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Proud
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Solution Centers
*Core Learning;
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Proud Foundation Vision & Mission
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Megasmart email:
jeff@proud.com |
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Jeff's
Education Blog |
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1/05/2008 - 9:25:52 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
It's starting to happen. For several years we've
known that about 50% of teachers will retire in the
next decade. That means older teachers in inner city
schools too. New teachers don't have the same
tolerance for tough kids as their predecessors.
Therefore, inner city schools will continue to lose
teachers, eventually students, and finally they will
close their doors.
Beset by the retirement of
veteran teachers and the flight of younger
faculty, schools in poor neighborhoods across
the country are increasingly turning to combat
pay to recruit and retain replacements. But the
controversial strategy will not produce the
700,000 teachers they need in the next decade.
The bleak outlook has particular relevance for
California, where every year 10 percent of
teachers in schools serving poor students
transfer to other schools. The most recent
evidence comes from Dallas, which had only 65
takers for its offer of $6,000 annual bonuses to
lure teachers to the city's hard-to-staff
schools. Researchers at the University of Texas
at Dallas attributed the disappointing results
to the amount tendered. They estimated that
bonuses would have to equal 45 percent of base
pay to attract the number of teachers required.
If they are correct, the amount would come to an
average of $20,000 for mid-career teachers.
But even that overly optimistic prediction
offers only a partial solution because it
focuses solely on the recruitment side of the
equation. It says nothing about the equally
important retention side.
Churn is costly. It forces a school to
repeatedly screen new teachers, undermines
instructional continuity, and makes students
feel abandoned. Massachusetts serves as a case
in point. In 1999, the Bay State began offering
$20,000 sign-up bonuses to teachers, primarily
to lure them to failing schools. After one year,
however, one-fifth of these teachers bailed out
of the classroom entirely, while many others
fled to suburban schools. Massachusetts's
experience does not bode well for Denver. Under
a recently implemented strategy known as ProComp,
which was funded after voters agreed to pony up
an additional $25 million in property taxes,
teachers receive bonuses for working in
hard-to-staff schools as well as for meeting
three other requirements. This likely explains
why teacher applications, so far, are up
substantially. But it's doubtful that the trend
will continue once word travels through the
grapevine about the daunting task of educating
students with huge deficits in socialization,
motivation and intellectual development.
None of the data comes as a surprise. A
study by the Texas Schools Project from 1993 to
1996 confirmed long standing anecdotal evidence.
It concluded that working conditions and student
characteristics matter far more than salary in
attracting and keeping teachers. Although the
study focused exclusively on elementary
teachers, who tend to have similar educational
backgrounds and similar opportunities outside
the school system, the findings apply to middle
and high school teachers as well.
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12/23/2007 - 12:43:13 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
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(I didn't realize all the troubles I'd run into changing
servers. We're coming along okay...we should be done this week. Thank
you & Merry Christmas)
The first steps in Reading!
This is a super-duper reading method, there
aren't any frills, just good basic down-to-earth reading, and they
keep a good schedule. More time spent on the program, the more you
get out of it. Steps to Literacy, covers phonetics,
vocabulary, spelling, writing, word recognition, reading
comprehension and fluency in kindergarten through second grade. One
of the program's strengths is that it appeals to students with
different learning styles and ability levels, advocates say.
The students are learning to read in a fast-paced program that
is being phased in systemwide to accelerate student literacy skills
and eliminate achievement gaps.
In a study involving first-graders at more than a dozen
schools that use the curriculum, the school system found that about
88 percent met targets in a statewide literacy test last year,
compared with 74 percent three years earlier. A quarter of the
students were from low-income families, and more than a third
represented racial or ethnic minorities. That kind of progress can
help eliminate achievement gaps.
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12/16/2007 - 10:21:40 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
School or the Streets: Crime and California's Dropout Crisis
Sheriff Lee Baca and other local law
enforcement leaders unveiled a new report that links low graduation
rates with violent crimes such as homicide and aggravated assault.
The report noted that high school dropouts are over three times more
likely than graduates to be arrested and eight times as likely to go
to jail or prison. Nationwide, 68 percent of state prison inmates do
not have a high school diploma. The report highlights research
showing that California’s dropout crisis damages California’s
economy, in addition to threatening public safety. According to data
released in August by the California Dropout Research Project:
dropouts earn less, pay fewer taxes, and are more likely to collect
welfare and turn to crime; for each year’s worth of dropouts,
California suffers billions of dollars in economic losses over time,
including $12 billion in crime costs alone; and every dollar
invested in programs proven to increase graduation rates will return
a long-term savings to taxpayers of $2 to $4.
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12/13/2007 - 5:18:13 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
The host server for Proud Foundation is being changed.
We should be up and running smoothly in a few days. This is the printed
sources of thoughtful hypotheses representing the state of education
today in the USA.
This research is the foundation for my book titled:
"Megasmart & Freedom to Learn."
This book
gives you the ability to educate your own kids to a very high bar,
making them influential and compelling persons; people that you will
want to meet!
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12/10/2007 - 5:44:17 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Until recently, the doors to college
were essentially closed to students with
cognitive disabilities.
Those students
typically remained in high school,
taking life-skills and transition
classes until they turned 22 and
could no longer receive services
through the public schools. But
increasingly, students with
intellectual disabilities that
prevented them from earning high
school diplomas are continuing their
education at the college level.
Massachusetts stands at the
forefront of the movement, with a
pilot program that allows students
with cognitive disabilities to
attend regular community college
classes. The initiative, which began
this year, marks the first time a
state has launched a coordinated
effort to give such students access
to postsecondary education.
Nationally, there are 121
college programs for students with
such intellectual disabilities as
Down syndrome and mental
retardation, but most separate the
students from typical campus life.
More than a dozen students
with disabilities are taking classes
at MassBay and Holyoke Community
College, and the program will expand
next semester to include at least
four other community colleges and
the University of Massachusetts at
Boston. The program works in tandem
with the students' high schools,
which provide educational coaches to
assist them.
MassBay students typically
audit a single course, either an
introductory academic, vocational,
or recreational class.
The initiative, financed
through a $1.5 million state grant,
seeks to determine whether students
like Lee, who are of traditional
college age but unlikely to receive
a high school diploma, will benefit
from exposure to college life. They
are not expected to pursue degrees.
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12/09/2007 - 1:23:08 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Is there a Crisis in Mathematics and Science
Education in the USA?
What
is the rationale for all United States
high students passing three advanced
courses in math and science to receive a
high school diploma? What is the
rationale for "all" high school
graduates satisfying the requirements
for admission to a four-college program?
There is none!
The United States is the
uncontested leader of the world in
scientific research in respect to
published accomplishments, Nobel Prizes,
volume of research and expenditures on
scientific research. The United States
is the leader of the world in technology
and the unchallenged leader of the world
in the global economy. The United States
dominates the world because of its
educational systems, including K-12
public education, post-secondary
colleges and universities that produce
the most highly educated, productive and
successful workforce in the world.
(Example See
www.jobseducationwis.org 276
Nobel Prizes in Science 2006
The American high tech workforce
has made corporations like Microsoft,
Intel, Cisco and IBM the absolute
leaders in technology in the world and
the global economy. It is
incomprehensible how American K-12
public school critics, including the
CEO's of the major high tech
corporations and Microsoft's Bill Gates,
the richest person in the U.S. ($51
Billion) and Harvard dropout, get away
with the bashing of all American K-12
schools based on bogus analysis of
useless international tests. Critics of
American public schools use K-12
education as the scapegoat for all of
the social and economic problems of the
United States. (Example See
www.jobseducationwis.org 261
Corporate Greed: Global Corporations
Outsourcing High Tech Jobs for Cheap
Labor While Bashing American Education
The Center for the Study of Jobs &
Education in Wisconsin has analyzed the
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and
Wisconsin Dept. of Workforce Development
ten year projections of employment
1996-2006, 1998-2008, 2002-2012 and
2004-2014(Example see
www.jobseducationwis.org267
Just Another Big Con: Jobs and Education
in the United States: United States
Employment Projections 2004-2014 272
Wisconsin Projections of Employment 2004
to 2014: Education and Training
The
political, business and education
leaders in the U.S. and Wisconsin, who
are responsible for education policies,
and inexcusably the media, ignore the
actual employment statistics and
projections. Only selected statistics
and anecdotal stories that support the
spurious claims about the crisis in
American K-12 education and future skill
worker shortage are reported.
The U.S. 2004-2014 BLS Projections
were released in the November Monthly on
December 7, 2005. (See
http://stats.bls.gov/ Employment
Projections listed under Employment and
Unemployment heading) The statistics in
Table 1 and 2 that follow on pages 2 and
3 of this report come from the BLS
November Monthly Labor Review. (http://stats.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2005/11/art5exc.htm)
Jobs and Education in Math and
Science in the United States:
As shown in Table I, 80 job titles
related to math and/or science are
projected to employ 7,469,000 in the
United States in 2014, an increase of
1,291,000 from 6,178,000 employments in
2004. The 7,469,000 represents 4.5% of
total United States employment projected
for 2014 of 165,540.000 in 760 job
titles. The 2004 math and/or science
employment of 6,178,000, was 4.2% of
2004 total employment of 145,612,000
workers.
A majority of workers in math and
or science occupations are employed in
Computer Occupations (53.6% in 2014).
Many of there workers do not have 4-yr
college degrees. This is also true of
math and science Technician occupations.
Table IMath & Science Employment in
the United States 2004-2014
|
Occupational Areas |
U.S.
2004 |
U.S.
2014 |
% |
Change |
% |
Number/ |
|
Employment |
Employment |
Job
Titles |
|
Architecture |
220,000 |
258,000 |
3.4 |
38,000 |
17.8 |
4 |
|
Engineers |
1.449,000 |
1,644,000 |
22 |
195,000 |
13.4 |
18 |
|
Engineering Technicians |
532,000 |
595,000 |
8 |
63,000 |
11.8 |
12 |
|
Physical Scientists |
250,000 |
281,000 |
3.8 |
30,000 |
12.2 |
7 |
|
Life Scientists |
232,000 |
280,000 |
3.7 |
48,000 |
20.8 |
12 |
|
Phy. & Life Technicians |
342,000 |
291,000 |
3.9 |
49,000 |
14.4 |
10 |
|
Computer Occupations |
3,046,000 |
4,003,000 |
53.6 |
957,000 |
31.4 |
11 |
|
Math Scientists & Tech. |
107,000 |
117,000 |
1.6 |
10,000 |
9.7 |
6 |
|
Totals |
6,178,000 |
7,469,000 |
100 |
1,291,000 |
20.9 |
80 |
|
Total U.S. Employment
|
145,612,000 |
164,540,000 |
18,928,000 |
13.0 |
760 |
|
%
Total U.S. Employment |
4.2% |
4.5% |
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Occupational employment projections to
2014, Monthly Labor Review, November
2005.
The great numbers of high paying
jobs of the future that are claimed to
require college graduation and high
academic skills for all high school
students are a great exaggeration. The
majority of the jobs of the future in
Wisconsin and the United States are low
or average paying jobs that require
short term or moderate-term on the job
training and do not require high-level
academic skills in any academic areas,
particularly in higher mathematics. The
projections of high skill job employment
shortages in the future may also be
significantly lowered because of
outsourcing of jobs for cheaper labor.
American corporations justify
their outsourcing of jobs by bashing
American education and quoting
statistics about the higher percentage
of China and India's college graduates
with engineering and science degrees and
that there is a shortage of high skilled
American high tech workers and college
graduates. A January 2006 report from
Duke University, published in Education
Week,"U.S. Asian Engineering Gap
Overstated" says, "It is clear that the
U.S is not in the desperate state that
is routinely portrayed." Almost one
third of the world's science and
engineering graduates are employed in
the U.S."
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12/08/2007 - 2:56:13 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
The Family: America's Smallest School
This report
examines the family and home experiences
that influence children's learning.
Factors include single parent families,
poverty and resources, parents talking
and reading to children, quality day
care, and parental involvement in
school.
"When parents,
teachers and schools work together to
support learning, students do better in
school and stay in school longer," says
Barton. "Our analysis shows that factors
like single-parent families, parents
reading to children, hours spent
watching television and school absences,
when combined, account for about
two-thirds of the large differences
among states in National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP) reading
scores."
Findings in the report show that:
- Thirty-two percent of U.S.
children live in single-parent
homes, up from 23% in 1980.
- Thirty-three percent of
children live in families in which
no parent has a full-time,
year-round job.
- By age 4, children of
professional families hear 35
million more words than children of
parents on welfare.
- Half of the nation's
two-year-olds are in some kind of
regular day care. Seventy-five
percent are in center-based day care
rated of medium- or low-quality.
- A comparison of
eighth-graders in 45 countries found
that U.S. students spend less time
reading books for enjoyment — and
more time watching television and
videos —than students in many other
countries. Forty-four percent of
births to women under 30 are
out-of-wedlock.
- Nationally, 11 percent of all
households are "food insecure." The
rate for female-headed households is
triple the rate for married
families.
- Sixty-two percent of high SES
kindergartners are read to every day
by their parents, compared to 36
percent of kindergartners from low
SES groups.
- One in five students misses
three days or more of school a
month. The United States ranked 25th
of 45 countries in students' school
attendance.
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12/05/2007 - 4:26:53 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
The United
States lags behind most other developed countries when it comes to
science education.
That is one conclusion of a major report
released Tuesday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD). It measures student literacy in science, math,
and reading (focusing this year on science) among 15-year-olds, and
is an often-cited reference for policymakers sounding the alarm
bells about the state of education in the United States and its
implications for the ability of Americans to secure jobs in a global
economy.
Finland emerged at the top of 57 countries in science,
according to the 2006 survey results from the Programme for
International Student Assessment (PISA). The US ranked 29th, behind
countries like Croatia, the Czech Republic, and Liechtenstein, and
ahead of just nine other OECD countries.
The US is average in the number of students at the highest
levels of scientific literacy, but has a much larger pool – nearly 1
in 4 – at the bottom.That worry has energized education advocates
and reformers, who see the test as a useful tool to catalyze public
opinion behind the need for fundamental change in how America
educates.
"To most policymakers there's almost a believed connection
between how well our kids do in school and how well our economy does
in the global economy," says Marc Tucker, president of the National
Center on Education and the Economy.
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12/04/2007 - 9:34:44 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Houghton Mifflin Co. is selling its
college textbook unit to Cengage
Learning for $750 million so it can
focus on its publishing business geared
to kindergarten through 12th grade, as
well as trade and reference
publications.
Cengage, previously known as
Thomson Learning, said yesterday's
transaction would help broaden its
education products, including
textbooks and study guides.
Boston-based Houghton Mifflin
and Stamford, Conn.-based Cengage
also said they plan to cooperate in
expanding distribution of Cengage's
book titles into the US market for
high school advanced placement
textbooks.
Yesterday's cash transaction
is expected to close in the first
half of next year, subject to
conditions including regulatory
approval.
Tony Lucki, chairman,
president, and chief executive of
Houghton Mifflin, said the privately
held company's college division "has
been an important contributor to
Houghton Mifflin for many years, but
moving forward we will focus our
efforts on our K12, trade, and
reference businesses."
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12/03/2007 - 5:13:37 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Teachers draft reform plan
Teachers would decide what to teach and when.
Teachers and parents would hire and fire principals. No supervisors
from downtown would tell anyone -- neither teachers nor students --
what to wear.
These are among the ideas a delegation of teachers and their union
officers are urging L.A. schools Supt. David L. Brewer to include in
the school reform plan he will present to the school board Tuesday.
Will this improve education?
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12/02/2007 - 4:52:13 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Young, Gifted and Skipping High School
As Jackie Robson rushed off to
Japanese 101, a pink sign on the main door of
her college dorm reminded her to sign out. There
were more rules: an 11 p.m. curfew, mandatory
study hours, round-the-clock adult supervision
and no boys allowed in the rooms.
Jackie is 14. She never spent a day in
high school.
Like the other super-bright girls in her
dorm, the
Fairfax County teen bypassed a
traditional education and countless teenage
rites, such as the senior prom and
graduation, to attend the all-female Mary
Baldwin College in the
Shenandoah Valley.
The school offers students as young as
12 a jump-start on college in one of the
leading programs of its kind. It also gives
brainy girls a chance to be with others like
them. By all accounts, they are ready for
the leap socially and emotionally, and they
crave it academically.
Last spring, Jackie finished eighth
grade at
Langston Hughes Middle School in
Reston. This fall, she's taking
Psychology 101, Japanese 101, English 101,
Folk Dance and U.S. History 1815-1877:
Democracy and Crisis.
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12/01/2007 - 3:20:41 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
The Clark County teachers union has fended off
a takeover attempt by the Teamsters union, only to face a threat
from another organization that wants to render it all but useless.
Facing a Friday deadline to turn in signatures of support,
Teamsters Local 14 will announce today it has officially abandoned
its effort to challenge the teachers union for the right to
represent the school district's 18,000 licensed personnel.
Teamsters Secretary-Treasurer Gary Mauger said in a statement
Wednesday the union was unable to obtain the support of a majority
of members in the five-month organizing window to petition the state
labor board for an election.
But the teachers union can't rest. Even as it prepares to
battle casinos by trying to raise the gaming tax by three percentage
points, its members are being targeted by a new organization, the
Professional Association of Clark County Educators, which says it
can better help rank-and-file teachers without raiding their wallets
for political purposes.
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11/29/2007 - 7:30:34 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Who or what is to blame for lagging performance by minority students?
Disadvantaged students' low performance has
many mutually reinforcing causes. We're the most unequal society in
the industrialized world; it would be silly to expect academic
performance to be equal when nothing else is. Every industrialized
society has achievement gaps. Ours are bigger because our economic
system is more unequal.
Educational debates are corrupted by insistence that schools alone
can close achievement gaps. Certainly, better schools would lift
achievement. Groups trying to improve schools, train better teachers
and principals, improve curriculum and raise standards are
essential.
Closing gaps requires combining better schools with greater social
and economic equality.
On Monday, I gave one example of why better schools alone can't do
it, describing how low-income children have more frequent asthma,
resulting in more school absence. Imagine two groups of children,
identical except that one has high absenteeism from untreated
asthma. When children in this group do come to school, they are
often drowsy from being awake at night. Without proper medical care,
they can't suppress symptoms with inhalants, as more fortunate
children do. The second group has adequate medical care and less
absenteeism. If both groups have great teachers, curriculum and
standards, they will still differ in average learning.
Of course, good teachers will get higher average achievement from
children who are frequently absent than will inadequate teachers.
But will good teachers get the same average achievement from the
frequently absent that they get from healthier students? Certainly
not.
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11/28/2007 - 5:17:26 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Lawsuit challenges state law defining gender in schools
A federal lawsuit was filed Tuesday challenging a
new state law that will change the way “gender” is defined in
schools.
The new law says “no teacher shall give instruction nor shall
a school district sponsor any activity that promotes a
discriminatory bias” against students. The lawsuit, filed in federal
court in San Diego, seeks an injunction barring the law from going
into effect as well as a finding that the law is unconstitutional.
The lawsuit says the change “recklessly abandons the traditional
understanding of biological sex in favor of an elusive definition
that is unconstitutionally vague.” The lawsuit argues that the new
law redefines gender as sex, and says it includes “a person's gender
identity and gender-related appearance.” Robert Tyler, a lawyer for
Advocates for Faith and Freedom, said it is a safety issue. In a
press release issued earlier in the day, he said: “What will prevent
the 250-pound linebacker from deciding he wants to share the locker
room with the cheerleaders?” “If implemented, this bill will have
disastrous effects in our school system,” Tyler said. “This social
experiment defies common sense.”
Grossmont Union High School District board member Priscilla
Schreiber is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which also is
being supported by board members Larry Urdahl, Robert Shield and Jim
Kelly. At a news conference held outside Lincoln High School,
supporters of the lawsuit said the new law would allow students to
define themselves as either male or female, regardless of biology.
It also would prohibit anyone – students, teachers and other staff
members – from speaking against homosexuality or transgender issues.
“If you say anything that is opposed to that alternative
lifestyle, you are discriminating against those individuals,” said
Ron Prentice of the California Family Council, which oversees the
California Education Committee. “It's an indoctrinating bill. It's a
bill that says you must respect the rights of homosexuals to the
degree that the traditional world view is silenced.”
But Geoff Kors, the executive director of Equality California,
which sponsored the bill, said the lawsuit is wrong. Kors said the
new law was just a “language clean-up bill” which clarified
conflicting state laws regarding students' discrimination and
harassment. He said that the definition of gender has been in the
education code since 2000, and there have been no controversies
surrounding it. “This bill did not make any change to the definition
of gender,” Kors said. Equality California is one of the state's
leading same-sex rights' groups
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11/27/2007 - 1:57:41 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Spending a huge amount of money on health care is considered a national
scandal - but huge spending on higher education isn't.
"It takes more resources
today to educate a postsecondary student than a
generation ago," writes Richard Vedder, a
professor of economics at Ohio University and a
rare insider who is critical of rising costs.
"That is not true for most goods and services .
. . . Relative to other sectors of the economy,
universities are becoming less efficient, less
productive, and, consequently, more costly."
The problem is not only that teaching is
the only profession that has had absolutely no
productivity advance in the 2,400 years since
Socrates taught the youth of Athens." To make
matters worse, Vedder notes, the
nonteaching staff at universities is
ballooning; growing third-party payments are
eroding consumer cost-consciousness (just as
they have in health care); and universities lack
any equivalent of the bottom line by which to
measure executive performance.
Vedder's paper on this topic,
Over Invested and Over Priced, was
published to little notice this month by the
Center for College Affordability and
Productivity. The far bigger news in academia
was captured by this New York Times
headline of Nov. 12: "More College Presidents in
Million-Dollar Club."
Yes, pay for college presidents is now
soaring to once unimagined heights. They are
being rewarded for . . . well, for what? For
successfully deflecting any serious questions
about how their institutions operate?
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11/26/2007 - 5:58:07 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
TECHNOLOGY CLICKS WITH KIDS - Computers transform classrooms - gadgets
get students excited to learn
The kids grab small voting devices
on their desks, then punch in their answer to a
question posed on the screen above them: "¿Cual es
verde? "In an instant, teacher Nancy Conn
pushes a button and up pops a chart showing the
correct answer -- the green square -- among six
squares of varying colors.
All of this is happening on a large interactive
white board -- a cross between a blackboard,
computer screen and projector -- that Conn uses in
her Spanish classroom at Hickory Grove Elementary
School in Bloomfield Township.The boards
-- which will be in every classroom in the
Bloomfield Hills Schools district by the beginning
of next year -- are among the ways schools in metro
Detroit are using technology to teach and capture
the minds of a generation growing up in a digital
age.
At Lottie Schmidt Elementary School in New
Baltimore, students in Jim Alvaro's fifth-grade
class create podcasts of their lessons, broadcast
for anyone on the Web to hear. Rob McClelland, a
teacher at the Oakland Technical Center campus in
Wixom, has created computer games that help solidify
students' understanding of key lessons.
And at Fisher Elementary School in the South
Redford School District, students are learning
Chinese and interacting with pen pals in China via a
webcam, computer, projector and software.
"You always learn something new by using
technology," said Natalie Joniec, 10, a Fisher
fifth-grader.
Technology boosts performance
While some schools are pushing forward with
plans to fully integrate technology, others struggle
to do so in ways that engage kids and help them
learn, said Ledong Li, an assistant professor of
education at Oakland University.
And that's a problem, he said.
"If we deliver information like we used to do
in the traditional way, kids are bored in the
classroom," said Li, who organized a workshop in
June on using video games in the classroom. "They
don't feel they are engaged."
Li said technology can be intimidating to
teachers who aren't familiar with how to use it, or
how it can benefit their lessons. And so much is
focused today on improving test scores that it's
easy to see technology as an extra. Yet, Li said
research shows technology can improve student
performance.
Still, some teachers "look at the requirements
for raising test scores as the kind of signal that
they have to do things in a traditional way," Li
said.
State Superintendent Mike Flanagan has
announced proposed changes to teacher preparation
programs, and he's making the integration of
technology into teaching practices a priority. Last
year, Michigan became the first, and still the only,
state in the nation that will require students to
take an online class or have online experience to
graduate high school.
Ric Wiltse, executive director of the
Lansing-based Michigan Association for Computer
Users in Learning, said budget crunches have
impacted how schools integrate technology.
But, Wiltse said, "teachers are getting more
and more creative about how they use the technology
tools students have these days."
That includes Alvaro, whose classroom has a
blog called the Skinny as well as the podcasts. The
students worked on a project that had them research
and write about when their ancestors arrived in the
United States.
Games that teach
Today's kids are steps ahead of their
teachers, in many cases. They instant message, text
message, play video games, blog and use social Web
sites like MySpace and YouTube.
"Everything we do is about technology," said
Kala Kottman of Commerce Township, a senior at
Walled Lake Western High School and the Oakland
Technical Center campus in Wixom. "It's a big deal."
Kala, 17, is enrolled in the culinary arts
program at the technical center. She was among a
group of students in a computer lab playing a game
created by McClelland, who provides support to
fellow teachers.
There are about 100 culinary tools students
must memorize, and while they still use rote
memorization tricks, McClelland's game gives them a
fun way to test their knowledge. McClelland has
produced a similar game for two other technical
center programs.
In the game, which is timed, students must
quickly match a picture of a tool with its correct
name.
McClelland programmed the game using popular
phrases familiar to kids. For instance, if they
click on the wrong answer, they're likely to hear
the "D'oh!" popularized by Homer Simpson. If they
get it right, they might hear a "Woo hoo."
Instant feedback
The Bloomfield Hills district is making a
significant investment in the Promethean white
boards. About $2.1 million has been committed to put
them in all of its classrooms.
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|
11/25/2007 - 5:03:29 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
The Achievement
Crisis
The American public sees that
something is badly amiss in the education of our young people.
Employers now often need to rely on people from other countries to
do the math that our own high school graduates cannot do. We score
low among developed nations in international comparisons of science,
math, and reading. This news is in fact more alarming than most
people realize, since our students perform relatively worse on
international comparisons the longer they stay in our schools.
America’s fourth graders score ninth in reading among 35 countries,
which is respectable. By tenth grade they score 15th in reading
among 27 countries, which is not promising at all for their (and
our) economic future.1 A person’s and a nation’s economic success
depend on high reading and/or math ability. We have learned from the
phenomenon of outsourcing that those who have these abilities can
find a place in the global economy no matter where they happen to
live, while those who lack them can be marginalized even if they
live in the middle of the United States.
Reading ability is the heart of the
matter because it correlates with learning and communication ability
across subjects. Reading proficiency isn’t in and of itself the
magic key to competence. It’s what reading enables us to learn and
to do that is critical. Given current and rapidly growing uses of
technology in daily life and in many jobs, the key to economic and
political achievement is the ability to gain new knowledge rapidly
through reading and listening.
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11/23/2007 - 3:44:55 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Texas has to make schools safe for learning without turning misbehaving
students into criminals
Something went horribly
wrong after Texas decided to crack down on mayhem in public schools by
mandating zero tolerance for weapons, drugs and violence on campus.
Given broad discretion to remove unruly pupils from class, teachers and
administrators restored order. But they also created a terribly
efficient fast track to prison for a shocking number of Texas
schoolchildren.
According to an analysis of statewide data for 2001-2006 and thorough
studies of more than a dozen Texas school districts, the number of
students suspended and the number removed to alternative discipline
campuses skyrocketed after the Legislature's 1995 overhaul of school
discipline laws. This, the public interest law group Texas Appleseed
states, has caused a "school-to-prison pipeline" that puts inordinate
numbers of youngsters on a path to dropping out of school and into the
juvenile justice system. The far end of the pipe pours into Texas'
massive adult prison system.
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11/21/2007 - 3:15:24 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
The National Endowment for
the Arts shows how reading habits have declined
in recent years. Here are some of the troubling
highlights of "To Read or Not to Read: A
Question of National Consequence." From 1982 to
2002, the percentage of 18- to 24-year-olds who
read literature dropped from 60 percent to 43
percent.*
The percentage of
17-year-olds who read for pleasure almost every
day dropped from 31 percent to 22 percent over
the period 1984-2004.
In study after study the
reading results are very consistent. The number
of adults with bachelor's degrees who score
"proficient in reading prose" fell from 40
percent in 1992 to 31 percent in 2003.
Some argue that questioning
"reading" fails to capture the entire picture if
they do not account for the Internet This is
true, but 90ty percent on the time on the
Internet is spent on sites like MySpace, or
FaceBook, etc. I'm sure you won't find a lot of
kids using their Internet time looking up the "Reading
Masters." You can figure out the
rest on your own.
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|
11/20/2007 - 5:38:50 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
California schools are failing all our kids
State schools Supt. Jack O'Connell hosted a
summit in Sacramento last week of 4,000 educators, policymakers and
experts. He asked them to confront California's "racial achievement
gap" -- the persistently lower test scores of California's African
American and Latino public school students compared with their white
and Asian peers. In 125 packed sessions, participants probed causes
of the gap and offered strategies to close it. O'Connell asked them
to "honestly and courageously face this pernicious problem," and for
two days, the capital was abuzz with ideas, energy and even some
hope.
Strikingly, the state's other "achievement gap" was barely mentioned
at the summit; this is the gap between California and the rest of
the nation.
The most recent results from the National Assessment of Education
Progress test (popularly known as "the nation's report card") place
California's fourth- and eighth-graders below those in nearly every
other state in math and reading achievement. (Although California's
math scores have improved over the last decade, so have the scores
in the rest of the country.)
This national achievement gap affects students across the state
regardless of their race. If we don't address both the racial and
national achievement gaps, it's hard to imagine solving either one
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11/19/2007 - 8:27:35 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
An Interview with Dr.G. Gbaanador, a Nigerian-born general and Trauma
surgeon practicing in Houston,
Dr. G was there as a board member for the Fort
Bend Independent School District's Thurgood Marshall High School
Electronic Engineering Academy. Being a surgeon and participating
with a high school was of particular interest to me because of the
education aspect of his exemplary work. He had just returned from
Nigeria where he continues his efforts towards building a hospital
for those who need health care.
|
|
11/18/2007 - 2:38:12 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Rhee Weighs D.C. Privatization
Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee of the D.C. Schools is
considering turning over the management of 27 failing public schools
to nonprofit charter education firms, is sending a clear signal that
she intends to shake up the moribund bureaucracy that has failed
generations of students.
Experts and school advocates say they are uneasy about the
lack of details surrounding her idea, particularly given evidence
across the country that charters and schools under private
management sometimes fare no better than traditional public schools.
(Please
note that experts and school advocates designed the system that's
there now. HooRah, Michelle is really
thinking! And her ideas are outside the "Box" - very cool!)
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|
11/17/2007 - 11:33:24 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Election '08 Meets The Great Education Myth
"Advanced economies,
whether America's or Denmark's, are knowledge economies. And
knowledge economies reward education. Get a degree, expand your
skills, and you will do just fine."
"Today, the
Economic Policy Institute issued a report that should come as a
clarion call to everyone concerned about the impact of unfair trade
agreements and practices on America's working families. In their
report, the EPI concludes that between 25 to 30 million American
jobs -- about one in five American jobs -- in states all across the
nation, are at risk for being off-shored over the next decade. And
it's not just manufacturing jobs - the report shows those jobs that
require at least a four-year college degree are actually the most at
risk. This report makes clear what the labor community has known for
far too long: bad trade deals, cheap foreign labor, illegal foreign
subsidies and foreign currency manipulation are having a devastating
effect on American workers...Given this reality, I find it alarming
that Senator Clinton and Senator Obama have chosen to support a
flawed Peru Trade deal that will only further expand the NAFTA-model
that has already cost us well over a million jobs."
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11/16/2007 - 5:14:33 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Commentary:
Socrates, Aristotle and Plato
If our
television networks spent as much time
trying to teach people about Socrates,
Aristotle and Plato, as they did trying to
follow the latest gossip about Lohan, Spears
and Hilton, our society might be a better
place. (this is really the truth,
read the whole article)
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|
11/15/2007 - 4:36:18 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
For her students, developmental math finally adds up
(read the original article - it shows that students'
with math difficulties are easily brought back to proper grade level
proficiency with the appropriate level of extra attention)
Professor Rosemary Karr constantly
challenges the perception that math is something to be feared.People
think it's OK to say "I've never been good at math," says Karr, who
teaches at Collin County Community College in Plano, Texas. But "if
I were to tell you, 'I can't read,' or 'I can't write,' are you
going to be laughing? Why is it socially acceptable to say, 'I can't
do math'? "
Karr, who will be honored today in
Washington, D.C., as community college professor of the year, has
spent much of her career demystifying mathematics for remedial
students. "At the developmental level, you see increased
frustration, and that's something I'm good at, helping students to
relax a little bit more and see the fun of mathematics, and not just
see math as something to torture people," she says.
She uses clips from movies such as Cast
Away and Little Big League to introduce math concepts in a
non-threatening way and has a knack for analogies that build
understanding. Untangling algebraic equations, for example, is like
taking off shoes before socks and socks before pants.
Karr left a tenured position at Eastern
Kentucky University in 1989 when her husband was transferred to
Plano. At Collin, she started working with remedial students and
found that helping students get over their fears of math at the
developmental level went a long way toward setting them up for
success.
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|
11/14/2007 - 7:15:21 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Study Compares States’ Math and Science Scores With Other Countries’
American students even in
low-performing states like Alabama do better on math and science
tests than students in most foreign countries, including Italy and
Norway, according to a new study released yesterday. That’s the good
news.The bad news is that students in Singapore and several other
Asian countries significantly outperform American students, even
those in high-achieving states like Massachusetts, the study found.
“In this case, the bad
news trumps the good because our Asian
economic competitors are winning the race to
prepare students in math and science,” said
the study’s author, Gary W. Phillips, chief
scientist at the American Institutes of
Research, a nonprofit independent scientific
research firm. The study equated
standardized test scores of eighth-grade
students in each of the 50 states with those
of their peers in 45 countries. Experts said
it was the first such effort to link
standardized test scores, state by state,
with scores from other nations.
Gage Kingsbury, the chief
research and development officer at the
Northwest Evaluation Association, a group in
Oregon that carries out testing in 2,700
school districts, praised the study’s
methodology but said “a flock of
difficulties” made it hazardous to compare
test results from one country to another and
from one state to another. “Kids don’t start
school at the same age in different
countries,” he said. “Not all kids are in
school in grade eight, and the percentage
differs from country to country.”
Because of such
differences, Dr. Kingsbury said, it would be
a mistake to infer too much about the
relative rigor of the educational systems
across the states and nations in the study
based merely on test score differences.
Scores for students in the United States
came from tests administered by the federal
Department of Education in most states in
2005 and 2007. For foreign students, the
scores came from math and science tests
administered worldwide in 2003, as part of
the Trends in International Mathematics and
Science Study, known as the Timss.
Concern that science and
math achievement was not keeping pace with
the nation’s economic competitors had been
building even before the most recent Timss
survey, in which the highest-performing
nations were Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea,
Hong Kong and Japan. American students
lagged far behind those nations, but earned
scores that were comparable to peers in
European nations like Slovakia and Estonia,
and were well above countries like Egypt,
Chile and Saudi Arabia.
The Timss survey gives
each country a metric by which to compare
its educational attainment with other
nations’. The nationwide American test,
known as the National Assessments of
Educational Progress, allows policy makers
in each state to compare their students’
results with those in other states.
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|
11/13/2007 - 3:15:21 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Dr. Philip Shaw of the National Institute of
Mental Health said that although brain development was slower among
children with ADHD, it followed a normal pattern, which should
reassure parents. Shaw, lead author of the report published in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said the results
could help explain why many children with ADHD appear to grow out of
the disorder and become less impulsive and fidgety as they mature.
About 4.4-million school-age children in the United States, or
3 percent to 5 percent, have ADHD, which can lead to poor school
performance and behavior problems. Half of children diagnosed with
the disorder are treated with stimulants, such as Ritalin, or other
medicines.
Researchers used magnetic resonance imaging equipment to scan
the brains of 223 children and adolescents with ADHD and 223
youngsters without the disorder. The scans were repeated two, three
or four or more times at three-year intervals.In children with ADHD,
developmental lags were most pronounced in the prefrontal cortex,
which supports attention and working memory, among other things.
Half of the cortical points in ADHD children reached peak thickness
at an average age of 10.5, contrasted with 7.5 in children without
the disorder.
Since brain development in ADHD is just slower and not a
permanent disability, we can catch these kids up by just teaching
them at their own rate.
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11/12/2007 - 5:08:04 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
DREAM Act's failure dashes
dreams of youths -
Illegal immigrant
children caught in middle of debate
Some local students felt their own dreams
dim last month when the DREAM Act failed in
Washington."I may have to start all over again
in
Mexico," said one
Clark County high school junior who lives illegally in
the
United States. "There are a lot of people who want to
continue their lives here and now can't." The Development,
Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act would have allowed
illegal immigrants who came to the United States with their
families before they turned 16, and who plan to attend
college or join the military, to move toward legality. But
the Senate last month blocked the legislation with a 52-44
vote for the act. Sixty votes were needed to advance the
proposal.
Opponents argued the bill would put people on a path to
citizenship even if they were living in the country illegally,
amounting to a type of amnesty.Clark County schools
don't track how many of their students are living illegally in
the country. But some administrators say the number is probably
substantial..
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|
11/11/2007 - 12:21:22 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
November 11, 2007 --
One-third of the graduates of the city's
Leadership Academy, the pricey principals
training program heralded as the cornerstone
of Mayor Bloomberg's school reform, are not
leading city schools - and a dozen grads
earned failing grades on new report cards.
The city is paying more than $7
million this year for the Aspiring
Principals Program - one of three programs
the academy runs - and is poised to take
over the bill for the entire academy at a
price that could reach $20 million a year.
The training cost an average of $146,000 per
graduate last year.
Meanwhile, about
half of the schools
headed by Leadership
Academy principals
last year received
grades of C, D or F
in school report
cards last week. The
12 failing schools
being led by academy
grads represent one
quarter of all F
schools in the
system and put the
principals at risk
of being ousted.
About 15 percent of
schools led by
academy grads got
A's, but that number
falls short when
compared to all
schools. Citywide,
23 percent of
schools earned A's.
Some grads are
heading schools
where they have been
harshly criticized
by teachers and
parents who cite
their lack of
experience and,
ironically,
leadership skills.
The Department
of Education
maintains that the
new principals take
on tough schools
that require years
to turn around.
Schools Chancellor
Joel Klein said the
placement and
performance of the
graduates has been
strong. "Would I
like it to do
better? You bet I
would," he said.
"Would I like
everyone who starts
to finish? Yes.
Everyone who
finishes to be an
A-plus principal?
Yes."
The academy
was created in 2003
with a mission to
create new leaders,
or "change agents,"
using
corporate-style
training. For three
years it was almost
entirely funded by
$69 million in
private money.
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11/06/2007 - 7:10:30 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Law shielding gay students is to
take effect in January.
A conservative
group has launched a petition drive to try to
overturn a new law that is intended to protect gay
students from discrimination.
The group, Capitol Resource Family Impact,
contends the statute will require changes in school
curriculum that will make homosexuality seem
acceptable.
Opponents need to collect valid signatures of
more than 400,000 registered voters to put a
referendum on the ballot.
The law was signed by Governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger last month and is scheduled to take
effect in January.
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|
11/05/2007 - 4:43:53 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
The State
believes that Parents are Idiots!
Thank goodness parents are idiots.
Otherwise, at least half of the current tax-funded bozos – the
so-called public servants whose sole mission is to supplant parental
rights and decision-making - the teachers - would be unemployed,
taking their aggressive panhandling to the streets nonetheless. And,
we can't have that, can we?
Of course, not all parents are
idiots. One special class of the omniscient exists; those parents
employed by government or associated organizations (can you say
teachers unions). These folks are never idiots since they drink from
the fountain of enlightenment. The fountain whose source is the
never-ending stream of tax dollars, and whose drain is the
never-clogged pipeline of bloated salaries.
Parents are idiots. Yes, that is a
harsh statement. However, from what I read – from what the state and
its minions believe, it is absolutely true. Offensive, but true.
Alright, put up or shut up! Fair
enough.
A recently published study on public school choice looked at the
schools parents chose when they were allowed to select between the
various Milwaukee public schools. The study reports that many
parents chose schools based on nonacademic reasons; parents chose
schools for reasons other than the state's definition of a quality
program.
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11/01/2007 - 11:41:22 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
The Science Education Myth
A
new report by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan
think tank, disproves many confident pronouncements
about the alleged weaknesses and failures of the
U.S. education system. This data will certainly be
examined by both sides in the
debate over highly skilled workers and immigration
(BusinessWeek.com, 10/10/07). The argument by
Microsoft, Google, Intel, and others is that there
are not enough tech workers in the U.S.
The authors of the report, the Urban
Institute's Hal Salzman and Georgetown University
professor Lindsay Lowell, show that math, science,
and reading test scores at the primary and secondary
level have increased over the past two decades, and
U.S. students are now close to the top of
international rankings. Perhaps just as surprising,
the report finds that our education system actually
produces more science and engineering graduates than
the market demands.
These findings go against what has been the
dominant position about our education system and our
science and engineering workforce. Consider reports
on national competitiveness that policymakers often
turn to, such reports as the 2005
"Rising Above the Gathering Storm" by the
National Academy of Sciences. This report says the
U.S. is in dire straits because of poor math and
science preparation. The report points to declining
test scores, fewer students taking math and science
courses, and low-quality curriculums and teacher
preparation in K-12 education compared to other
countries.
The call has been taken up by some of the most
prominent people in business and politics. Bill
Gates, chairman of Microsoft, said at an education
summit in 2005, "In the international competition to
have the biggest and best supply of knowledge
workers, America is falling behind." President
George W. Bush addressed the issue in his 2006 State
of the Union address. "We need to encourage children
to take more math and science, and to make sure
those courses are rigorous enough to compete with
other nations," he said.
Salzman and Lowell found the reverse was true.
Their report shows U.S. student performance has
steadily improved over time in math, science, and
reading. It also found enrollment in math and
science courses is actually up. For example, in 1982
high school graduates earned 2.6 math credits and
2.2 science credits on average. By 1998, the average
number of credits increased to 3.5 math and 3.2
science credits. The percent of students taking
chemistry increased from 45% in 1990 to 55% in 1996
and 60% in 2004. Scores in national tests such as
the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the
SAT, and the ACT have also shown increases in math
scores over the past two decades.
And the new report again went
against the grain when it compared
the U.S. to other countries. It
found that over the past decade the
U.S. has ranked a consistent second
place in science. It also was far
ahead of other nations in reading
and literacy and other academic
areas. In fact, the report found
that the U.S. is one of only a few
nations that has consistently shown
improvement over time.Why
the sharp discrepancy? Salzman says
that reports citing low U.S.
international rankings often
misinterpret the data. Review of the
international rankings, which he
says are all based on one of two
tests, the Trends in International
Mathematics & Science Study (TIMMS)
or the Programme for International
Student Assessment (PISA), show the
U.S. is in a second-ranked group,
not trailing the leading economies
of the world as is commonly
reported. In fact, the few countries
that place higher than the U.S. are
generally small nations, and few of
these rank consistently high across
all grades, subjects, and years
tested. Moreover, he says, serious
methodological flaws, such as
different test populations, and
other limitations preclude drawing
any meaningful comparison of school
systems between countries.
As far as our workforce is
concerned, the new report showed
that from 1985 to 2000 about 435,000
U.S. citizens and permanent
residents a year graduated with
bachelor's, master's, and doctoral
degrees in science and engineering.
Over the same period, there were
about 150,000 jobs added annually to
the science and engineering
workforce. These numbers don't
include those retiring or leaving a
profession but do indicate the size
of the available talent pool. It
seems that nearly two-thirds of
bachelor's graduates and about a
third of master's graduates take
jobs in fields other than science
and engineering.
Michael Teitelbaum,
vice-president of the Alfred P.
Sloan Foundation, which, among other
things, works to improve science
education, says this research
highlights the troubling weaknesses
in many conventional policy
prescriptions. Proposals to increase
the supply of scientists and
engineers rapidly, without any
objective evidence of comparably
rapid growth in attractive career
opportunities for such
professionals, might actually be
doing harm.
In previous columns, I have
written about research my team at
Duke University completed that
shattered
common myths (BusinessWeek.com,
7/10/06) about India and China
graduating 12 times as many
engineers as the U.S. We found that
the U.S. graduated comparable
numbers and was far ahead in
quality. Our research also showed
there were
no engineer shortages (BusinessWeek.com,
11/7/06) in the U.S., and companies
weren't going offshore because of
any deficiencies in U.S. workers.
So, there isn't a lack of
interest in science and engineering
in the U.S., or a deficiency in the
supply of engineers. However, there
may sometimes be short-term
shortages of engineers with specific
technical skills in certain industry
segments or in various parts of the
country. The National Science
Foundation data show that of the
students who graduated from 1993 to
2001, 20% of the bachelor's holders
went on to complete master's degrees
in fields other than science and
engineering and an additional 45%
were working in other fields. Of
those who completed master's
degrees, 7% continued their
education and 31% were working in
fields other than science and
engineering.
There isn't a problem with the
capability of U.S. children. Even if
there were a deficiency in math and
science education, there are so many
graduates today that there would be
enough who are above average and
fully qualified for the relatively
small number of science and
engineering jobs. Science and
engineering graduates just don't see
enough opportunity in these
professions to continue further
study or to take employment.
With U.S. competitiveness at stake,
we need to get our priorities
straight. Education is really
important, and a well-educated
workforce is what will help the U.S.
keep its global edge. But
emphasizing math and science
education over humanities and social
sciences may not be the best
prescription for the U.S. We need
our children to receive a balanced
and broad education.
Perhaps we should focus on creating
demand for the many scientists and
engineers we graduate. There are
many problems, from global warming
to the development of alternative
fuels to cures for infectious
diseases, that need to be solved.
Let's create exciting national
programs that motivate our children
to help solve these problems.
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|
10/31/2007 - 8:53:13 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
The Classroom of the Future Is Everywhere
The university
classroom of the future is in Janet Duck’s
dining room on East Chocolate Avenue here.
There is no blackboard and no lectern,
and, most glaringly, no students. Dr. Duck
teaches her classes in Pennsylvania State
University’s master’s program in business
administration by sitting for several hours
each day in jeans and shag-lined slippers at
her dining table, which in soccer mom
fashion is cluttered with crayon sketches by
her 6-year-old Elijah and shoulder pads for
her 9-year-old Olivia’s Halloween costume.
In this homespun setting, the spirited
Dr. Duck pecks at a Toshiba laptop and posts
lesson content, readings and questions for
her two courses on “managing human
resources” that touch on topics like
performance evaluations and recruitment. The
instructional software allows her 54
students to log on from almost anywhere at
any time and post remarkably extended
responses, the equivalent of a blog about
the course. Recently, the class exchanged
hard-earned experiences about how managers
deal with lackluster workers.
Those students, mostly 30-ish middle
managers and professionals trying to enhance
their skills, cannot be with her in a Penn
State classroom at a set time. One woman is
an Air Force pilot flying missions over
Afghanistan; other global travelers filed
comments last week from Tokyo, Athens, São
Paulo and Copenhagen. Dr. Duck cannot
regularly be at Penn State, largely because
of her three children. Yet she and other
instructors will help the students acquire
standard M.B.A.’s next August at a total
cost of $52,000, with each side having
barely stepped into a traditional classroom.
|
|
10/30/2007 - 5:49:22 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
One High
School out of every ten is considered a 'Dropout Factory'.
A "Dropout Factory," is a high school where no more than 60
percent of the students who start as freshmen make it to their
senior year. That description fits more than one in 10 high
schools across America. Ten percent of our entire school system at
the high school level is being ravaged. This is truly a frightening
number. Here's something that's even more scary, the whole
process is not done intentionally. If it is not intentional then it
must be something in the structure of "schools."
"If you're born in a neighborhood or town where the only high
school is one where graduation is not the norm, how is this living
in the land of equal opportunity?" asks Bob Balfanz, the Johns
Hopkins researcher who coined the term "dropout factory."
There are about 1,700 regular or vocational high schools
nationwide that fit that description, according to an analysis of
Education Department data conducted by Johns Hopkins for The
Associated Press. That's 12 percent of all such schools, about the
same level as a decade ago.
While some of the missing students transferred, most dropped
out, says Balfanz. The data look at senior classes for three years
in a row to make sure local events like plant closures aren't to
blame for the low retention rates.
The highest concentration
of dropout factories is in large cities or high-poverty rural areas
in the South and Southwest. Most have high proportions of minority
students. These schools are tougher to turn around because their
students face challenges well beyond the academic ones - the need to
work as well as go to school, for example, or a need for social
services.
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10/29/2007 - 3:39:56 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
There is an astonishing
spread of lazy slacker-hood, or the fact that
cell phones and iPods and excess TV exposure
are, absolutely and without reservation,
short-circuiting the minds of the upcoming
generation. Experts express zero doubt that this
is actually happening.
Kids these days are overprotected and
wussified, don't spend enough time outdoors,
don't get any real exercise and therefore can't
identify basic plants, or handle a tool, or
build anything at all. These things are a given;
they are widely reported and tragically ignored.
This is not just a general dumbing down.
It is far worse than that. We are, as far as
urban public education is concerned, essentially
at rock bottom. We are essentially churning out
ignorant teens who are becoming ignorant adults;
at this our whole society will hit a "Tipping
Point" very soon and will pay dearly.
There is occurring a surefire collapse of
functioning American society in the next few
years due to the absolutely irrefutable
destruction of the American brain.
There are studies, reports and hard data,
about the appalling effects of television on
child brain development (i.e.; any TV exposure
before 6 years old and your kid's basic
cognitive wiring and spatial perceptions are
pretty much scrambled for life), to the fact
that, because of all the insidious mandatory
testing teachers are now forced to incorporate
into the curriculum, of the 182 school days in a
year, there are 110 when such testing is going
on somewhere at your High-School.
Asked to define the words "agriculture,"
or even "democracy," not a single student could
do it. It gets worse, of a sample of 6,000 high
school students, only a small fraction now make
it to the 10th grade with a functioning
understanding of written English. They do not
know how to form a sentence. They cannot write
an intelligible paragraph. Recently, after
giving an assignment that required drawing
lines, he realized that not a single student
actually knew how to use a ruler.
It is, in short, nothing less than a tidal
wave of dumb, with once-passionate, increasingly
exasperated teachers nearly powerless to stop
it. The worst part: It's not the kids' fault.
They're merely the victims of a horribly failed
educational system.
Is there generational relativity,
suggesting kids are no scarier, dumber, or more
dangerous than they've ever been, and that maybe
some of the problem is merely the same old
generation gap, with every current generation
absolutely convinced the subsequent one is
appallingly stupid and spiteful and will be the
end of society as we know it. Just the way it
always seems.
I also point out how, despite all the
evidence of total public-education meltdown, I
keep being surprised, keep hearing from/about
teens and youth movements and actions that
really impress me. Kids made the Internet what
it is today. Revolutionized media. Broke all the
rules. Still are. Some of the best designers,
writers, artists, poets, chefs, and so on are in
their early to mid-20s. And the nation's top
universities are still managing, despite a
factory-churning mentality, to crank out young
minds of astonishing ability and acumen. How did
these kids do it? How did they escape the
horrible public school system? How did they
avoid the great dumbing down of America? Did
they never see a TV show until they hit puberty?
Were they all born and raised elsewhere, in
India and Asia and Russia? Did they all go to
Waldorf or Montessori and eat whole-grain breads
and play with firecrackers and take long walks
in wild nature? Are these kids flukes?
Exceptions? Just lucky?
That's precisely what most of them are.
Lucky, wealthy, foreign-born, private-schooled
... and increasingly rare. Most affluent parents
in America - and many more who aren't - now put
their kids in private schools from day one, and
the smart ones give their kids no TV and minimal
junk food and no video games. (Of course, this
in no way guarantees a smart, attuned kid, but
compared to the odds of success in the public
school system, it sure seems to help). This
covers about 3 percent of the populace. As for
the rest, the evidence is overwhelming, the
biggest threat facing America is not global
warming, not perpetual war, not junk food, or
low-level radiation, or way too much focus on
Hollywood socialites, but a populace that is far
too ignorant to know how to handle any of it,
much less improve it for future generations.
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10/28/2007 - 12:33:23 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
How do early-elementary children learn to read?
Increasingly, experts are in agreement: Phonics
works.
Kristine Beale's son Logan, now 8, was
"a reluctant reader" in first grade. As a
home-schooling parent who also worked as a
teacher for several years, Beale could see
that Logan was struggling. Typically an
outgoing little boy, Logan would hesitate to
read aloud to her as his frustration grew.
After attending a home-schooling
workshop on phonics by private tutor and
home-schooling parent Kathy Fears of Mounds
View, Beale decided that concentrated
phonics training might be just what her son
needed. She was right.
"There was a light switch that clicked
on in his head. He went from simple readers
to grade-level books in just a short time
after he started working with Kathy," said
Beale. "It was like he suddenly had a set of
decoding skills for reading."
While many experts use the term
"cracking the code" when it comes to kids
and reading, the process can vary greatly
from child to child at a time when there is
considerable pressure to get all kids
reading at or above grade level by the end
of third grade. As an offshoot of the
federal No Child Left Behind Act, Minnesota
started an initiative called Reading First
(based on a national model) to achieve those
goals.
So what's the best way for kids to
crack the code? While most kids are exposed
to print from a young age via the alphabet
and storybooks, many experts believe it is
really the letter and word sounds --
phonics -- that provide the best
path for deciphering the elements of
reading.
With an emphasis on visual, auditory
and kinesthetic learning, the Orton-Gillingham
method is one phonetic program being used by
public, private and home-schooling teachers
nationwide. It employs multisensory skills
to engage children in reading.
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10/27/2007 - 10:39:42 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Education and leadership hold the keys to the future
The Tofflers go on to highlight that those
regions and nations that will be successful in the future need to
grasp a simple fact: "An advanced economy needs an advanced society,
for every economy is a product of the society in which it is
embedded and is dependent on its key institutions."
In a world where knowledge and talent are supreme, what are we
doing to create wind under the wings for our key institutions such
as our K-12 schools, apprenticeship and trade school programs,
community colleges and other institutions of higher education?
"Today's industrial-age bureaucracies are slowing the move
toward a more advanced, knowledge-based system for creating wealth."
In other words, the status quo is busy tying anchors to productive
change.
The Answer Rests with Leadership
Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus in their management classic, LEADERS:
Strategies For Taking Charge, capture this when they proclaim,
"It almost seems trite to say it, but we must state the obvious.
Present problems will not be solved without successful
organizations, and organizations cannot be successful without
effective leadership. Now." While management is important,
leadership is crucial for successful organizations.
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10/26/2007 - 2:38:21 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Schools Embrace Environment and Cause Debate
Every weekday at 2:30
p.m., a line of luxury sedans and sport
utility vehicles idles outside Scarsdale
Middle School in Westchester County. Exhaust
fumes pollute the atmosphere, even though
posted signs decree this a “No Idling Zone”
and students berate their parents for
violating it.
Some educators contend that the
environmental focus is a waste of taxpayers’
money and a distraction for schools at a
time when many students are ill-prepared for
college and struggling to meet minimum
standards on math and reading tests.
“Students need very basic skills, and
those are so much more important than
getting an emotional high because they’ve
done something supposedly for the
environment,” said Jane S. Shaw, executive
vice president of the John William Pope
Center for Higher Education Policy, a public
policy organization in Raleigh, N.C. She is
a co-author of “Facts, Not Fear,” a 1996
book that argued that textbooks exaggerated
environmental problems.
Jerry Cantrell, president of the New
Jersey Taxpayers Association and a former
president of the school board in Randolph,
called the environmental programs an
unnecessary expense, particularly for public
schools facing budget cutbacks.
“The ‘ed biz’ is known for faddish
endeavors,” he said. “They pick up on some
new philosophy, and it seems cool and
popular, and I would throw being green in
with that.” But school officials counter
that they have a responsibility to help
students become better citizens, and that in
that sense teaching them to protect the
environment is no different from teaching
them ethics or social norms.
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10/25/2007 - 2:44:17 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
High school dropouts' price is high
High school dropouts are costing North Carolina
taxpayers millions of dollars each year,
according to a new report, but there's
sharp disagreement on what is the best
way to solve the problem.
The report released Wednesday by
the Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation
says a single year's group of dropouts
costs the state's taxpayers $169 million
annually in lost sales tax revenue and
higher Medicaid and prison costs. It's
the first time a specific dollar figure
has been given for the cost of dropouts
in this state.
The report's recommended solution
of using taxpayer-funded vouchers to
help students pay for private schools
has drawn a sharp dividing line between
supporters and critics of public
schools.
Legislators and state public
education officials are paying more
attention to the dropout problem since
numbers released this year showed more
than 30 percent of high school students
aren't graduating. Authors of the
Friedman Foundation report estimate this
translated into more than 38,000
dropouts in 2005.
According to the latest figures
from the state, 69.5 percent of students
who entered high school in 2003
graduated by this year.
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10/24/2007 - 4:13:40 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Program to Deter High School Dropouts by
Offering College Courses Is Approved
Trying to improve New
York’s high school graduation rates, state
education officials are proposing to place
12,000 potential dropouts a year in college
classes while they are still in high school.
The plan, approved yesterday by the state’s
Board of Regents, “would provide funding for
students to take genuine college courses and
receive credit for high school as well as
for college,” said the state education
commissioner,
Richard P. Mills.
“Instead of a four-plus-four plan —
four years of high school and four years of
college — students could actually complete
high school and a bachelor’s degree in seven
years,” the commissioner said. “And they
would not be taking just random courses, but
a set of courses accepted by higher
education”
“Schools and colleges will be working
together to pull youngsters who never would
have had a chance, never would have
considered a college career, to pull them
into success,” he added.
A recent study of dual-enrollment
programs in New York and Florida found that
students in them were more likely to earn
high school diplomas, to enroll in
postsecondary education and to stay in
college for more than one semester. The
study, by researchers at the Community
College Research Center at Teachers College,
Columbia University, also found that
low-income students benefited more from such
programs than other students did.
No legislation is required to put the
program in place.
“Especially with the expense of
college being what it is, if you can get
kids from disadvantaged families to complete
college work in high school, they would be
saving substantial dollars," she said, and
added that the program might eliminate “one
of the most serious barriers to kids
completing college.”
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10/23/2007 - 3:28:48 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
40% of Americans
don't need to know anything.
About 40% of Americans can best be
described as functionally illiterate. That means they may be able to
read [a little] but can’t understand what they’ve read – like ballot
box instructions – or perform simple addition and subtraction
without the aid of a calculator or computer.
“….heavy physical work
[manual labor, low wage jobs], the care of home and children [lots
of children, few responsible fathers], petty quarrels with
neighbors, films [entertainment], football [all sports] [and] beer
[or illegal drugs]….[will fill] up the horizons of their [empty]
minds [and lives]….Even when they [become] discontented, as they
sometimes [will], their discontent [leads] nowhere, because, being
without general ideas, they [can] only focus on petty specific
grievances [high prices and low wages]. Larger evils [like modified
teaching strategies, state-prescribed drugs and lowered expectations
which lead to lower achievement] invariably [escape] their notice”
[Emphasis added.]
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10/22/2007 - 1:50:44 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Educators say No Child goals 'impossible' to reach
Problem areas
As officials struggle with the law's 100 percent goal, they say they
must contend with a variety of challenges.
For example, new students arrive every year from other countries
speaking little or no English, Groth said. They must, nonetheless,
take the tests -- written in English and administered with
directions written and spoken in English. Only students in the
country for less than 12 months are exempt.
No Child Left Behind measures improvement in more than 20
demographic subgroups based on ethnic background and income level,
including special education and English learner. If any subgroup
fails, the entire school fails.
Schools that take federal money to help low-income students and
don't make the grade for two years in a row get placed in "program
improvement," a six-year series of increasing penalties for schools
that don't make the grade.
Federally mandated sanctions range from the parental right to move
children to a better school in the first year to firing educators
and converting the school to a charter school in the sixth and final
year of program improvement.
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10/15/2007 - 10/21/2007 |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
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Jeffrey is traveling this week...I'll post again on the 22nd |
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10/14/2007 10:32:14 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Code of Coercion
The NAS study says that
at Rhode Island College's School of Social
Work, a conservative student, William
Felkner, received a failing grade in a
course requiring students to lobby the state
legislature for a cause mandated by the
department. The NAS study also reports that
Sandra Fuiten abandoned her pursuit of a
social-work degree at the University of
Illinois at Springfield after the professor,
in a course that required students to lobby
the legislature on behalf of positions
prescribed by the professor, told her that
it is impossible to be both a social worker
and an opponent of abortion.
In the month since the NAS released
its study, none of the schools covered by it
has contested its findings. Because there
might as well be signs on the doors of many
schools of social work proclaiming
"conservatives need not apply," two
questions arise: Why are such schools of
indoctrination permitted in institutions of
higher education? And why are people of all
political persuasions taxed to finance this
propaganda?
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10/13/2007 4:57:19 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
“The Constitutional Abuse of High Stakes Testing.”
Given the scope of what I hope to accomplish with
this blog, I felt it was absolutely essential to begin by addressing
the issues of race and equal opportunity for at-risk minority
students. The majority of my professional career over the past 16
years or so has been advocating for the needs of at-risk minority
students. However, I want readers of this blog to understand that
the message I deliver to all is the same, regardless of their race.
I have the same message for inner-city Houston as I do for my
hometown of suburban Katy. Over the course of this blog, I will
communicate intensively on the pursuit of academic equality and
excellence for all students of all colors. For my suburban readers,
however, one should understand without question that at-risk
accountability has driven public education for the past two decades.
One cannot separate that issue from its ripple impact on the
classrooms across the board.
The reviled and revered 1971 ruling of
Federal Judge William Wayne Justice
envisioned equal opportunity for all
students. However, the failure of public
education, political, and civil rights
leaders to confront the concrete requisites
of that ruling continues to haunt Texas -
and America’s - minorities.
In order to “insure equal educational
opportunities for all students regardless of
race, color, or national origin,” Judge
Justice ruled that programs should include
“specific educational programs” designed to
“compensate minority group children for
unequal educational opportunities resulting
from past or present racial and ethnic
isolation.”
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10/12/2007 1:19:25 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
High School Design Affects Student Work
Ethic
Many have observed
that today's high school students lack
the work ethic.
1. Far too many students coast
through school and exert little effort;
the current design of high schools
contributes to their lack of interest
and effort.
2. Students won't learn unless
they discipline and push themselves;
3. Both parents and colleges are
major enablers of mediocrity. Parents do
not lower the boom on their kids when
they attempt to slide by, and colleges
lower admission standards to keep their
schools full and their jobs safe.
To engage
today's
teenagers
and take
full
advantage of
what their
teachers can
offer, high
schools must
substantially
alter the
way they
deploy
staff,
organize
curricula
and the
school day,
and connect
with the
community.
For example:
·Create
smaller
learning
communities
and let
students
concentrate
on a career
theme.
Teachers
would truly
get to know
their
students as
both would
spend most
of their day
in a career
theme
department
or academy
(such as
business,
engineering
and
technology,
health
sciences, or
expressive
arts).
·A
multidisciplinary
team of
teachers
would run
each career
theme
department.
Technical
subjects
would be
integrated
with
academic
ones.
Periodically,
students
could change
career
departments.
Employers in
a career
pathway
would help
oversee
curricula,
contribute
equipment
and mentors,
and provide
student
internships.
·Replace
school bells
with
morning-afternoon
scheduling.
Students
would take
cross-disciplinary
courses from
teams of
teachers who
work
together
rather than
in
isolation.
Students
would stay
together
long enough
to become
part of
teams that
focus their
attention on
solving
problems
that require
knowledge of
different
systems,
just as they
would in the
real world.
·Ninth-grade
students
would take
an
intensive,
team taught,
computer-assisted,
eight- to
12-week
course that
rapidly
brings up
their
reading and
math scores
to grade
level while
providing
career
guidance and
orientation
to high
school
expectations.
Success
factors for
this
approach
include the
challenging
cross-disciplinary
curriculum,
faculty
teaming and
small group
coaching,
emphases on
workplace
discipline
and time
management,
daily
feedback on
class and
individual
performance,
the use of
courseware
(e.g. PLATO,
NovaNet,
KeyTrain) to
manage
instruction
and
reporting,
and most
importantly,
the blending
of the
"soft"
teamwork,
customer
service and
interpersonal
skills with
the "hard"
reading,
math, and
computer
skills.
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10/10/2007 2:46:16 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Teacher shortage looms
Up to 6,000 West Virginia teachers can retire
next year, a trend that will accelerate in coming years — and state
Board of Education members are looking for ways to fill the gap. “We
are facing the possibility of massive teacher shortages in the
state,” state board member Lowell Johnson said.
The new group — made up of state Department of Education
employees, higher education and work force officials — will search
for better ways to recruit, retain and pay for new teachers, Johnson
said. That may include fast-tracking teacher certifications, hiring
people with English as a second language to teach foreign languages,
and improving teacher salaries. Johnson said the group would also
make sure state law does not forbid their solutions.
In a related decision, board members introduced a plan to
address cost-of-living pay increases in the fastest-growing areas of
West Virginia. The plan is in response to a lawsuit filed June 8 on
behalf of the Berkeley County Education Association and other school
employees. Paul Taylor, the Martinsburg lawyer who filed the suit,
wants the state board to comply with a 17-year-old law that required
it to address the increased cost of living in some areas of West
Virginia.
On Aug. 29, Kanawha Circuit Judge James Stucky denied the
school board’s motion to dismiss the case.
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10/09/2007 1:10:55 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
High Stakes Illusions
Politicians and others
have promoted high-stakes testing as a
panacea that would bring accountability to
teaching and substantially boost the
classroom performance of students.
Not only has high-stakes testing
largely failed to magically swing open the
gates to successful learning, it is
questionable in many cases whether the tests
themselves are anything more than a shell
game.
Daniel Koretz, a professor at
Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, told
me in a recent interview that it’s important
to ask “whether you can trust improvements
in test scores when you are holding people
accountable for the tests.” The short
answer, he said, is no.
If teachers, administrators,
politicians and others have a stake in
raising the test scores of students — as
opposed to improving student learning, which
is not the same thing — there are all kinds
of incentives to raise those scores by any
means necessary.
Guess what’s been happening?
“We’ve had high-stakes testing,
really, since the 1970s in some states,”
said Dr. Koretz. “We’ve had maybe six good
studies that ask: ‘If the scores go up, can
we believe them? Or are people taking
shortcuts?’ And all of those studies found
really substantial inflation of test
scores.“In some cases where there were huge
increases in test scores, the kids didn’t
actually learn more at all. If you gave them
another test, you saw no improvement.”
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10/08/2007 12:21:15 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Educators say No Child goals 'impossible' to reach
"Within two to three years, our
school district will be in the headlines for failing," said Kelli
Moors, president of the board of Carlsbad Unified School District --
that, with San Dieguito Union High School District and Poway Unified
School District, are among the highest performing in the county.
All three say that they have so far met the requirements of
federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, but won't for long.
Under the law, every student in
every classroom in every state must read and do math at grade level
by 2014 as measured by a battery of state tests given each spring to
students in grades two through 11.
As Congress considers reauthorizing the landmark legislation,
designed to improve teaching and learning across the nation,
educators and policymakers across the state say the law should stay
-- but it must be revised to make it work.
"There's not a school in our district that will meet that test --
not a school in the nation," said Don Phillips, superintendent of
Poway Unified School District.
To reach that 100 percent target in California, state lawmakers set
annual goals for improvement. In 2006-07, one in four students was
required to earn a "proficient" score, which means that a student
has learned the facts and skills that state officials have set for
that grade and age.
But starting in 2008, the annual requirement for improvement will
rise 11 percent per year.
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Jeffrey on assignment from 10/06/07 to 10/07/07 |
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10/05/2007 12:47:09 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
No Child Left Behind Law Is Failing To Assess Student Proficiency
The federal government holds all states
accountable for their schools’ performance, but it lets states
design their own accountability measures. That means the tests
that students take in Wisconsin, for example, might be far
easier than the tests students take in Massachusetts (in fact,
they are).
The disparities are laughable, especially when they’re used as
the basis for a massive federal educational accountability
system. Some states habitually report that upwards of 80 percent
of their students score at the “proficient” level on state
tests. But when those same students take the national
assessment, only 20 percent reach the “proficient” mark.
But even if the state tests are easier, the argument goes, they
can still show whether students in each state are making
academic progress. If the percentage of Illinois’s eighth
graders who score “proficient” on the state test increases from
one year to the next, then the state is doing a better job
teaching its youngsters, right? Wrong. A new study, The
Proficiency Illusion, shows among other things that some state
tests are simply getting even easier from one year to the next.
Researchers used data from schools in several states whose
pupils participated both in state testing and in a nationally
standardized assessment by the Northwest Evaluation Association
(NWEA). Then they estimated proficiency cut scores, i.e., the
level students needed to reach to pass the tests. What did they
find?
State tests vary greatly in difficulty. The extent to which
the difficulty of tests varies from one state to the next is
shocking. Cut scores on Colorado’s math test were at the 6th
percentile on the NWEA scale; Massachusetts’ math test cut scores
were at the 77th percentile.
What does this mean for educational policy and practice? What
does it mean for standards-based reform in general and NCLB in
particular? It means big trouble, and those who care about
strengthening U.S. K-12 education should be furious. There’s all
this testing - too much, surely - yet the testing enterprise is
unbelievably slipshod. It’s not just that results vary but that
they vary almost randomly, erratically, from place to place and
grade to grade and year to year in ways that have little or
nothing to do with true differences in pupil achievement.
America is awash in achievement “data,” yet the truth about our
educational performance is far from transparent and trustworthy.
It may be smoke and mirrors. Gains (and perhaps slippages) may
be illusory. Comparisons may be misleading. Apparent problems
may be nonexistent or, at least, misstated. The testing
infrastructure on which so many school reform efforts rest, and
in which so much confidence has been vested, is unreliable - at
best.
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10/04/2007 12:17:56 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Unemployment Training (The Ideology of Non-Work Learned in Urban
Schools)
The ideology of unemployment insures that those
infected with it will be unable to enter or remain in the world of
work without serious in-depth unlearning and retraining. Urban youth
are not simply ill prepared for work but systematically and
carefully trained to be quitters, failures, and the discouraged
workers who no longer even seek employment. What this means is that
it is counterproductive to help urban schools do better at what they
now do since they are a basic cause of their graduates living out
lives of hopelessness and desperation.
The dropout problem among urban youth - as catastrophic as it
is - is less detrimental than this active training for unemployment.
We need be more concerned for "successful" youth who graduate since
it is they who have been most seriously infected. They have been
exposed longest, practiced the anti-work behaviors for the longest
period, and been rewarded most. In effect, the urban schools create
a pool of youth much larger than the number of dropouts who we have
labeled as "successful" but who have been more carefully schooled
for failure.
|
|
10/03/2007 2:07:35 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Standards among
seven-year-olds in the "three Rs" have got worse or
stalled, with one in eight children failing to
master basic writing skill
Official figures show that the
number of pupils meeting standards for writing has
fallen for the second successive year while there were
no improvements in the number of seven-year-olds
attaining standards in math, reading and science.
It means that in the past five
years standards at Key Stage One - the first two years
of primary school - have either fallen or flat-lined.
Across all subjects - speaking and listening, reading,
writing, math and science - boys lagged behind girls,
particularly in writing with only 75 per cent of boys
passing the basic Level Two grade.
|
|
10/02/2007 12:06:44 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Dispute on private school payments heard by Supreme Court
Taxpayers shouldn't be asked to pick up the
cost of private schooling for special education children who don't
first give public schools a chance, New York City's top appeals
lawyer told the Supreme Court Monday. Arguing on the first day of
the court's new term, The justices were urged not to make it easier
for parents to be reimbursed for private schooling in situations
where school districts contend they can take care of children's
special needs.
The parent in the case before the court "had no contact with
the system at all."
|
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10/01/2007 4:20:39 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
A new test for students
with the most significant cognitive disabilities in the
state could not only help Wisconsin meet federal law, but it
also could lead to instructional changes for those students.
"A lot of the work with these students has been
more about life skills, and it hasn't been as much
about academic content," said Lynette Russell,
director of educational accountability for the state
Department of Public Instruction. "And this will
help drive in that direction."For example,
teachers might have previously taught their students
about what they need when it's raining outside, said
Kim Stumpf, a teacher who works with cognitively
disabled students at Marcy Elementary School in the
Hamilton School District. But the new standards and
testing requirements could encourage them to make
the lesson more scientific, she said.
"We would think, 'OK, look at science, look at
the weather, because of the weather how do we
dress?' " said Stumpf, who served on a committee
that drafted the state reading standards for third-
and fourth-graders. "It's just a matter of changing
our thinking a little bit to make sure that we're as
rigorous as we could be."
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09/30/2007 10:47:47 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
|
The Cost of Remedial Education
Many high school graduates are not academically
prepared for the rigors of college level work. According to the
latest data from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, 35
percent of all freshmen at Texas public higher education
institutions were not prepared for college-level work in at least
one area. During the fall of 2006, 38 percent of students at public
two-year colleges had to take remedial coursework as did 24 percent
of students at public four-year colleges.
Nationwide, the trend is similar with 42 percent
of community college freshmen and 20 percent of freshmen at
four-year institutions having to enroll in at least one remedial
course. During the 2006 fall semester, 162,597 students were
enrolled in remedial classes at public higher education institutions
including 139,647 students at public two-year colleges and 22,950
students at public four-year colleges.
ACT, a national college entrance testing company,
found that only 19 percent of Texas high school graduates in 2007
were “college ready” for math, science, reading, and English.
In addition to the direct costs of teaching and
administering remedial education courses, there are many indirect
costs to students, families and the economy. The Alliance for
Excellent Education estimates the nation loses $3.7 billion a year
as a result of remedial education. Their estimate includes $1.4
billion to provide the remedial education on college campuses and a
$2.3 billion loss to the economy from lost earnings.
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09/29/2007 12:54:24 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Coming Soon: The Real D.C. School Battle to Begin
If you are among those District residents who
cheered Mayor Adrian Fenty's takeover of the public school system,
it's time to tighten the old chin strap and gear up for battle. The
Fenty administration is about to go to war.
After weeks of observing and probing, Fenty and schools
Chancellor Michelle Rhee have decided to take a whack at the Gordian
knot entangling the D.C. school system. They intend to cut down to
size the central office, which they regard as an obstruction to
school reform. They also want to rid the system of underperforming
principals and teachers, who are as hard to get rid of as a bad
cold.
But even as legislation is being drafted in the executive
branch, defenders of the status quo have started to circle their
wagons. And nervous lawmakers, especially those facing the voters
next year, are beginning to engage in the council's favorite dance:
It's called "slipping and a-sliding, peeping and a-hiding" -- moves
designed to avoid taking a firm position on the firings.
The Fenty administration, however, can't move decisively
without expanded authority to terminate employees. For that, it
needs the D.C. Council's cooperation. But, you ask, didn't the
council approve the mayor's plan to take over the schools? Yes.
Fenty's plan won council approval by a robust 9 to 2 vote in April.
But that was then, this is now, and overnight can be a lifetime in
politics. To buck up council weaklings, Fenty and Rhee are going to
need the support of residents who are tired of their children
suffering the consequences of a poorly performing school system.
|
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09/28/2007 6:06:11 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
A Troubling Age to Come
There wasn't much to celebrate when the
National Assessment of Educational Progress test results disclosed
earlier this week.
The news wasn't particularly good nationally, with scores that
were largely flat as compared with the results two years ago,
deflating some of the president's arguments as America reconsiders
the No Child Left Behind law.
Expressed in terms of percentage of students reaching
proficiency, 58% of Massachusetts fourth graders made the grade in
math as opposed to 43% in New York, and 49% reached proficiency in
reading, as opposed to just 36% here.
The gap really widens among eighth graders. While 51% made the
grade in math in Massachusetts, only 30% did so in New York. In
reading, 43% met the proficiency standard in the Bay State, while
just 32% did so here.
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09/27/2007 12:48:12 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Education and Economic Competitiveness
For individuals, the economic returns to
education are substantial as well. In 2006, the median weekly
earnings of college graduates were 75 percent higher than the
earnings of high-school graduates. In turn, workers with a
high-school degree earned 42 percent more than those without any
diploma.1
These differentials are large and have been growing; indeed, they
have roughly doubled in the past twenty-five years or so. The
source of the widening wage gap between the more-educated and
less-educated is nothing more complicated than supply and demand.
The demand for more-educated workers has been increasing rapidly,
partly because the much more widespread use of computers and other
sophisticated information and communication technologies in the
workplace has increased the reward for technical skills. The supply
of highly educated workers has also risen. At the start of the
1980s, 22 percent of young adults aged 25 to 29 held a college
degree or more; by last year, that fraction had moved up to 28.5
percent.2
Nevertheless, the supply of educated workers has not kept pace with
demand, thus generating an increased salary premium for education.
Because the wages of those at the top of the educational ladder have
increased the fastest, increasing our investment in education can
benefit not only individuals and society but also might narrow
income gaps.
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09/26/2007 5:08:22 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
US
students score sweeping gains on tests.
This is pure propaganda. Please read this and
the accompanying NEAP scores.
Most of our students are just barely proficient
in the core subjects of reading and math to minimally survive.
A huge number of our high school and college
graduates didn't learn enough in the US school system to read simple
pamphlets or make change.
This is dangerously dismal. We are barely ahead
of where we were in 1983 when the famous "A Nation at Risk" was
published showing how inadequate our school system was then...and
still is.
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09/25/2007 12:57:53 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
The following statement makes use of flawed
or highly inflated facts: The excerpt below states "70%
of schools showed progress." There is no reference for where this came
from? Besides it's exaggerated enough to "bend" the truth. Also "large
gaps between white and minority students have narrowed." Again, this
statement is misleading; what research supports it?
Article Titled: "Let the 'No
Child' law do its work"
The simple wisdom of the NCLB law is its
recognition that reading and math are fundamental to learning other
subjects, and that schools need to be independently judged. Before
this law, US public schools were graduating many students who could
barely read a sentence or multiply numbers. Since then, test scores
in these subjects have risen. More than 70 percent of schools showed
progress. And, most important, large gaps between white and minority
students have narrowed.
|
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09/24/2007 1:34:12 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Special ed is bane to children, boon to lawyers
What D.C. officials have acknowledged is a
dangerous and deteriorating special education system has meant big
paydays for the lawyers of James E. Brown & Associates. Since 2001,
D.C. has paid nearly $15.5 million to the law firm for representing
parents who sue the city schools over the special education system,
city records show.
Federal law says children can be placed in outside schools, at
public expense, if the children can prove that their local schools
can’t meet their needs. Parents are allowed to bill the schools for
their legal fees. The law gives the schools 35 days to respond to a
parent’s request for a special education evaluation. D.C. routinely
breaks that law, leaving anxious parents facing the prospect of
watching their children wallow in failing schools.
“It takes a toll financially and emotionally,” said Theresa
Bollech, a part-time activist who fought to get her
learning-disabled daughter, Ashley, placed in a private school.
“Year after year, I’ve seen the schools fail to provide adequate
programs and services.”
|
|
Jeffrey is traveling this week until 9/23/07 |
This [Jonas Salk] school was in
deep trouble but it reorganized with a common vision
to improve the school, largely through the use of
technology. Technology excites the students and
keeps them learning.
Results released in August
largely show that more students
are showing mastery of English
and math. Nearly one-fourth of
sixth- and seventh-graders were
deemed proficient or advanced in
English, up nine percentage
points from the previous year.
The percentage of eighth-
graders rose six points, to 10
percent.Meanwhile,
results showed significant
movement of students from the
lowest levels toward proficiency
in English. For example, only 16
percent of seventh-graders
tested far below basic -- the
lowest category -- whereas 37
percent were in that category
the year prior.
Not all the successes last
year were measured by tests.
Jonas Salk's abysmal suspension
rate -- the school once
accounted for one-fourth of the
district's suspensions -- has
been cut in half. Fewer students
transferred out of the school
than in years past, and daily
attendance rose slightly.
|
|
09/14/2007 6:45:03 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
In the past, teachers have generally arrived at
the schools after four years of a liberal arts education, with some
pedagogy courses, and a major and perhaps minor or endorsement area.
These teachers have typically been 22 or 23 year old largely
developmentally late adolescents who were fresh out of college. This
approach to procuring teachers had been in place for many years
until a teacher shortage struck America, and many school systems
were forced to re-think how to procure teachers and began examining
the "alternative certification" route. This paradigm shift was
spearheaded by Delia Stafford who implemented a Texas state
department mandate, an entirely new approach that provided a new
type of teacher that was uniquely suited to work in the urban
schools with at-risk students in the Houston Independent School
District. She was assigned as Director of Alternative Certification
by then Superintendent Dr. Billy Reagan. Coupled with Martin
Haberman's Star Teacher interview, her efforts were successful and
later recognized by the first President Bush. She was awarded the
"Commendation for Meritorious Service Award" by Dr. Rod Paige. Her
efforts have increased exponentially the number of alternatively
certified teachers for thousands of schools across the nation. Her
combination of careful selection and district based on-site training
has made this paradigm shift of alternative certification possible.
Her courage, persistence and insight have challenged the decades old
approach to teacher training and certification. Currently, she heads
the Haberman Educational Foundation. Inc. and in the last thirty
years she has touched the lives of more children, teachers,
principals and schools in her work than any other leading pedagogist
in America. In this interview, she responds to questions about the
domain of alternative certification, it's history and importance,
and reflects on her challenge to the status quo in American
education.
|
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09/13/2007 6:51:20 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
THE AIM OF EDUCATION
It seems to me an
obvious fact that a country's education
system should be about laying the foundation
of a unified society; a society with a
roughly common understanding about the
nature of the world, about the importance of
diversity of opinion, about respect for a
diversity of people; about respect for the
past, present, and future.
Instead, I argue, education in the
West especially is fracturing and weakening
society, building on and then exaggerating
the social and moral divisions that already
exist and creating a literal stratification
of mutual distrust and exclusion. Our
schools do too little to assist successive
generations to dissolve these divisions. But
this is not - and having been a teacher for
nearly thirty years I cannot emphasize this
too strongly - because teachers do not care.
They care. But the system of education
they are obliged to serve, with its main
emphasis on instruction, actively prevents
any seriously systemic change. In all
societies - in any, that is, smaller than a
two-seat canoe - there is naturally a
rivalry between tribalism and socialism.
Tribalism, with its chiefs, its
warriors and police and workers, is the
simpler dynamic. Traditionally the upper
tiers are men; the workers, women.
Ideally, socialism offers equal and
above all peaceful means for the talented to
benefit their society. But socialism is also
not new. The Greeks had begun to experiment
with it by 500 BC.
Working against this ideal is not just
tribalism as a wholly complete, coherent,
well-tested culture in itself, but also the
very human inclination of the advantaged to
maximize their advantages and pass them down
to their descendents.
The ideal of most Western schools is
precisely to offer 'equal opportunities' in
order to raise up the talented to equal
status with the privileged. But as soon as a
teacher begins to teach by instruction, any
potential for such opportunities simply
disappear. They cannot exist for any average
group of youngsters if they are all are
required to learn from their teacher's
instruction as individuals.
The inequalities they enjoy - or
suffer - then remain essentially intact.
There will be those who can fully understand
the teacher's instruction; those who cannot
fully understand, but can copy and obey; and
finally are those who can do neither.
This is the true situation in most
schools. It might not be true if all schools
were fully staffed with expert, sensitive,
and experienced teachers and if all pupils
were attentive, respectful, and ambitious. I
have reported on such a school in 473959: an
educators' - and pupils' - paradise. But
since these conditions are only very rarely
true, I believe the previous remarks are
true nearly universally.
Generally speaking, our systems of
education first create a fraction of high
achievers. These fortunate young people,
most from already privileged backgrounds,
are generally held up as the proof that
their education 'works', that it is
effective. The success of obviously less
privileged students is also held up, with
even greater excitement, as yet more
definite proof that the system selects for
ability alone.
But even before they leave their
teens, many of these successful students are
also being conditioned to be both selfish
and amoral. They become selfish because they
are envied and disliked by everyone less
able themselves: who call them nerds. They
return this unpleasantness by thinking of
everyone less able as stupid. As adults,
they are likely to decide that they have a
right to reward themselves - as they were
rewarded academically - materially without
limit or in any way they please. Except if
it may profit them directly, they will have
little interest in politics; for politics,
they will understand, is undertaken to
distract, confuse, and entertain the
Stupids.
A much larger fraction of young people
below this first division are both capable
and ambitious. But they are pressed so hard
to produce the results that their schools
need to prove that they also 'understand'
the instruction of their teachers that they
are obliged both to be selfish and to be
dishonest.
Although fundamentally respectful of
laws, inclined to think that laws alone
restrain both those more able and less able
than themselves from destroying order
altogether, these students will retain a
sneaking belief that success must be
accompanied always by a certain degree of
concealed dishonesty. As a consequence of
this, despite their insistence on the letter
of formal regulations, they will not
hesitate to cheat or to lie if it seems to
them that the alternative, the unacceptable
alternative, is to fail. In most Western
societies they will form the demographic
adult majority. They will be the majority
who vote. Generally they can be expected to
vote for the kinds of people they expect to
represent their values. They will also
continue to vote for revealed cheats and
liars provided they appear to succeed.
Finally, there is a third division.
These are usually already unfortunate before
they even get to school. They expected that
school will also help them to succeed.
Instead they find themselves overwhelmed by
demands that they cannot possibly satisfy.
Although some teachers will certainly do
their best to help them, the endless tests
and the remorseless individual competition
progressively bewilders, humiliates, and
demeans them. The other fractions will soon
add to their increasing sense of
unworthiness by beginning to reject them as
a burden and a nuisance.
In order to give themselves a sense of
importance, they are most likely to be the
first to be disruptive in the classroom.
This is a form of self-defense. It stops
anyone from learning. Initially it may be
encouraged by the others as a form of
entertainment. Later they may turn more
violent, more criminal, involve more
self-abuse. These youngsters will soon hate
all form of authority. They will hate the
system. Above all they will hate all who
have abandoned them. A glance of disrespect
can invite a murder.
So, first of all the book is about the
creation of what I have called these 'social
identities', the labels that schools are
actively required to fix on people to make
later social engineering easier. Social
engineering is the fundamental aim, and I
would be against it, even if it promised the
most perfect societies, for I do not believe
that any group of people, however select,
however large, however powerful, has the
right to decide other people's futures: even
when it is through neglect; through walking
past on the other side.
Whatever their ambitions and claims,
this is actually what most of our schools
are doing most of the time. I repeat: it is
not the fault of the teachers. They, like
most of us, obey their orders. It must also
be stressed that these divisions are
natural. They are inherited from previous
generations. What we must do is to find a
way to teach youngsters to learn which does
not depend on continuing the divisions and
exaggerating them. This is possible. We can
show them how to work as a team. We can show
them how to think and succeed as a team.
This is not correct, children must learn
individually.
|
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09/12/2007 12:56:19 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
A federal
judge ruled Tuesday that Milwaukee Public Schools systemically failed to
provide special education services to children who needed them, and the
state Department of Public Instruction failed to exercise adequate
oversight.
In his decision, U.S. Magistrate Judge
Aaron Goodstein said the district broke the law between 2000 and
2005 when it failed to evaluate students with a suspected disability
on a timely basis and routinely suspended them instead of figuring
out if they needed special education services.
The cost of providing special education has increasingly
strained school district budgets, with MPS spending millions more on
the mandated services each year. Meanwhile, the district has
struggled to find enough special education teachers. The ruling
could exacerbate some of these financial strains and teacher
shortages. Complying with both the spirit and the letter of the law
in terms of making sure children are identified and receive the
services they are entitled to is mandatory - it's not optional.
|
|
09/11/2007 1:03:11 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Do teachers and principals impact the racial achievement
gap?
Robert Strauss, a professor in
the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management at
CMU, released a report on the racial achievement
gap.The study tried to identify the causes of the
gap in which white students perform better than
black students. Dr. Strauss noted the gap in grades
5, 8 and 11 ranged from 12 percent to 19 percent on
the state tests given in the spring this year.
The study looked at 89 principals, 236 English
teachers and 199 math teachers of students taking
the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests
in reading and math in March 2005. 62 principals had
an effect on math results -- ranging from scores
17.5 percent higher to those 37.2 percent lower. And
33 principals had an effect on reading -- ranging
from scores 15.66 percent higher to 35.65 percent
lower. Among teachers, 148 had a significant impact
in math scores and 90 did so in reading, both also
by a wide range, positive and negative.
Teachers and principals who made a positive
difference helped both white and black students.
Race is a larger factor than poverty and black
achievement levels vary widely across schools.
|
|
09/10/2007 12:54:23 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Congress should resist attempts to water down the No
Child Left Behind law.
Mr. Miller, with insights
into how schools scam the law's requirements,
would plug loopholes that let schools enhance
their records through statistical sleights of
hand and by excluding hundreds of thousands of
minority and special education students from
measurement.
At the same time, though, Mr. Miller would
open the door to even larger end runs around
accountability. His draft would allow states to
use measures besides math and reading tests to
judge school performance. A school unable to
show student proficiency in math and reading
would be allowed to trot out other tests where
children did better or could get credit for
graduation rates or Advanced Placement tests.
Not only does this diminish the central
importance of math and reading as fundamental
subjects to be mastered, it also lets schools
define their success by masking the failure of
some of their students. Equally troubling is a
provision that would allow some states to use
differing local assessments. The public's stake
in knowing how its schools are doing would be
compromised by methods that are easily
manipulated, hard to understand and impossible
to use in comparing one school or district
against another.
Mr. Miller argues that the recommendations
are aimed at undoing some of the unintended
consequences of No Child Left Behind. No doubt
he is right that some schools teach to the test
and that some districts have starved their
curricula of other subjects. But letting schools
off the hook is not the answer. Nor is letting
them go their own way. Instead of multiple
measures, the discussion should be about
national measures. Then, too, there needs to be
a candid assessment of whether the laudable goal
of 100 percent proficiency by 2014 is having
adverse effects. Is it driving states to lower
the standards and take shortcuts? Would it be
better to give schools more time so that they
can aim higher and achieve more?
|
|
09/09/2007 10:32:38 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
TAKS cheating was factor in Neeley's ouster
Dr. Shirley Neeley, the
former superintendent of schools in Galena Park who Gov. Rick Perry
named the Texas Commissioner of Education in early 2004, left that
job July 1, after learning in mid-June that Perry wouldn't
re-appoint her.
"Over the last few years, he has been disappointed in the
agency's lack of action to deal with the accusations of cheating in
our public schools. He looks forward to bringing in someone who will
take decisive action to deal with this issue and be willing to work
hard to take education in Texas to the next level."
Neeley, the first woman to head the TEA, took her ouster
philosophically. "I can compare my situation to that of a
superintendent when a school board decides to take no action or not
extend their contract," she wrote in a letter to TEA employees.
"Anyway you look at it, the message is clear: when it is time to go,
it is time to go."
Although evidence of widespread cheating on the Texas
Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test may have been a big part of
it, some think Neeley had tired of cheerleading for Perry. And there
was tension with her deputy commissioner, Robert Scott, who served
as interim commissioner before she arrived and now since she's gone.
|
|
09/08/2007 9:23:50 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
NY City survey finds parents like teachers, but also have
woes
A survey of nearly 600,000 parents,
teachers and students in city schools yielded some
surprising results - about 90% of parents are happy with
their kid's teacher, and only 1% want less test prep.
The multiple-choice questionnaires, which will
cost the city about $4.2 million over three years, asked
questions about a broad array of topics, from how safe
kids feel to how much teachers trust their principals.
Of the 1.8 million survey copies sent out, nearly
587,000 were returned.
Many of the responses were encouraging:
88% of parents feel informed about their
child's academic progress, and 67% of
teachers believe their principal is an
"effective manager."Some results
were worrisome, such as 41% of students not
being offered art and 61% saying students
like to put others down.
About 24% of parents listed smaller
class sizes as the change they would most
like at their kid's school, ahead of better
communication and improved arts programs.
|
|
09/07/2007 9:05:44 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Private companies move into special ed
Claypool founded Educational Services of
America in Nashville in 1999 as one of the few companies even
attempting to make money by running special education private
schools. With programs in 16 states, ESA owns and operates more than
120 private and charter schools. It hires the teachers and sets up
the curriculum for about 7,800 students with learning, developmental
or behavioral problems.
Only about 2 percent of all special education students --
about 100,000-- are taught in private schools set up exclusively for
special education, according to recent data from the U.S. Department
of Education.
ESA schools offer instruction for students with many kinds of
disabilities, from mental retardation to high-functioning autism.
One of its rapidly growing programs helps high school special
education graduates who want college degrees.
|
|
09/06/2007 7:35:11 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Blacks in suburbs failing Md. exams
When Maryland's top school officer proposed
that the state back away from its tough high school testing program
last week, one reason might have been the troubling performance of
some suburban schools. An alarming pattern of failure is surfacing:
Minority students, especially African-Americans, are struggling to
pass the exams in the suburban classrooms their families had hoped
would provide a better education.
"It is a wake-up call to African-Americans in Maryland," said Dunbar
Brooks, president of the state school board and former president of
the Baltimore County school board. "For many African-Americans, the
mere fact that your child attends a suburban school district does
not make academic achievement automatic."
Baltimore City and its suburbs released school-by-school
results last week for the Class of 2009 - the first group that must
pass the statewide High School Assessments in algebra, English,
biology and government to get a diploma.
What they show is that in Baltimore County alone, nearly a third of
the system's roughly two dozen high schools had pass rates of 60
percent or less. Also, high schools with predominantly
African-American populations, such as Randallstown and Woodlawn, had
passing rates mostly below 50 percent.
The results were similar, if not so pronounced, in Anne Arundel
County, where some of the most urbanized schools - North County,
Annapolis, Glen Burnie and Meade - performed well below the rest of
the system.
Educators point to the gap in achievement between African-Americans
and whites as one reason for the slump among inner suburban schools
- although not the only one.
Until now, the achievement gap in Baltimore County has been masked
by county averages. Some of Maryland's highest-performing schools
are in the county's largely white and well-to-do northern corridor,
including Towson, Dulaney, Carver and Hereford high schools. Those
schools, along with the Eastern and Western technical magnets, boost
the county averages.
|
|
09/05/2007 11:24:08 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Children taught synthetic phonics can see their reading
improve in just two weeks
Children who struggle with reading
can make dramatic progress in just a fortnight when they
are given traditional lessons, a report reveals today.
The study by a think-tank showed that primary
school pupils increased their reading ages by nearly two
years in as many weeks when they were given intensive
"synthetic phonics" lessons.
The back-to-basics method involves teaching the
letter sounds of English and how to blend them together
to work out unfamiliar words.
It said thousands of children had been consigned
to the educational scrapheap by the failed reading
schemes promoted in schools over the past decade.
|
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09/04/2007 2:57:35 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Are college students paying too much for book & extras?
A 24-year-old
mortuary science major at San Antonio College, is about to plunk
down $133 for a psychology textbook. She's not happy about it. In
fact, she's not even sure why she has to take psychology.
"Unless I'm going to be talking to dead people about their
problems," She mused while standing in line at the college's
bookstore. "It just irritates me."
That attitude is not uncommon among students, or parents. Who
likes dropping hundreds of dollars on books they'll likely never
crack again?
Students are now spending an average of $700 to $1,000 each
year on textbooks, and the issue has caught the attention of
lawmakers and student activists, inspiring studies to find out why
prices are so high and a flurry of state laws aimed at controlling
costs. There's plenty of blame going around: Publishers are accused
of "bundling" books with costly CD-ROMs, bookstores are slammed for
marking up prices, and universities are knocked for taking a cut of
the profit.
|
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09/03/2007 9:29:09 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
America's knowledge-based economy is growing big time
The U.S. labor force is 153 million people
strong. Three traits of the American work force position our nation
for tremendous gains in the increasingly competitive 21st century
worldwide economy: high productivity, flexibility and mobility.
Every year, about one-third of U.S. jobs change hands, largely
because workers have found better opportunities.
America's economy is increasingly a knowledge-based economy.
Two-thirds of all the new jobs being created require some kind of
post-secondary education. Over the next decade, America will need 3
million health-care professionals and 1.7 million schoolteachers. We
will need more than 900,000 engineers, and workers in other
high-growth industries including nanotechnology, geospatial
technology, and the life sciences, to name a few. From 2001 through
2006, high-paying occupations grew almost three times as much as
lower-paying occupations.
With the new school year starting, students need to be aware that
high school dropouts make about $522 per week for full-time work and
their unemployment rate is about 7.1 percent. Meanwhile, workers
with a high school diploma average $704 weekly, and this segment of
the work force has a 4.4 percent unemployment rate. Workers with
associate degrees average about $846 per week, and this group's
unemployment rate is 3.5 percent. But workers with a bachelor's
degree or higher average $1,393 per week and have an unemployment
rate of 2.1 percent.
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09/02/2007 4:54:11 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
"Expulsions aren't helping."
(Preschool is just paid daycare. It isn't the school's job to correct
bad parenting. The schools are right to give disruptive children back to
their parents to correct their behavior problems.)
Some preschoolers are getting tossed from our
schools precisely when they need attention and care. A young mother
recently told me, "That was a crisis situation; my child was
expelled from preschool and it happened right in the middle of my
divorce." These kinds of cases happen too often in Florida. With the
start of a new school year, a surprisingly large number of parents
are worried that their young children will be turned away due to
disruptive behavior.
A 2005 Yale University study revealed that the Florida
preschool expulsion rate is 18 times greater than expulsion rates in
grades kindergarten through 12th grade. Communities need to ask:
What have we done to help children who are at risk of being expelled
from preschool? According to the mother mentioned above, her child
did not get the help he needed during one of the most stressful
times of his life.
Comments on this article
by Paul Preston: "That was a crisis situation; my
child was expelled from preschool and it happened right in the
middle of my divorce." Is the fact that the child is going
through divorce the schools fault and hence the school's
responsibility. No it's the parents.
by Tom: As
usual, a new fully-funded government program is proposed as the
only possible solution to solve a problem. Don't buy into this
myth. by Nancy: This is a bad parenting problem, not a
"schools need to do more" problem. Accountable parents raise
successful school children.
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09/01/2007 4:43:21 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Democrats Try to Soften Bush’s Education Law
The House education
committee posted the proposals on its Web
site this week. Among the most important
changes in the draft are those to the law’s
accountability system, in which states judge
whether schools have made “adequate yearly
progress” and can avoid sanctions.
The draft would allow states to look
beyond annual test scores and says bluntly
that broader criteria “may increase the
number of schools that make adequate yearly
progress.”
Another change would distinguish
schools where only one or two student groups
fail to meet annual testing goals from those
where three or more groups fall short. The
latter would face more rigorous sanctions;
students at the former would no longer be
eligible to transfer to higher-performing
schools.
That change would be popular in many
suburbs, where thousands of schools with
sterling local reputations have faced
federal sanctions because of one or two
low-performing groups, but it has already
drawn opposition from the tutoring industry
and the Bush administration.
A bill allowing states to opt out of testing requirements
without losing federal money, introduced this year by Representative
Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan, has attracted 50
conservative Republican co-sponsors, including the minority whip,
Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri.
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08/31/2007 9:00:02 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Three Rs sink to seven-year low despite billions spent on schools
Seven-year-olds' mastery of reading, writing
and math has returned to 2000 levels despite huge state spending on
early education schemes.
At least one in ten pupils fails to reach basic
levels in the subjects regarded as crucial by parents
and employers.
Almost half of boys - nearly 140,000 - will start
the next phase of primary school next week without the
writing skills needed to be sure of coping with the
courses. They lag behind girls in every subject.
The results have prompted claims that the
Government's campaign to raise primary school standards
has run out of steam. The Tories said the trend was
"hugely concerning" because a solid grasp of the Three
Rs in primary school was a springboard to success at
GCSE and beyond. The LibDems called boys' poor writing
skills "a national disgrace" and warned that ministers'
targets for raising primary achievement were now out of
reach.
The figures emerged days after research from
Durham University found that spending of £21billion over
the past decade on nursery education and childcare has
failed to improve children's ability to learn.
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08/30/2007 2:59:40 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
School voucher
foes, friends alike hope for out-of-state support
Voucher supporters say
the voucher program will help middle- and low-income families to
afford the educational option of private school. It will not take
money from public schools, they say, and will improve them by
offering competition.
Their opponents complain
the program's $500 to $3,000 subsidies would be too little to make a
difference to most middle- and low-income families and will just
help the wealthy, while further undermining Utah's public schools.
* Narrowly
passed in the 2007 Legislature, faces a referendum
challenge Nov. 6.
* Would award $500 to $3,000
in financial aid for every child enrolled in a private
school, except those currently attending private school (low-
income private school students could still get vouchers).
* The voucher program could
cost $400 million to $500 million over 12 years.
|
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08/29/2007 12:28:36 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
SAT scores hit the bottom
Students starting college this week
posted some of the lowest reading and math scores on the
SAT college admissions exam in recent years - a dismal
trend reflected in New York City and across the country.
Of the 1.5 million students who took the test this
year, 24% did not identify English exclusively as their
first language compared with 17% a decade ago. The
College Board said 35% of test-takers will be the first
in their families to go to college. In New York City,
38,937 kids from the Class of 2007 took the exam last
year - an increase of 8.7% over 2006. The number of
black students taking the test was up 15.4%, the number
of Mexicans was up 22%, Puerto Ricans were up 11.9% and
kids who identified themselves as "other Hispanic" were
up 22.7%, city officials said.
City public school kids averaged their lowest
scores in math and reading since at least 2003, with the
average student scoring 462 in math and 441 in reading
out of a possible 800 points in each. That's compared
with national average where reading scores were at their
lowest level - an average of 502 - since 1994. Math
scores across the country averaged 515, the lowest since
2001.
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08/28/2007 2:31:14 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
"Why won't he or she read?"
The questions point to two
critical problems affecting millions of teenagers:
students who can't read at grade level and those who
don't want to read, known as "reluctant readers."
More than 8 million adolescents between grades
four and 12 are identified as "struggling readers,"
according to the National Governors Association's
Center for Best Practices. Many others read
reluctantly.
The nature of reading changes between
elementary and middle school, said Wayne Brinda,
assistant education professor at Duquesne
University. "You go from learning to read to reading
to learn. The texts become more complicated. There
are less pictures, new vocabulary, new ideas."
Many middle and high school students can read
words, but don't understand the ideas and concepts
they're reading about. Rita Bean, an education
professor at the University of Pittsburgh who
specializes in reading, said students need help
"learning strategies that will enable them to read
successfully in the various content classes --
science, geography, history, math."
In addition, many teens simply aren't
practicing reading enough. Voluntary reading drops
as students progress through school, especially
during the middle and high school years, according
to a report on student reading and writing habits
from the National Center for Education Statistics.
|
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08/27/2007 10:54:49 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
With Turnover High, Schools Fight for Teachers
The retirement of
thousands of baby boomer teachers coupled
with the departure of younger teachers
frustrated by the stress of working in
low-performing schools is fueling a crisis
in teacher turnover that is costing school
districts substantial amounts of money as
they scramble to fill their ranks for the
fall term.
Superintendents and recruiters across
the nation say the challenge of putting a
qualified teacher in every classroom is
heightened in subjects like math and science
and is a particular struggle in high-poverty
schools, where the turnover is highest.
Thousands of classes in such schools have
opened with substitute teachers in recent
years.
Here in Guilford County, N.C.,
turnover had become so severe in some
high-poverty schools that principals were
hiring new teachers for nearly every class,
every term. To staff its neediest schools
before classes start on Aug. 28, recruiters
have been advertising nationwide, organizing
teacher fairs and offering one of the
nation’s largest recruitment bonuses,
$10,000 to instructors who sign up to teach
Algebra I.
Los Angeles has
offered teachers
signing with
low-performing
schools a $5,000
bonus. The district,
the second-largest
in the country, had
hired only about 500
of the 2,500
teachers it needed
by Aug. 15 but hoped
to begin classes
fully staffed, said
Deborah Ignagni,
chief of teacher
recruitment.
In Kansas, Alexa
Posny, the state’s
education
commissioner, said
the schools had been
working to fill “the
largest number of
vacancies” the state
had ever faced. This
is partly because of
baby boomer
retirements and
partly because
districts in Texas
and elsewhere were
offering recruitment
bonuses and housing
allowances, luring
Kansas teachers
away.
“This is an
acute problem that
is becoming a
crisis,” Ms. Posny
said.
In June, the
National Commission
on Teaching and
America’s Future, a
nonprofit group that
seeks to increase
the retention of
quality teachers,
estimated from a
survey of several
districts that
teacher turnover was
costing the nation’s
districts some $7
billion annually for
recruiting, hiring
and training.
In June, the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, a nonprofit group that seeks to increase the retention of quality teachers, estimated from a survey of several districts that teacher turnover was costing the nation’s districts some $7 billion annually for recruiting, hiring and training.Demographers agree that education is one of the fields hardest hit by the departure of hundreds of thousands of baby boomers from the work force, particularly because a slowdown in hiring in the 1980s and 1990s raised the average age of the teaching profession. Still, they debate how serious the attrition will turn out to be.
In New York, the wave of such retirements crested in the early years of this decade as teachers left well before they hit their 60s, without a disruptive teacher shortage, Ms. Bernstein said.
In other parts of the country, the retirement bulge is still approaching, because pension policies vary among states, said Michael Podgursky, an economist at the University of Missouri. California is projecting that it will need 100,000 new teachers over the next decade from the retirement of the baby boomers alone.
Some educators say it is the confluence of such retirements with the departure of disillusioned young teachers that is creating the challenge. In addition, higher salaries in the business world and more opportunities for women are drawing away from the field recruits who might in another era have proved to be talented teachers with strong academic backgrounds.
|
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Jeffrey's on vacation through 8/27/2007...see you then |
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08/20/2007 10:54:49 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
State law and a DPI administrative rule
mandate that districts hold school for at least 175
instructional days and that they provide at least 437 hours
of direct pupil instruction in kindergarten, at least 1,050
hours in grades one through six, and at least 1,137 hours in
grades seven through 12. However, a large number of schools
in the Milwaukee Public Schools system fell below the
standard in 2006-'07.
"There's nothing more important than time with the
classroom teacher," said Tony Evers, deputy superintendent
of the state Department of Public Instruction. "And, if
that's continually taken away, the state of Wisconsin would
have an obligation that doesn't happen."
Studies have found only a weak connection between
time students spend in school and their achievement,
said David Berliner, an education professor at
Arizona State University who has studied the effects
of instructional time on learning.What is
important and has a strong link to student
performance is the amount of time students are on
task and engaged in subject material, which he said
can range from 50% to 90% of classroom time
depending on the teacher.
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08/19/2007 11:40:23 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
|
In an effort to
separate church and state, teachers have gone too far; they are becoming
anti-religious
Many teachers in
public schools across the country now stress feelings and mystical
experiences, not facts and reason, much less critical reading and
thinking. Their behavior modification techniques indoctrinate
children with emotion-driven group think and anti-Western,
anti-Judeo-Christian values.
In classrooms
throughout the country, Judeo-Christian beliefs are cast aside or
ridiculed. Multicultural studies, environmental propaganda, and
arts-education classes now indoctrinate children with New Age
religious beliefs. Public schools sometimes try to sneak offensive
spirit or new age religions into their curriculum without parents’
knowledge.
|
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08/18/2007 10:14:19 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
China and India recognized 20 years ago that the future belonged to
nations that educated their children in math and science.
"AMERICA is in trouble," says Vernon Ehlers, a
Congressional representative from Michigan. The problem, thinks
Ehlers, lies in the nation's classrooms:
Now a $33 billion remedy is to be administered over the next
three years. On 9 August, President George W. Bush signed
legislation to recruit thousands of new teachers, update the science
and math skills of those already in classrooms and help
science-orientated kids to launch research careers. It also calls
for significant increases to the National Science Foundation's $4.7
billion annual research budget, although exactly how much is
unclear.
|
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08/17/2007 1:09:41 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Vouchers and private schools are the best alternatives to failing
public schools that score an "F" in educating the kids.
An increasing number of black lawmakers in
Florida find themselves strapped with a dilemma: They can continue
to support public schools as the academic performance of black
children annually falls below that of every other ethnic group, or
they can dump public schools in favor of unproven* private schools
that accept vouchers. The public school officials state that "Every
dollar taken to support a voucher is a dollar taken from the
education of a public school student." **
*research has shown time and again that private schools
outperform public schools.
**This is not correct and a deliberate twisting of the facts.
These dollars are the same ones that are spent on failing public
schools. They are still spent on the children's education, only the
dollars are better spent at a quality school. This type of lying is
a major reason why public school officials are not trusted.
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08/16/2007 12:36:14 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Millions of middle- and high-school students nationwide attend
"drug-infested" schools.
A report, to be released today by Columbia University's
National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, found that 80
percent of high-schoolers and 44 percent of middle-schoolers
interviewed by researchers say they have witnessed illegal drug
use, dealing or possession at school, or have seen classmates
drunk or high on school grounds. Based on these interviews,
researchers characterized schools as drug-infested or not.
Joseph Califano Jr., chairman and president of the center,
said an estimated 16 million students attend schools the
researchers characterized as drug infested.
"Unless we get the drugs out of these schools," he said,
"we're never going to get the kind of test scores and academic
achievement we need to compete."
From 2002 to 2007, the proportion of high-school students
who attend drug-infested schools climbed 39 percent, according
to the survey. For middle-school students, the rate jumped 63
percent during the same five-year period.
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08/15/2007 2:58:36 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
For children in poverty being successful in school is a matter of life
and death
The large numbers of children affected by
poverty feel overwhelming: fifteen million children live in poverty
in our country.(1) That figure is probably low. We are failing these
millions of children miserably: as of June 2006, seven thousand
children in our nation drop out of school every day, predicting a
life of poverty for 2,555,000 additional youth and families each
year. (2) In response to the size and the significance of the need,
our nation must resolve: No more will we ignore our children -- our
nation's most precious resource -- who are needy! No more will we
stand by as children lack food, clothes, a decent environment,
health care, or someone to assist with homework! No more should
children go to schools in this country where termites infest walls,
windows leak, bathrooms don't work, and the building feels like a
jail.
Accepting the status quo will bring America to
its knees. Americans must make an intense examination of what needs
to be done to stop the decline of our country's educational system,
and act! The next decade must see a radical transformation of the
ways we instruct our youth. Graduating every student with an
excellent education is the solution, and effective teachers and
principals are the key to achieving this goal.
Under-resourced schools lack adequate space,
computer equipment, and other educational materials. Poor children
tend to get the nation's weakest, lowest paid, and newest teachers.
Facilities are overcrowded and in shameful disrepair. Further, poor
parents do not have the capacity to advocate for their children in
the school system in the same way that middle class parents can.
For children in poverty being successful in school is a matter
of life and death. For those without a high school diploma, the
likelihood of ever having a decent job -- one with adequate health
insurance and some form of retirement account -- is extremely
remote. Being a drop-out or a push-out dooms people to dead-end
jobs, living in unsafe neighborhoods, and never being able to fully
provide adequate health care for themselves and their families. It
also means that those who are miseducated never develop the
individual potentialities that would give their lives greater
meaning and society the benefit of their participation and
productivity.
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08/14/2007 12:20:41 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Moving kids to better neighborhoods does not
improve their school grades
Many social reformers have
long said that low academic achievement among
inner-city children cannot be improved
significantly without moving their families to
better neighborhoods, but new reports released
today that draw on a unique set of data throw
cold water on that theory.
Researchers examining what happened to
4,248 families that were randomly given or
denied federal housing vouchers to move out of
their high-poverty neighborhoods found no
significant difference about seven years later
between the achievement of children who moved to
more middle-class neighborhoods and those who
didn't.
Although some children had more stable lives and better
academic results after the moves, the researchers said, on average
there was no improvement. Boys and brighter students appeared to
have more behavioral problems in their new schools, the studies
found.
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08/13/2007 5:54:07 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
25,000 'superior' teachers - that's just too many.
A mere three-tenths of 1 percent of Chicago
public school teachers receive "unsatisfactory" evaluations. A
recent study by the New Teacher Project, a national non-profit aimed
at raising the caliber of public school teachers, also found that
even among the district's 87 most demonstrably failing schools, 80
percent hadn't issued an "unsatisfactory" rating to a teacher.
Either that's one astounding teaching force, or the Chicago Public
Schools' evaluation system is whacked.
Call us cynics, but we favor the latter interpretation
|
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08/12/2007 12:11:40 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
A lot of the No Child Left Behind funds are being used for things other
than closing the achievement gap.
Prince George's County schools
are offering new teachers stipends to pay for
professional development, Montgomery County is
hiring instructional coaches, Fairfax and
Arlington county schools will have some smaller
classes and Loudoun County teachers will have
the chance to take free college courses -- all
thanks to the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
Nationally, about half of federal
teacher-quality money is used to hire teachers
to reduce class size, a move that has drawn
criticism.
Since 2002, Congress has
provided about $16 billion under the law to help
states and school systems improve the caliber of
the teaching workforce, the biggest federal
investment ever in teacher quality. About $30
million of these grants flowed to the Washington
area last year, a Washington Post survey found.
But some education experts argue that funding across the
country has been frittered away on programs that are not specially
tailored to closing achievement gaps between rich and poor students
or ensuring that teachers are prepared to help students meet
ever-tightening academic standards. Lesser-known provisions expanded
the federal role in teacher training, principal development and
related initiatives, prompted by research that shows quality of
instruction is a major -- often the most important -- factor in
student performance.
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08/11/2007 11:35:29 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Pupils are to
be given a question-by-question
breakdown of their GCSE and A-level
results over the next fortnight,
which could give parents the
ammunition to sue schools for poor
teaching.
Edexcel, one of the country’s
largest exam boards, will give heads
feedback on the performance of all
their students and teachers when
they publish their results for the
examinations, starting on Thursday.
Not only will heads and teachers be
able to compare results for
questions across year groups, but
some fear that parents and pupils
will be able to do the same.
Teaching unions have expressed
concerns that Edexcel’s latest move
could be exploited by parents to
punish underperforming staff and
have called for the information to
be used solely for in-school
improvements. Next week more than
200,000 sixth-formers will receive
their A-level results amid
expectations that a quarter of
entries could achieve an A-grade,
thereby putting greater pressure on
students aiming for places at the
top universities. Revealing more
information could encourage parents
to sue schools, but it is crucial
that pupils knew whether they had
been taught badly.
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08/10/2007 12:03:21 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
|
Testing doesn't always give us the answers we want.
Since 2002, when No Child
Left Behind became law, states have spent millions of dollars giving
standardized reading and math tests; one estimate puts the total
cost above $5 billion through 2008.
I don't have a problem with testing
children. I have a problem with thinking test results tell you most
of what you need to know. They simply don't — these tests are often
very narrow instruments. Where reforms have forced educators to
notice children who might otherwise have been neglected, I give
credit. But I wrote this book because school reforms intended to
abolish a two-class system were in some ways exacerbating it.
There's one world where students pass the test as a matter of course
and get to write poems, and another where children write paragraphs
about poems.
Meanwhile, there's supposed to be a
movement in American schools to educate each child as an individual.
The teachers at Tyler Heights work mightily to do that, but they
have to get everybody to the same place in the same amount of time,
and follow daily curriculum agendas handed down from above.
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08/09/2007 4:33:43 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
|
By Emily Richmond <emily@vegas.com>
Las Vegas Sun
(only a portion of the article is posted here; go to
the above link for the complete article)
A proposal that Nevada teachers be allowed to
carry concealed weapons garnered a lot of notoriety but little
traction among state lawmakers this year. Now comes this idea: Give
bonus pay to teachers - from kindergarten to college - who would be
trained and armed as reserve school police officers.
Faculty-turned-campus cops would supplement the thin ranks of
campus police and be in position to respond quickly to campus
emergencies, the two champions of the idea say.
Others worry about allowing teachers to be put in that kind of
position.
The idea will be taken up at separate meetings this month by
Nevada System of Higher Education regents and the State Board of
Education.
The proposal was initiated in June ago
by Regent Stavros Anthony, a Metro Police captain, who was thinking
in terms of college campuses. State Board of Education member
Anthony Ruggiero, an investigator with the state attorney general's
office, wants to extend the concept to the state's K-12 teachers as
well.
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08/08/2007 2:30:10 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Is a Cash Reward for Good Test Scores the Wrong Kind of Lesson?
The program, which has been adapted from a
similar Mexican cash incentives plan, is aimed largely at schools
with students from low-income families. Some think it is unfair that
some kids will see other seventh graders being rewarded for far
lower scores, while they savor only the intangible plums of pride
and satisfaction.
Educators respond to skeptics by arguing that no one has
figured out how to get more poorer children engaged in learning.
Trumpeting the long-term benefits of education, the better jobs and
lives well lived has not worked. Cash just might.
Still, critics warn school officials to
be prepared for a backlash from families,
both poor and more well off. The program
will foster “ill will.” The word bribe comes
to mind. You certainly don’t want kids with
identical abilities, where one gets paid and
the other doesn’t.
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08/07/2007 2:34:18 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Gov’s plan calls for starting free public education at 3 years old
(two more years to screw up kids in public schools)
Gov.
Deval Patrick envisions free education for every Massachusetts
resident from age 3 through community college.
To help him make that vision a reality, Patrick yesterday
appointed an 18-member panel to draw up blueprints for the 10-year
plan.
“We need to change
fundamentally the way we think about and most of all deliver public
education in this commonwealth,” the governor said. “Everything is
on the table.”
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08/06/2007 12:05:07 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Question & Answer: The Truth About America's Schools - Is K–12 education
really lagging badly, or have we ‘raised our sights’? DIANE RAVITCH
answers the tough questions.
1. How big is America’s school system?
Nearly 55 million children attend schools in the United
States, taught by about 3.5 million teachers. About 89 percent of
students from kindergarten through the 12th grade attend public
schools, the rest private or religious ones.
2. How can we judge the quality of U.S. schools?
There are several important benchmark tests, administered to
students in many countries.
In the United States, testing companies make assumptions about
what students at different grade levels will learn, in part by
examining textbooks that are widely used across the nation. Thanks
to these tests and the similarity of textbooks, there is already
something akin to a national curriculum in science, mathematics,
reading, and history.
Some children will do poorly on tests simply because the
curriculum in their classroom, their school, or even their country
did not include the material that was tested. The tests send a
signal to educators about what is usually taught, as well as what
was taught poorly and therefore not learned. This is a backward
process—we should be setting the tests based on the curriculum, not
setting the curriculum based on the tests.
3. So how do American students compare to peers
internationally?
In assessments of math and science, U.S. performance is
mediocre. There are two major tests, the Trends in International
Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Program for
International Student Assessment (PISA). On the math portion of the
TIMSS, our eighth-grade students rank 16th among 46 nations. The 15
entities whose students outperformed ours include Singapore, Taiwan,
Korea, Hong Kong, Estonia, Japan, and Hungary. On the PISA test,
American scores in science and math literacy were below the average
for the 30 nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD)The American Institutes for Research
examined the scores of the 12
nations, including ours, that participated in TIMSS and PISA in 2003
and found that our students consistently ranked eighth or ninth of
the 12. Only mathematics and science have been consistently tested,
because other subjects are culture-bound. We spend a lot on
education—only Sweden spends more—so these outcomes are
disappointing.
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08/05/2007 10:37:30 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
It has become increasingly popular to speak of
racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural
festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is
the same: our differences make us stronger.
A massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly
30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite.
Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam -- famous for "Bowling
Alone," his 2000 book on declining civic engagement -- has found
that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote
and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work
on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors
trust one another about half as much as they do in the most
homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement
in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are
lower in more diverse settings.
The study comes at a time when the future of the American
melting pot is the focus of intense political debate, from
immigration to race-based admissions to schools, and it poses
challenges to advocates on all sides of the issues. The study is
already being cited by some conservatives as proof of the harm
large-scale immigration causes to the nation's social fabric. But
with demographic trends already pushing the nation inexorably toward
greater diversity, the real question may yet lie ahead.
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08/03/2007 11:25:43 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
A fifth of children set to start secondary
school in September are unable to read, write or add up properly.
Exam results for 11-year-olds to be published next week are
set to show as many as 120,000 lack basic literacy skills and almost
140,000 cannot do sums.
Ministers insist that standards have soared since Labour came to
power, when more than a third of children left primary school
without reaching national standards in English and math.
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08/02/2007 4:05:23 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Just as we are all in a state of
angst about Britain's depressed, underperforming, over-eating
offspring, teachers are recommending that children should stay well
clear of formal school until the age of seven. The Professional
Association of Teachers said at its annual conference yesterday that
children ought to be allowed to delay the start of formal education,
allowing them more time for play. Are they mad? Or is it just
possible that the organisation could be plugging this for all the
right reasons, having seen at first hand the consequences of the
present directive regime of pressure and performance targets on
fragile, five-year-old minds?
Increasingly, when I have visited schools and met parents,
teachers and child psychologists, there have been discussions about
why our children have to start school so early. Raising the starting
age is not a radical idea - many countries have followed the
practice for decades and their children do not suffer. American
research recently found that children who had "teacher-led, academic
lessons" at the age of five did not display "lasting academic
advantage" over those who began later. Moreover, they were more
likely to suffer emotional problems as adults.
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08/01/2007 12:24:11 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
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07/31/2007 2:35:31 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Charter school ruling could cost city millions
Last academic year, the school system's budget
contained the equivalent of more than $13,000 per child for all of
its public schools, though not all of that was directly spent on
children. The city's charter schools received $5,859 per child in
cash and the rest in services.
In a 7-2 decision, the Court of Appeals affirmed the right of
charter schools to receive as much money per pupil as regular public
schools spend on their students. When the new academic year begins
next month, Baltimore will have 22 charter schools serving about
5,400 children, more than in the rest of the state combined.
"It's a great decision, and it's in keeping with what
we believe is and should be the law of the land: Money
should follow children," said Jeanne Allen, president of
the Center for Education Reform, "Children are entitled
to equitable public funding regardless of the kind of
school they attend."
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07/30/2007 4:10:27 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Skyrocketing numbers of kids are prescribed powerful antipsychotic
drugs.
More and more, parents at wit's end are begging
doctors to help them calm their aggressive children or control their
kids with ADHD. More and more, doctors are prescribing powerful
antipsychotic drugs.
In the past seven years, the number of Florida children
prescribed such drugs has increased some 250 percent. Last year,
more than 18,000 state kids on Medicaid were given prescriptions for
antipsychotic drugs.
Even children as young as 3 years old. Last year, 1,100
Medicaid children under 6 were prescribed antipsychotics, a practice
so risky that state regulators say it should be used only in extreme
cases.
These numbers are just for children on fee-for-service
Medicaid, generally the poor and disabled. Thousands more kids on
private insurance are also on antipsychotics.
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07/29/2007 2:51:53 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Debunking the concept of "Learning Styles."
Under the new
system children are considered to have different
"learning styles" and instead of being taught by the
conventional method of listening to a teacher, they
should be allowed to wander around, listen to music
and even play with balls in the classroom. In
effect, it dismisses so-called "chalk and talk"
teaching as inadequate.
But now Baroness Greenfield, the director of the
Royal Institute and a professor of pharmacology at
Oxford University, has dismissed this view as
"nonsense" from a neuroscientific point of view.
"Humans have evolved to build a picture of the world
through our senses working in unison, exploiting the
immense interconnectivity that exists in the brain.
It is when the senses are activated together - the
sound of a voice is synchronization with the
movement of a person's lips - that brain cells fire
more strongly than when stimuli are received apart.
"The rationale
for employing Vak learning styles
appears to be weak. After more than
30 years of educational research in
to learning styles there is no
independent evidence that Vak, or
indeed any other learning style
inventory, has any direct
educational benefits."
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07/28/2007 5:07:17 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
The push is on to prepare kids for the high-tech
age
Many public schools in Minnesota are
turning their focus toward STEM -- science,
technology, engineering and math.
Apple Valley's Cedar Park Elementary
School will open this September with a
highfalutin mouthful of a name: Cedar Park
Elementary - Science, Technology,
Engineering and Math (STEM) Magnet School.
The new name signifies that Cedar Park
will no longer be a traditional elementary
school, but one that will give its 580
students a firmer grounding in the four
fields, known as STEM. That will require
more space. This summer, rising cinder block
walls and scaffolding outside the school
mark where 4,000 square feet of new
classroom and lab space will open for
business in December.
"Most schools will have an art room,
but not a science lab," said Cedar Park
Principal Margaret Gruenes. The school's new
space will accommodate a digital microscope,
computers loaded with scientific software
and other scientific materials.
Cedar Park is part of a statewide
effort to bring Minnesota students up to
speed in science, math and related fields.
It ties in to the nationwide concern
that American students are being overtaken
in math, science, technology and engineering
by students in other countries. Though there
are signs that student interest in these
fields is on the rebound, state officials,
including Gov. Tim Pawlenty, have been
hammering at the need for Minnesota students
to concentrate more on STEM courses, and for
more students to pursue STEM careers.
Statewide, 23 high schools and middle
schools received grants in 2006 to ramp up
their STEM teaching and resources.
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07/27/2007 3:00:10 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Proposal to increase class sizes for gifted troubling to parents
Highly gifted students in San Diego public
schools have typically enjoyed a class size of 20 students per
teacher – which is much smaller on average than the norm. But in the
future, the teacher-student ratio for so-called Seminar classes in
the San Diego Unified School District could increase to 25 to 1,
much to the dismay of some parents.
The Gifted and Talented Education Seminar task force, which is
made up of parents, teachers and administrators, stressed the
importance of keeping the 20-to-1 ratio in a report to the school
board in May. It recommended hiring about 20 additional teachers at
a cost of $1.57 million to meet demands from parents for more
Seminar classes.
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07/26/2007 1:16:37 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
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07/25/2007 12:06:15 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
U.S. students are spending more time on math and reading and less on
other subjects, an apparent consequence of the No Child Left Behind law.
Roughly two-thirds of elementary schools
surveyed by the nonpartisan Center on Education Policy reported
increasing math and reading time since the law was passed in 2001.
In some cases, schools appear to be adding math and reading
time to lessons in other subjects, meaning they might be teaching
both reading and history at the same time. Schools are facing
tougher consequences under the No Child Left Behind law, which could
explain the recent spikes in time spent on math and reading in the
new report.
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07/24/2007 12:12:45 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
A full-scale investigation of NY State Education Department is
absolutely necessary.
The Wall Street Journal reported today on what
appears to be widespread corruption at the New York State Education
Department. This corruption targets children with disabilities.
"Golden has confirmed many of the facts that my office has
been investigating over the last year in preparation for legal
action against Mr. Kelly and the others involved in what I believe
to be a conspiracy," Cuddy stated. "Multiple attorneys in that
office reported that they left because they felt that participating
in Kelly's agenda would cause them to lose their licenses to
practice law, and sources inside the office confirm that the agenda
is ongoing despite expressed opposition within the office from
Kelly's staff," Cuddy said.
Because of today's Wall Street Journal report, Cuddy has
requested that New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo commence
an immediate, full-scale investigation in order to determine whether
there has been a criminal conspiracy to violate the civil rights
of New York State's disabled children and their parents. My office
is offering assistance to any current or former employee of the
State Education Department who feels that they are being threatened
or intimidated into participating in a cover-up. Cuddy also bought
this matter to the attention of the Office of the Inspector General
of the United States Department of Education.
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07/23/2007 1:13:29 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
California plan to keep track of students
takes a hit
California finally seemed ready to develop a
computerized student-tracking system to accurately compile dropout
rates, transfer student records and do basic research. The lack of a
student information system keeps educators in the dark about what
works and what doesn't work.
Two years ago, a Harvard University study criticized the state
for not having given students identification numbers, something that
has been done since then. The Harvard study concluded that the high
school dropout rate in California was 29 percent, much higher than
the 13 percent rate being reported by the state at the time.
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07/22/2007 10:59:02 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Business giants want boost in schools
The heads of two of America's titans of the
high-tech economy, Google and AT&T, had a simple message when they
met with the nation's governors Saturday: Get us a skilled
workforce. And get out of the way.
As things stand, they say government regulations often hamper
business investment. Qualified workers are in short supply.
Case in point: AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said his
company is hard-pressed to find the 50,000 new hires it's seeking
each year, including 4,000 positions that are returning to the
United States from India. Part of the blame, he and Google Chief
Executive Eric Schmidt agreed, lies with an underperforming
education system.
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07/21/2007 8:56:19 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Despite highly
suspicious test scores,
a February report by the
Texas Education Agency
declared the Houston
school cheating-free –
largely because school
officials, when asked,
said they were unaware
of any wrongdoing on
their campus.
But last month, a
Dallas Morning News
statistical analysis
found that Forest Brook
had one of the worst
cheating problems in
Texas. Looking at two
years of scores, the
analysis found more than
350 TAKS answer sheets
had answer patterns that
were suspiciously
similar – in some cases
identical – to those of
at least one classmate
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07/20/2007 5:32:13 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
New York City at the
Supreme Court Over Special Education
The federal government is siding against
New York City in a case before the
U.S. Supreme Court that parents of children with disabilities
are watching closely.
The case is likely to set standards for when localities must
reimburse parents for private school tuition for students with a
range of disabilities. The
New York City Department of Education says it must only pay for
private school if the school is unable to meet the needs of the
child. The city claims that any other policy will require it to pay
for the bias many parents have toward an expensive private
education.
The
U.S. solicitor general,
Paul Clement, argues that the city's policy denies some children
immediate access to an appropriate education. The solicitor
general's office claims that the city is responsible for funding a
private education for students the school system is unable to serve
even when the child has never spent a day in public school.
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07/19/2007 12:37:31 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Regents exam: American history for dummies
Before Mayor Bloomberg starts
shelling out money to high school juniors for passing
their New York State Regents exams, he would do well to
bring as much scrutiny to the content of these tests as
he does to the quantity of trans fats in restaurant
food.
People who took their Regents exams 30 years ago
assume that the current version of the tests is
essentially the same. They would be stunned to learn how
dumbed-down the tests have become. You might say that
the American history Regents gives new meaning to the
term "E-Z Pass."
The 15 document-related questions are ludicrously
easy. The documents include some written passages, but
are mostly political cartoons and photographs. In the
test given last month - which I helped administer and
grade - several concerned the women's suffrage movement,
such as a photograph of a suffragists' parade showing
women carrying various signs containing the word
"suffrage." The exam question asks, "What was a goal of
the women shown in these photographs?"
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07/18/2007 3:09:47 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
The Source and Nature of Best Practice in Teaching
Schools are places organized on the expectation
that groups of children and youth of the same age "learn" at roughly
the same rate and in the same ways. Schools organized on the basis
of age-grades are an American cultural and historic phenomenon that
have not only survived but thrived (1/2 trillion dollars per year,
54 million children in 15,000 districts over four hundred years) and
will not be transformed simply because their assumptions reflect
neither the realities of student growth and socialization nor any
research or theory of human development.
The natural drive for children to move and not sit all day has
never been adequately dealt with by schools. The fact that teachers
spend most of their time talking and giving directions which have
little or no impact on learning is well-documented. Limiting school
practice to the theories and research of psychology cannot lead to
effective school teaching and learning because psychology seeks to
explain how individuals learn and schools are locked on the
assumption that" learning" must occur in groups.
Pianta's recent study of 2,500 classrooms in 400 school
districts shows that the typical child has a 1 in 14 chance of
learning in a rich, supportive classroom environment. Fifth graders,
for example, spend 91 percent of their time listening to the teacher
or working alone on low-level worksheets.
The following subgroups exist in a
class of 25 to 35 students: 4-6 students
feign helplessness regardless of how
much the assignments are watered down
and never complete assignments; 6-8
students need for attention prevents
them from staying on task and interferes
with the work of others; 1-2 students
see themselves as having been hurt by
teachers and seek revenge regardless of
the task or assignment at hand; 3-4
students challenge the teacher for
control of the classroom; 6-8 students
come to school everyday and function as
observers rather than participants.
(They devote most of their time to
observing the interactions (i.e. the
cold or hot war) between the teacher and
each of the four student groups cited
above. Ultimately, this group comprises
the majority of school dropouts; these
are students with very low achievement
who declare they quit school because it
was "boring." ); 4-6 officially labeled
special needs students with IEP's.
It is the
ideology and functioning of great
teachers that must be replicated. The
value we place on their craft knowledge
is the ultimate test. Unless and until
we recognize, prize it and develop ways
of disseminating it we will continue to
stumble about assuming we can derive
best practice in schools from some
theory of "learning," that doesn't
exist.
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07/17/2007 2:30:50 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Students &
Executives: Reading is Irrelevant
A 5-year study of the
reading habits of 1,050 students (high
school and college) and 875 executives
reveals reading books is last on their
hierarchy of values. It is an old fashioned
knowledge technology.
These results mirror the past twenty years
of information technology. Public access to
the Internet is a form of neuroplasticity.
The computer changes not just our learning
habits, but the function and structure of
the brain of Homo sapiens.
Students
a) "Reading, there are better things to do
with my time."
b) "I spend four-hours messaging my friends
on MySpace."
c) "I rather listen to music, fire-off video
games, or surf YouTube."
d) "Reading books is a school thing, not
what I choose."
Executives
Surfing the Internet for news, CNBC for
stock price listings, and Googling games and
porno, occupies up to 40% of executives
time. The book publishing industry confirms
the typical executive (college graduate)
reads only one (1) book annually.
A recurring complaint by executives is based
on their Cost-Benefit-Analysis of the
reading experience. There is too limited a
payoff for the time invested in book
reading. Audio (Podcasts), Video, and the
Internet, offers greater cognitive rewards
than three hours in reading text. Is reading
a book as cool as using their laptop?
Educators labeling students and executives
learning-challenged or folks with limited
attention-span, is a refusal to accept the
attraction of new technology. Today students
and executives demand immediate
gratification for their learning experience
regardless of their learning curve. Produce
or be deleted.
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07/16/2007 4:31:33 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Changes being considered to overhaul No Child Left Behind.
Dodd is seeking easing certification
requirements for teachers and giving schools more ways to show they
are making students better at math and reading.
Senators Judd Gregg of New Hampshire and Richard Burr of North
Carolina -- both Republicans -- introduced legislation last week
aimed at keeping the accountability and testing concepts while
giving more leeway to schools. For example, the bill would give
schools more time to achieve test standards among children just
learning English, and treat schools with small populations of
low-achieving students less harshly than those with widespread
problems.
Avoid labeling entire schools as failing because they
have students who are harder to teach, such as those with learning
disabilities or limited English skills.
Give schools more time to bring up test scores before
they are forced to take corrective action.
Ease certification requirements for teachers.
Give schools more options for showing they are making
students better at math and reading.
Treat schools less harshly if they have small
populations of low-achieving students compared with those with
widespread problems.
Allow different ways of calculating a school's progress
in bringing up test scores in select locations.
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07/15/2007 1:53:12 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
When San Francisco started trying to promote socioeconomic diversity in
its public schools, officials hoped racial diversity would result as
well.
Abraham Lincoln High
School, for example, with its stellar
reputation and Advanced Placement courses,
has drawn a mix of rich and poor students.
More than 50 percent of those students are
of Chinese descent.
“If you look at diversity based on
race, the school hasn’t been as integrated,”
Lincoln’s principal, Ronald J. K. Pang,
said. “If you don’t look at race, the school
has become much more diverse.”
San Francisco began considering
factors like family income, instead of race,
in school assignments when it modified a
court-ordered desegregation plan in response
to a lawsuit. But school officials have
found that the 55,000-student city school
district, with Chinese the dominant ethnic
group followed by Hispanics, blacks and
whites, is resegregrating.
The number of schools where students
of a single racial or ethnic group make up
60 percent or more of the population in at
least one grade is increasing sharply. In
2005-06, about 50 schools were segregated
using that standard as measured by a
court-appointed monitor. That was up from 30
schools in the 2001-02 school year, the year
before the change, according to court
filings.
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07/14/2007 1:45:13 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
|
Science Education We Need
Demand for students with a solid foundation in
science continues to grow. By 2010, jobs in science and engineering
nationally are expected to increase by 2.2 million.1 Equally
important, science education needs to ready citizens who do not
pursue careers in science to handle dilemmas they will face in their
lives, such as selecting treatments for diseases, evaluating
messages about climate change, or using new technologies.
However, current science education in the United
States falls short of these goals. American students continue to
languish in international comparisons of science achievement. The
situation only grows worse in later grades. In national assessments,
U.S. students’ performance becomes increasingly weaker at higher
grade levels .
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07/13/2007 1:32:42 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Zogby Poll:
Most Think Political Bias Among College Professors a Serious Problem
Four in 10 said the problem is "very serious;" Tenure seen as
harmful to teaching quality.
As legislation is introduced in more than a dozen
states across the country to counter political pressure and
proselytizing on students in college classrooms, a majority of
Americans believe the political bias of college professors is a
serious problem, a new Zogby Interactive poll shows.
Nearly six in 10 - 58% - said they see it as a
serious problem, with 39% saying it was a "very serious" problem.
The online survey of 9,464 adult respondents nationwide was
conducted July 5-9, 2007, and carries a margin of error of +/- 1.0
percentage points.
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07/12/2007 12:00:07 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
WHEN ARE
PARENTS GOING TO FIX EDUCATION?
"More money for education" is
nothing more than empty words when it comes to the Federal
Department of Education and the destruction that agency has done to
America's children in the area of education. When are America's
parents going to catch on to that big lie pitched every election
cycle? Does the problem ever get fixed from one Congress to the
next? No. One president to the next? No. One governor to the next?
No. Over the past 25 years I have read thousands of words written
about how to improve education in America, but what do we see coming
out of the government's indoctrination centers? It makes me sad to
say, but so many are little more than zombies. Fifty percent of all
college freshmen need remedial reading instruction. Watch the
individual out there who can't make change at a mini-mart until the
computerized cash register puts it up on a digital screen. All the
money in the world won't fix education as long as the system is
unconstitutionally controlled by the federal government and as long
as the curriculum is anti-American, anti-learning and new world
order-doctrine driven.
There are 72 million
parents with children. What do you suppose would happen if 10 or 12
million of them pulled their children out of school all at the same
time and home-schooled them until the state legislatures correct the
problem? Only parents, using the power they have can stop the
brainwashing of America's children into becoming "global citizens"
and the push to get children to
experiment
with queer sex. Let your voices be heard from border to border,
coast to coast. Not all parents can afford to put their children in
private schools; so many have written me that they feel so poorly
educated, they are afraid to home school. There is help out there
for those parents who wish to get their children out of these
cesspools: Welcome to the National
Home Education Network and
National Home
school Networks. I also highly recommend you look into
Exodus
Mandate Program.
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07/11/2007 12:01:26 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Too many students in too many places are not learning enough. Is NCLB
fixing this?
THE COMPLAINTS are reaching a crescendo as
Congress moves closer to reauthorizing No Child Left Behind, the
education reform law that President Bush passed with rare bipartisan
support in 2001. Conservatives are wailing about federal intrusion.
Teachers unions and some leading Democrats moan that the law relies
too much on testing as the measure of student progress. And some
parents echo each of those indictments.
With immigration reform derailed, educational accountability
offers Washington its last chance for a big bipartisan
accomplishment this year. It won't be easy — conservative
Republicans want to repeal the federal testing mandate, and teachers
unions are pressing Democrats to dilute it by allowing schools to be
judged not only by test scores but by fuzzier measures, such as
teacher assessments. Such changes would amount to dismantling the
foundation built since 2001. The better course is to dig deeper into
the law's initial motivation and more effectively lift up the
millions of children still left behind every day.
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07/10/2007 2:47:06 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Blissfully Uneducated
Colleges lost their way in the 1960s, contends
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, a classics professor. Students now get a
‘therapeutic curriculum’ instead of learning hard facts and
inductive inquiry. The result: we can’t answer the questions of our
time.
Is the Iraq war, as we are often told, the “greatest mistake”
in our nation’s history? If few Americans know of prior abject
disasters during the winter of 1776, the summer of 1864, or January
1942, then why wouldn’t Iraq really be the worst mistake in our
history?
Americans increasingly cannot seem to answer questions like
these adequately because they are blissfully uneducated. They have
not acquired a broad knowledge of language, literature, philosophy,
and history.
Instead, our youth for a generation have been fed a “Studies”
curriculum. Fill in the blanks: Women’s Studies, Gay Studies,
Environmental Studies, Peace Studies, Chicano Studies, Film Studies,
and so on. These courses aim to indoctrinate students about
perceived pathologies in contemporary American culture—specifically,
race, class, gender, and environmental oppression.
Such courses are by design deductive. The student is expected
to arrive at the instructor’s own preconceived conclusions. The
courses are also captives of the present—hostages of the
contemporary media and popular culture from which they draw their
information and earn their relevance.
The theme of all such therapeutic curricula is relativism.
There are no eternal truths, only passing assertions that gain
credence through power and authority. Once students understand how
gender, race, and class distinctions are used to oppress others,
they are then free to ignore absolute “truth,” since it is only a
reflection of one’s own privilege.
By contrast, the aim of traditional education was to prepare a
student in two very different ways. First, classes offered
information drawn from the ages—the significance of Gettysburg, the
characters in a Shakespeare play, or the nature of the subjunctive
mood. Integral to this acquisition were key dates, facts, names, and
terms by which students, in a focused manner in conversation and
speech, could refer to the broad knowledge that they had gathered.
In the end, education is the ability to make sense of the
chaotic present through the prism of the absolute and eternal truths
of the ages. But if there are no prisms—no absolutes, no eternals,
no truths, no ages past—then the present will appear only as
nonsense.
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07/09/2007 12:36:14 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
The
British recognize that without more education they will fall behind the
rest of the world in economic postion. The same will happen in the USA
unless we adopt the same philosophy.
The "Our future. It's in our hands" campaign will run over
three years, but it is hoped this first phase will create the desire
and will to learn.
Minister John Denham said there was a need to change the
attitude to skills.
The government is spending £20m on advertising adult education
over the next five years.
The campaign comes after a report by Lord Leitch for the
government warned that the UK must become a world leader in skills
by 2020 if it wants to sustain its position in the global economy.
It said the UK would continue to fall behind its competitors
unless it doubled the rate at which people were being trained.
|
|
07/08/2007 1:18:23 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Conservatives and Liberals Rally Around State and Local Control
The No Child Left Behind Law as it was
originally passed was a big power grab by the federal government to
manage and control education in the USA. Education has traditionally
been locally controlled and a responsibility of the states. Now the
NCLB Law is up for reauthorization.
As Congress prepares to debate No Child Left Behind's
reauthorization, conservatives and liberals alike are calling for
greater state and local control of schools. Whether they join
together in a common legislative initiative could shape the outcome
of the reauthorization debate and the future of American education.
|
|
07/07/2007 12:26:41 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Graham sues over tuition
Former Gov. Bob Graham sued the Legislature on
Friday, setting up a constitutional showdown over control of the
state's public universities.
The suit asks a Leon County circuit judge to declare that the
Board of Governors has the power to set tuition, not lawmakers.
Voters in 2002 approved a constitutional amendment that created the
board to oversee the state's university system.
Graham, who spearheaded the amendment, complained that the
board has been too timid to exert its authority and that
universities are hamstrung by the Legislature's annual budget
battles.
He cited Gov. Charlie Crist's recent decisions to veto a
5-percent across-the-board tuition increase and to put off a
''differential'' tuition plan for the state's three largest
universities until next year.
''It makes it almost impossible to have effective
management,'' Graham said. ''It's hard to run any kind of
institution with that kind of lack of foresight.''
The complaint asks the court to strike down a university
governance scheme that lawmakers passed in 2003 that retains the
Legislature's authority to set tuition rates, a power it has guarded
zealously since 1905.
|
|
07/06/2007 12:29:14 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
New
Orleans trying to lure area teachers
Scrambling to hire 500 certified teachers by
Sept. 4, a hurricane-ravaged school district hopes to find some of
them in Pittsburgh.
Betty Jean Wolfe, the district's director of human resources,
said Pittsburgh and Minneapolis are being targeted because they have
teacher surpluses. She said the district is recruiting in Houston
because a large number of New Orleans residents relocated there
after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005.
"If anybody in Pittsburgh has a heart for New Orleans, come
down and join us," said Ms. Wolfe, who's offering new hires up to
$17,300 in relocation, housing and retention incentives, plus credit
for service in other school districts, so they can start higher on
the district's salary scale.
Base pay for a teacher with a master's degree ranges from
$37,300 to $52,900, according to the district's salary scale. By
comparison, in 2005-06, the average Allegheny County teacher made
about $59,000, without a master's, according to state figures.
|
|
07/05/2007 2:35:31 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
How many
high school dropouts do we have? (This still doesn't
count the kids who quit after middle school & don't
make it to high school).
For years, public educators
in Maryland, Virginia and the District have
measured graduation rates based on the number of
students known to have dropped out, and many
dropouts are never counted. Education leaders
long defended the method, but increasingly they
are agreeing with researchers that it yields
inflated graduation rates.
The analysis of head counts from 23
schools, provided by the state education
department, found that the class shrank from
11,589 students to 9,743 between freshman year
and graduation day. That suggests a graduation
rate of about 84 percent, eight points lower
than the 92 percent reported by the Maryland
State Department of Education.
The Post estimated graduation rates by
comparing the number of freshmen enrolled in
fall 2002 with the number of diplomas awarded in
spring 2006, the latest count available.
The result is only an estimate -- it
doesn't account for the comings and goings of
students, those who repeat grades or the growth
and decline in school populations over time. But
it may give a more accurate picture of student
attrition than the state can provide at present.
|
|
07/03/2007 11:26:47 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Kids lose their desire to learn from
mind-numbing classes and school curricula that
bores them senseless. Paying them doesn't change
this.
NEW YORK CITY has
decided to offer cash rewards to some
students based on their attendance records
and exam performance. Diligent,
high-achieving seventh graders will be able
to earn up to $500 in a year.
The assumption that underlies the
project is simple: people respond to
incentives. If you want people to do
something, you have to make it worth their
while. This assumption drives virtually all
of economic theory.
Sure, there are
already many rewards
in learning: gaining
understanding (of
yourself and
others), having
mysterious or
unfamiliar aspects
of the world opened
up to you,
demonstrating
mastery, satisfying
curiosity,
inhabiting imaginary
worlds created by
others, and so on.
Learning is also the
route to more
prosaic rewards,
like getting into
good colleges and
getting good jobs.
But these rewards
are not doing the
job. If they were,
children would be
doing better in
school.
|
|
07/02/2007 4:46:23 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
The idiocy of the Government Education System at work. They just don't
get it!
The Arizona Department of Education (ADE) has
mandated that the schools align their curricula to an ADE-determined
grade-by-grade curriculum sequence. "These rules would have the
perverse effect of dumbing-down some of the most successful schools
in the entire United States," said Clint Bolick, the litigation
center's director.
The schools filing the lawsuit—BASIS Tucson, BASIS Scottsdale,
Veritas Preparatory Academy in Phoenix, Chandler Preparatory Academy
and Mesa Preparatory Academy — include four of the ten
highest-performing public schools in the state based on AIMS test
scores.Newsweek named BASIS Tucson one of the nation's ten best high
schools for two consecutive years.Mesa Preparatory Academy will open
this fall. Veritas, Chandler Prep, and Mesa Prep are part of the
Great Hearts Academies network.
|
|
07/01/2007 11:29:55 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
New York City is asking parents to grade their public
schools.
The city has made some strides in offering
families more choice. Today, New York has 58 public charter schools
serving 15,000 students; another 12,000 children are on waiting
lists to enroll in charter schools. After years of political
bickering, state legislators in Albany have finally agreed to
increase the cap on the number of charter schools that are allowed
in the state from 100 to 200. Approximately 50 new charter schools
will be allowed to open in New York City.
Unfortunately, this will only help a fraction of the tens of
thousands of kids trapped in the city's public schools, where, on
average, only one out of three 8th graders is reading at
grade-level.
More money is not the answer. New York City already spends more than
$12,600 on each student in public school every year, well above the
national average.
Mayor Bloomberg's "customer feedback" survey is a small step in the
right direction toward empowering parents. Yet he should recognize
that parents have been giving feedback for years in their efforts to
escape public schools whenever they have been given the chance. The
question is whether politicians will ever give them the opportunity.
|
|
06/30/2007 10:49:28 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
|
More Florida schools earned Ds and Fs and fewer earned As and Bs on
this year's school report card, state figures show.
Officials had predicted schools would fare worse
this year because the state stiffened the grading standards, making
it harder for schools to get top marks. Among the changes was the
inclusion for the first time of FCAT science scores in this year's
grade calculations.
Across Florida, 1,941 public schools earned As or Bs, down from a
high of 2,077 last year. And 302 earned Ds or Fs, more than double
the 143 that got lousy grades last year. The number of F-grade
schools hit 82, an all-time high since Florida started grading
schools in 1999.
|
|
06/29/2007 3:23:14 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Smaller Classes = Lower Achievement; Counter-Intuitive
Would you prefer to have your child in a class
of 30 with a school district's best teacher or in a class of 20 with
one of its least effective teachers?
Assume a 30-minute instructional period for a subject in
grades 1-3. And assume every minute is instructional time which, of
course, it is not. The teacher attempting individual attention in a
class of 30 has an average of one minute per child. California's
mandate of a maximum 20 students means the teacher has 90 seconds
per student, 30 seconds more. Per half hour. The other 28.5 minutes
must be devoted to the other 19 students.
Hardly the formula for outstanding results.
The guaranteed winners? Teacher unions. 60,000
more teachers, 90% of whom typically join the unions, and $600 dues,
has raised union income $32,400,000 annually, or nearly $200 million
by this fall.
No wonder they support smaller classes.
|
|
06/28/2007 5:34:22 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Thomas Jefferson wanted children educated so as to
benefit the State, at least to grade three. He thought school should be
'at the father's choice.' Jefferson also believed smarter kids should
get more grades at public expense.
Jefferson believed in selection by merit from
an early age: "By that part of our plan which prescribes the
selection of youths of genius from the classes of the poor, we hope
to avail the state of those talents which nature has sown as
liberally among the poor as the rich, but which perish without use,
if not sought and cultivated."
|
|
06/20 - 6/27/2007 Jeffrey's vacation |
|
06/19/2007 3:55:40 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
|
Millions
of kids are not learning to read, and reading failure is epidemic among
kids from poverty – kids who did not have the advantages of
being read to on a consistent basis or having the opportunity to be
raised in a language rich home. To be sure, many kids from
middle class families have a tough time learning to read but not nearly
at the level observed among kids from poor families.
What is amazing is that money from a number of federally funded
education programs had been thrown at the reading issue without any
discernable effect – and this went on year after year. It is mind
boggling when you think about it.
To fix reading we must answer three basic questions:(1) how does
someone learn to read – that is, what are the skills, environments,
family variables, instructional factors, that provide the foundation for
proficient reading; (2) why do some children (and adults) have
difficulty learning to read; and most importantly, (3) what can be done
to prevent and/or remediate reading difficulties. |
|
06/18/2007 4:04:21 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
We're always told that education is so important that it must be left to
the experts,
...yet experts cannot be all-knowing. Would you
trust the production of food, clothing or shelter – even more
important to our well-being than education – to the same people who
are producing education in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and even
wealthy Capistrano Unified? I didn't think so.
Planning an economy from the top down is "as hopeless as if a
human being tried consciously to control all the muscles directing
his breathing, blood circulation, and digestion, deciding just when
to contract his right ventricle and how much insulin should be
released by his pancreas," wrote Scott Shane in a 1994 book
analyzing the failure of the Soviet "utopia."
That's the same problem with the school systems in America,
which are not particularly different than the Soviet economy. An
elite group plans and directs a one-size-fits-all system. There are
few choices. There are no consumers. This is a top-down,
government-controlled monopoly system, with more than a little bit
of coercive force at its disposal. How could a system such as this
take root in a society that is supposed to pride itself on freedom
and the market economy?
That's why socialist education systems cannot provide decent
education for kids no matter how much money is thrown at the
bureaucracies.
The market (and private charities) will provide an astounding
array of excellent choices in the poorest, bleakest neighborhoods.
We don't know exactly how the new system would work, any more
than I can tell you how a pencil came into being. But I do know
that, as in all free markets, the results will be astounding. And an
enormous amount of resources (almost half the state's general-fund
budget) would be unleashed, generating unheard-of prosperity.
|
|
06/17/2007 Jeff is on assignment...no post today |
|
06/16/2007 Jeff is on assignment...no post today |
|
06/15/2007 4:44:04 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
One of the consistencies of public schools is their
incessant demand for more money.
2004 - A Massachusetts
study "implied that almost every district in the
state–even the wealthiest–was underfunded, with
an average shortfall of 66 percent. Ironically,
the only sizeable district judged to be spending
enough was Cambridge, where student performance
has been persistently low." pp 27-8, James
Peyser & Robert Castrell, "exploring the costs
of accountability," p 22-29, Education Next,
Spring 2004.
2005 - ALEC's 11th annual report:
"...although per-student spending has gone up
nationwide by 53% in the past two decades, 73%
of public school students in eighth grade taking
the National Assessment of Education Progress
math exam in 2003 performed below the level of
proficiency."
2006 - "there is no significant
correlation between the percentage of its budget
that a school district spends on instruction and
scores on state reading and math tests,
concludes the most recent analysis by
SchoolMatters, a service of Standard & Poor's."
Robert C. Johnson, "Ratio Spent on Classrooms
Not Tied to Scores, Study Says," p. 20,
Education Week, March 1, 2006.
|
|
06/14/2007 12:51:46 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
The school board president had to explain that
the superintendent, scheduled to begin on July 1
after a nine-month search costing more than
$20,000, had backed out, largely because of the
escalating math fight.
Dr. Brooks, a
superintendent on Long Island, is the latest
casualty in the math wars, felled by parents
who complain that their children have failed
to learn basic skills in one of the
top-performing school districts in
New Jersey. After consulting math
professors and hiring private tutors, the
parents flooded the Internet — and the local
newspaper, The Ridgewood News — with
concerns about what is known as reform math,
collecting more than 175 signatures on a
petition calling for an overhaul of math
instruction in six of the district’s nine
schools.
These schools — four elementary
schools and the district’s only two middle
schools — use reform math, an approach that
typically allows students to explore their
own solutions to problems, writing and
drawing pictures, and to use tools like the
calculator while they learn mathematical
methods and skills. Reform math grew out of
an effort to instill in students a deeper
understanding of what they are doing rather
than memorizing facts and repeating answers.
|
|
06/13/2007 2:54:54 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
|
Has school
choice in China led to improved student achievement?
Results show that entering one’s first-choice
school does not have significant beneficial effects on the student
test scores in the High School Entrance Exam (HSEE) 2002.4 However,
the beneficial effects of entering one’s first-choice school are
larger for students who applied to the top-tier schools (i.e.,
taking a high-stake lottery) than those who chose other schools as
their first choice (i.e., taking a low-stake lottery). This
indicates that entering one’s first-choice school does bring more
beneficial effects on academic performance for students who were
more academically ambitious than those who were not. Moreover, even
though academic quality is a major factor in parental school choice
in general, parental preferences of schools are heterogeneous to
some extent. In particular, students applying for the top-tier
schools tend to have stronger academic and socioeconomic
backgrounds, indicating sorting in school choice along socioeconomic
status, which is also observed by many studies (e.g. Hsieh and
Urquiola, 2006). Still further, many of the oversubscribed schools
were outperformed by undersubscribed schools in the HSEE 2002 after
the re-shuffling of students across schools via randomization. Thus,
parents seemed to select schools based on their performance prior to
the advent of school choice reform, suggesting that misinformation
might lead to inefficient school choice. These are all possible
reasons for the overall insignificant effects of entering one’s
first-choice schools on student performance. Finally, there seems to
be neither lottery winning effects nor differential lottery winning
effects between high-stake and low-stake lottery takers after
controlling for various school characteristics.
|
|
06/12/2007 11:54:23 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Higher starting salaries, more rigorous teacher
training programs and additional support for first
year teachers are just a few of the incentives
needed to deal with a projected shortfall of more
than 280,000 math and science teachers across the
country by 2015.
According to the report,
the quality of math and science teachers is the
most influential variable in determining the
success of a student in those subjects, but
fewer talented math and science graduates are
becoming teachers because they have many higher
paying professional opportunities.
To make teaching a viable career choice,
the report proposed a package of financial
incentives, including scholarships, signing
bonuses, loan forgiveness, housing subsidies and
differential pay to teachers who work in
high-demand subjects or those willing to work in
high-poverty school systems, where shortages are
being felt most acutely.
Offering higher pay in some subjects would
depart from the existing system, which is based
on experience and educational credits. The
proposal has been controversial, with some
teachers unions worried that different pay
scales would encourage discord on faculties.
|
|
06/11/2007 1:29:30 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Parents say "fuzzy" math doesn't add up
Parents, educators and the nation's
mathematicians clash over reform math programs -- what critics call
"fuzzy math." The debate has become particularly heated as test
after test shows U.S. students lag children in Singapore and China.
Reform math allows students to solve problems however they
wish and uses everyday language -- think "combine" instead of "add."
It encourages independent reasoning and computation using familiar
objects, so students may solve word problems by drawing a series of
circles and counting up the answer.
No matter the curriculum, improving math education in the
United States is a front-and-center goal. Citing global
competitiveness, the Bush administration last year assembled a new
panel to study the teaching of math.
Many mathematicians and engineers have explicitly declared
certain reform programs as fundamentally flawed and overly
simplistic. A leading critic, research mathematician and Stanford
University professor R. James Milgram, says programs such as
Everyday Math, and Investigations in Number, Data, and Space (known
as TERC), both of which are used in Ridgewood, are too reliant on
calculators and don't thoroughly teach students basic number facts
or functions.
"Students are coming to the university
worse prepared than any time we can remember. ... They simply cannot
do math at the university level."
|
|
06/10/2007 2:47:14 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Can D.C. Schools Be Fixed?
After decades of
reforms, three out of four students fall below math
standards. More money is spent running the schools
than on teaching. And urgent repair jobs take more
than a year.
The District
spends $12,979 per pupil each year, ranking it
third-highest among the 100 largest districts in the
nation. But most of that money does not get to the
classroom. D.C. schools rank first in the share of
the budget spent on administration, last in spending
on teachers and instruction.
Tests show that in reading and math, the
District's public school students score at the
bottom among 11 major city school systems, even when
poor children are compared only with other poor
children. Thirty-three percent of poor
fourth-graders across the nation lacked basic skills
in math, but in the District, the figure was 62
percent. It was 74 percent for D.C. eighth-graders,
compared with 49 percent nationally.
Principals reporting dangerous conditions or
urgently needed repairs in their buildings wait, on
average, 379 days -- a year and two weeks -- for the
problems to be fixed. Of 146 school buildings, 113
have a repair request pending for a leaking roof, a
Washington Post analysis of school records
shows.
The schools spent $25 million on a computer
system to manage personnel that had to be discarded
because there was no accurate list of employees to
use as a starting point. The school system relies on
paper records stacked in 200 cardboard boxes to keep
track of its employees, and in some cases is five
years behind in processing staff paperwork. It also
lacks an accurate list of its 55,000-plus students,
although it pays $900,000 to a consultant each year
to keep count.
Many students and teachers spend their days in
an environment hostile to learning. Just over half
of teenage students attend schools that meet the
District's definition of "persistently dangerous"
because of the number of violent crimes, according
to an analysis of school reports. Across the city,
nine violent incidents are reported on a typical
day, including fights and attacks with weapons. Fire
officials receive about one complaint a week of
locked fire doors, and health inspections show that
more than a third of schools have been infested by
mice.
|
|
06/09/2007 8:40:22 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Reconstituting Dropouts
It's public education's dirty
little secret: Three out of ten students who start
high school don't finish it four years later. Among
African American and Hispanic teens, on-time
graduation rates can be less than 50 percent.
That's why a growing number of groups are
rallying to not only prevent high schoolers from
leaving but also convince those who have fled to
return to the classroom.
|
|
06/08/2007 5:00:03 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Blaming the Victim
This attitude of blaming the victim is a common
occurrence in the public schools. Other than constant cries for more
money, perhaps nothing is heard so often as arguments by educators
that students who do not learn are to blame. It is alleged they
simply don't try, their home conditions are the cause of failure or
they can't learn regardless of what teachers or schools might do.
Anyone remotely resembling a normal person is able to learn French,
or math, or whatever. On the other hand, there is a too long list of
teachers who are unable to teach.
That teachers are generally the problem, not students, is indicated
by the thousands of schools - public, private, secular, religious -
where disadvantaged students consistently learn.
|
|
06/07/2007 11:40:22 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
|
Data suggest states satisfy No Child law by expecting less of students
|
|
06/06/2007 11:42:28 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Homeschool regulation: The revenge of the failures
In their never-ending effort to "help"
homeschoolers, public school bureaucrats periodically try to
increase homeschooling regulations. This makes K-12 education
perhaps a unique endeavor: it's a field in which the failures
regularly, and astonishingly, insist that they should be able to
regulate the successful.
Never mind that homeschoolers consistently
outperform children institutionalized in government schools or that
the longer a child is institutionalized in a government school the
worse he does in relation to homeschooled children. Never mind,
also, that international surveys of academic performance show that
in the course of 12 years government schools manage to turn
perfectly capable children into world-class dullards. No, the same
education bureaucrats who consume an annual cash flow of roughly
$600 billion to achieve previously unknown levels of semi-literacy
and illiteracy among otherwise normal American children feel
compelled from time to time to abandon their diligent pursuit of
intellectual mediocrity to offer proposals for regulating homeschool
parents.
|
|
06/05/2007 12:51:50 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Alternative Teacher Certification
During the past 15 years, most states have
created alternate pathways to K-12 teaching that do not oblige
would-be teachers to have an undergraduate degree in education.
Approximately one-third of new teachers each year in U.S. public
schools now come with degrees and often, successful careers in
fields other than education.
The question is whether a would-be career-switcher ought
to have to take 24 college credit hours or more of professional
education courses in order for high school students to benefit
from his or her deep knowledge of a subject.
Delia Stafford-Johnson, a pioneer in alternative teacher
certification and president of the National Center for
Alternative Teacher Certification Information, believes getting
high-caliber teachers into classrooms is about more than
accumulating education credits in universities. She said it's
also about more than simply knowing the subject matter.
"Content and pedagogy are very important,"
Stafford-Johnson said. "However, if the novice can't relate to
children, it does not matter how much content the individual
brings."
|
|
06/04/2007 2:27:38 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Will
vouchers cause segregation or erase it?
Private school vouchers are often touted as a
way to level the educational playing field for less-affluent
families, particularly minorities living in poverty.
The fear about voucher programs leading to segregated schools
exists because it's happened before. The first state-sponsored
voucher programs arose in Southern states as a way to help white
families avoid sending their children to integrated schools. The
schools were dubbed "segregation academies" and popped up throughout
the South.
Eventually, courts ruled those scholarship programs illegal,
although many white students continued to avoid enrolling in public
schools and those who did often moved to predominantly white
districts. Those familiar with the history of segregated schools say
current voucher debates bring up painful memories for many, said
Marcia Synnott, a University of South Carolina history professor who
is an expert on the history of education in the South.
|
|
06/03/2007 10:16:41 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Analysis shows TAKS cheating rampant
- State says it's addressed the problem, but
News uncovers more than 50,000 cases
Tens of thousands of
students cheat on the TAKS test every year, including thousands on
the high-stakes graduation test, according to an in-depth data
analysis by The Dallas Morning News.
The analysis
– among the first of its kind on this scale – found cases where 30,
50 or even 90 percent of students had suspicious answer patterns
that researchers say indicate collusion, either between students or
with school staff. Perpetrators go almost entirely undetected and
unpunished by state officials.
|
|
06/02/2007 9:06:14 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
A Powerful
Look at the overall value of Reading
More American children
suffer long-term life-harm from issues related to reading than from
parental abuse,
accidents, and all other childhood diseases and disorders
combined. In
purely economic terms, reading related difficulties
cost our nation more than the war on terrorism, crime, and drugs
combined.
|
|
06/01/2007 1:26:02 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
U.S. Data Show Rapid Minority Growth in School Rolls
Driven mainly by an extraordinary influx of
Hispanics, the nation’s population of minority students has surged
to 42 percent of public school enrollment, up from 22 percent three
decades ago, according to an annual report issued yesterday by the
government.
The report also found that many high school students were
spending more time on homework than did students two decades
earlier. In 1980, 7 percent of 10th graders reported spending 10
hours a week or more on homework, but by 2002 that number had risen
to 37 percent, more than a fivefold increase. The number of boys who
reported spending 10 hours or more increased to 33 percent from 6
percent. For girls, the number jumped to 41 percent from 8 percent.
In 2002, 19 percent of girls, and 26
percent of boys, reported spending three
hours or less a week on homework.
|
|
05/31/2007 1:05:13 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
"No Child Left Behind": State Tests Vary
As much as I've heard and read about "No Child
Left Behind" the education bill President Bush signed into law five
years ago, I had no idea that every state uses a different test and
standard to determine whether its schools are making the required
progress under the law.
It is an issue, we learned, that is debated sharply in education
circles — with some states accusing others of lowering the bar by
using easier tests and lower standards to make their schools look
more successful.
Why would they do this? Well, the stakes couldn't be higher. A
school that is identified as not meeting NCLB targets — the
requirement is 100 percent proficiency in reading and math by 2014 —
could face sanctions or ultimately be shut down.
|
|
05/30/2007 2:47:40 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
US school
students think they are great at Math, but 'taint true
PARIS: School students in the United
States think they are just great at mathematics: but by the age of
14 they are two years behind the level in other industrialized
countries and overall come 24th in a class of 29.
The causes are perplexing. But a central factor that has to be
corrected is a climate of low school standards, low expectations and
not enough exams.
So says the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in
a survey on Tuesday of underlying policies and trends in the US
economy, against a background of recent warnings that emerging
countries such as China and India, are producing more engineers than
the United States.
The OECD stressed that the higher education system is still a world
leader and that overall spending on education is high. But it is
damning in its analysis of school standards.
“A country’s ability to compete in an ever more integrated economy
depends crucially on a highly educated workforce. However ... the
United States has lost its leading position. Test scores at the
compulsory level are at or below the OECD average and lag those in
many other major economies.”
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05/29/2007 1:20:46 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
On Reading, Charters
Outperform other Public Schools
The most recent round of reading tests show
students attending charter schools in the city outperforming other
public schools on reading tests.
Sixty-one percent of charter school students in the city who
took the test met state standards, compared to 51% of students
citywide. Charters' performance also seems to be improving at a
brisker pace, with the number of students meeting standards rising
five points from 56% last year. City schools overall reported a gain
of one-tenth of one percentage point.
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05/28/2007 3:03:09 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Students can't pass the ACT test even if they get
good grades in dumbed down core courses
Using research on the
college success of students who took the ACT
college entrance test, and comparing their test
scores to their high school records, ACT
researchers found that many core courses were
not carefully constructed or monitored and that
students often received good grades in the core
courses even if they didn't learn much.
State requirements also leave something to
be desired, the report said. More than half of
states do not require students to take specific
core courses in math or science to graduate.
Many students pick up diplomas having taken
"business arithmetic" rather than geometry or
"concepts of physics" rather than a physics
course with labs and tough exams.
Taking two years of algebra instead of
algebra and geometry and taking chemistry in
addition to biology significantly raised the
likelihood that a student would score high on
the ACT college readiness scale.
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05/27/2007 4:35:22 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Teacher Attrition Rate Higher at Charter Schools Than Traditional
Public Schools - More than twice as likely as those in regular
schools to leave after one year, research finds.
TEMPE, Ariz and BOULDER, Colo. -- As many
as 40 percent of newer charter school teachers end up leaving
for other jobs, a new study concludes.
The report, "Teacher Attrition in Charter Schools," by Gary
Miron and Brooks Applegate, of the Western Michigan University
Evaluation Center, was released by the Education Policy Research
Unit at Arizona State University and by the Education and the
Public Interest Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Attrition rates fluctuate from year to year and state to state,
but typically as many as one in five or one in four charter
school teachers leave each year—approximately double the typical
public school attrition rate, which is around 11 percent. In
addition to being younger and less experienced, the researchers
found that teachers who quit charter schools were more likely to
be uncertified. Teachers with higher levels of formal education
were more likely to stay.
Attrition among inexperienced and younger teachers may be
particularly critical for charter schools, because the
percentage of charter-school teachers under 30 (37 percent) is
more than three times that of traditional public schools (11
percent).
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05/26/2007 1:52:12 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Is Ohio's Graduation Test fair?
The mother of Rashunda Smith, a senior at Aiken College &
Career High School in College Hill, said her daughter doesn't
deserve the bad news she received on May 15.
That's when Rashunda learned she won't be allowed to graduate
because she failed two sections of the graduation test again, even
though she passed all of Aiken's required courses with
average-to-good grades. Aiken College & Career High School is rated
in Academic Emergency on the state report card, the lowest of five
categories.
"She came a long way from being a D student," Tina Smith said.
"... She came to be a B student, getting on the honor roll. But she
didn't pass the OGT."
Rashunda's circumstance is disturbingly common, some school
officials and politicians said as graduations begin in Greater
Cincinnati.
The class of 2007 is the first group to be required to pass
the sophomore-level Ohio Graduation Test instead of the older Ninth
Grade Proficiency Test, and the beefed-up exam is taking its toll.
Statewide, about 7 percent of Ohio's seniors failed at least
one part of the five-part exam.
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05/25/2007 4:44:24 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
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05/24/2007 12:41:22 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Public Education, the last vestige of the Industrial Age?
The skills needed for a 21st century
marketplace are different and often more complex than we imagine.
Our education system was designed and organized around the
priorities of 19th century industrialists and investment bankers to
prepare our populace for factory work. It's design and general aims
have not changed since then. It is still a vehicle for developing
prescribed behaviors and a narrow set of skills. It does not, for
the most part, focus on building cognitive skills, or what we
commonly refer to as intelligence.
The end products of human capital-driven education are workplace
skills, and the willingness to participate in our economy—to be good
workers and enthusiastic consumers. This would be acceptable to most
of us if it didn't preclude developing the full powers of our
brains.
Are we trading in our brainpower for purchasing power? Taking the
'human capital' view, some may argue that over-education of the
underclass produces a set of problems that create dissatisfaction,
underemployment, and unrealistic expectations.
But, what about intelligence? How important is it? Do we need it to
participate in our own governance, to realize a true democracy? Do
we need it to improve our lives, to create high-functioning
relationships and communities? Is it not intelligence that enables
us to evolve from mere survival: defensive, aggressive, and coping
behavior--to transcendence: compassion, tolerance, individual and
social evolution? Our current system of schooling, by the nature of
its outmoded design, ignores these urgent human needs.
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05/23/2007 2:06:43 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
|
MOUNTING
PRESSURES FACING THE U.S. WORKFORCE AND THE INCREASING NEED FOR ADULT
EDUCATION AND LITERACY
At a time when economic competitiveness is
determined to a considerable extent by the education levels of a
nation’s workforce, the United States is at serious risk of losing
its edge in this realm. While the U.S. still has the best-educated
workforce in the world, the advantage arises because of the superior
education attainment levels of the generation that is approaching
the age of retirement. Those entering the workforce have not
attained the same level of education as their counterparts in
numerous other counties (slides 1 and 3). As other countries show
consistent decade-to-decade progress in enhancing the education
levels of their adult populations, the U.S. has been stuck at
essentially the same level for 30 years (slides 2 & 4). Unless the
U.S. finds ways to improve its performance in this arena, it will
fall farther behind a longer list of competitor countries.
This required improvement will not come easily.
The demographic profile of those who will be entering the workforce
in the coming decades is very different from that of their
predecessors; there will be decreases in the numbers of whites and
increases in the numbers of minorities, especially Latinos (slide
8). These growing parts of the population are exactly the ones that
have been least likely to achieve high levels of education
attainment. They are much less likely to graduate from high
school—and if they do, they are less likely to attend college and to
successfully complete a program of study if they do enroll (slide
9). As a result, they represent a substantially less well-educated
component of those who are entering the workforce and who will
remain in the workforce for many years to come.
It would be a serious mistake to treat the
nation’s dilemma as strictly a minority issue. The nation’s schools
and colleges are failing with far too many whites—especially white
males—as well. The education pipeline is leaking seriously at every
point:
• Too few complete high school.
• Too few high school graduates and GED
completers are going to college.
• Too few college entrants are getting degrees.
The levels of education attainment have been
sustained at a basically constant level for such a long period of
time that returning to a position of being the best-educated nation
in the world will take an extraordinary effort at this juncture.
Even if:
• students in all states graduate from high
school at the rate of the best-performing state,
• high school graduates in all states enter
college at the rate of the best-performing state,
• these students graduate from college at the
rate of the best-performing state, and
• educated immigrants continue to enter the
country at the levels of the recent past, the U.S. will likely be
unable to regain its place of primacy by 2025 if it relies solely on
strategies focused on traditional-age students (slide 43). Attention
will necessarily have to be directed at enhancing the education
attainment levels of adults who have fallen into the cracks of the
education system somewhere along the way.
The low-hanging fruit are those individuals who
started, but did not complete, a college education. There are
32,266,000 adults age 25-64 who fall into this category. The larger,
and more difficult, population is a focus of the National Commission
on Adult Literacy. These include almost one-quarter of the
population age 18-64, as follows:
Have completed high school but have limited
English ability:
8,340,000
Have completed high school but living in families
earning less than a living wage: 14,494,000
Have not completed high school:
19,424,000
Total:
42,358,000
The nature of the problem varies considerably
from state to state; in some, English language skills is a major
problem. In others, it is high school graduates who have
insufficient skills to obtain and hold a living wage job (slide 24).
But it is a problem in all states. The vast majority of prison
populations have no more than a high school education (slide 27).
Further, the lower the levels of education attainment, the less
likely that an individual will be participating in the workforce.
Nationally, only 56.8% of adults with less than a high school
education are gainfully employed (versus 84.6% of those with a
baccalaureate education). It is true that individuals with less
education have jobs that pay lower wages. More important, it is also
true that a great many will have no job at all. Unfortunately, the
mechanisms now in place to deal with the needs of undereducated
adults are not getting the job done. Adult education programs are
serving but a very small portion of the target populations (slides
29-31), and the number of GEDs awarded annually is but a small
fraction of those lacking a high school education. To make matters
worse, programs originally designed for undereducated adults are
increasingly being filled with out-of-school youth—in 2005 fully a
third of the GEDs were awarded to individuals 18 and under (slide
35). Over the past 15 years the trend has been that more degrees
(and resources) are going to younger individuals and fewer to those
25 and older (slide 36). The tools intended to address the learning
needs of adults are increasingly being applied to individuals who
recently dropped (or were pushed) out of the nation’s high schools.
The challenge is clear; the country must
successfully reengage adults who have too little education
(knowledge and skills) to hold living wage jobs. Failure puts the
nation at competitive risk. Rising to the challenge will require
developing new strategies and new tools. The old ones have proven to
be insufficient to the task.
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05/22/2007 4:10:35 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
High court rules in favor of special-ed parents
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday
strengthened the rights of the millions of parents who have children
with disabilities, ruling they may go to court on their own to fight
a school district's choice of a special education program.
The unanimous decision opens a door that had been closed to these
parents in many parts of the nation, where judges had ruled that
they could not go to court unless they hired a lawyer to represent
them.
But as the parents of an Ohio child with autism said in their appeal
to the high court, private lawyers were "often too expensive for the
average 'unrich' American." The justices said a private lawyer was
not required because the federal law that gave children with
disabilities a right to a "free appropriate public education" also
gave their parents a right to fight for them in court.
"We conclude the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act grants
parents independent, enforceable rights," said Justice Anthony M.
Kennedy.
He noted the law empowered parents at each step of the process in
deciding on the proper education program for their child.
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05/21/2007 6:58:57 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
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05/20/2007 9:32:47 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
A growing
number of superintendents,
district testing experts and
others are calling for an
independent review of the
Florida Comprehensive
Assessment Test after
third-grade reading scores,
released two weeks ago,
showed the first decline in
the test's history.
Nearly every school
district in the state
watched scores fall after
record improvement in 2006,
shocking both state and
district officials.
If the scores stand, in Palm Beach County
alone, 2,400 students could be held back from
fourth grade.
But if a mistake is found, it could call
into question the state's entire accountability
program, including school grades, reward money
and teachers' bonuses - all tied to FCAT scores.
"I think an independent audit would be a
good idea," said Wayne Blanton, executive
director of the Florida School Boards
Association. "I've been in the business long
enough to know that if (60 districts) out of 67
go down, that's not a valid test."
State officials say they are researching
any factor that could have played into falling
scores, from more difficult test questions this
year to changes in the student population.
More test scores released last week only
added to the confusion.
When 2007 reading scores took an
unexpected tumble earlier this month, Department
of Education officials declared last year's
third graders an aberration, a group of
unusually high performers.
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05/19/2007 4:57:29 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Legal
tussle over vouchers
While lawsuits
loom over the state Board of Education regarding the implementation
of vouchers, or lack thereof, officials are concerned about who will
defend the board if the issue heads to the courts, since the board's
actions are in conflict with the opinion of Utah's attorney general.
It could mean getting outside counsel.
Voucher proponents are up in arms about the state board's
delay and refusal to implement a voucher program that they expected
to be up and running as of Tuesday.
The program would provide Utah families with a tuition voucher
ranging from $500 to $3,000 per student attending a private school,
based on the parents' income.
But those interested in such help are going to have to wait
indefinitely, since the board has yet to draft rules for the bill
that voucher supporters believe should be implemented now.
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05/18/2007 7:52:36 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
College is
an expensive way of taking an IQ test.
The higher education industry is becoming a racket: Get a
degree or be condemned to life of working for lower wages, and a
degree can cost well over $100,000. . . . In the last three decades
the percentage of jobs requiring at least some college has doubled,
which means that employers are going along with the college racket.
A résumé without a college degree is never going to get past the
computer programs that screen applications.
Most professional jobs require a basic intellectual aptitude.
What has changed since the 1970s is that the court has developed a
body of law that prevents employers from directly screening for such
aptitude.
This became known as the "disparate impact" test, and it
applies only in employment law. Colleges and universities remain
free to use aptitude tests, and lean heavily on exams such as the
SAT in deciding whom to admit. For a student, obtaining a college
degree is a very expensive way of showing that he has, in effect,
passed an IQ test.
But why are employers able to get away with requiring a degree
without running afoul of the law? Because colleges and universities
go out of their way to discriminate in favor of minorities. Thus the
higher-education industry and corporate employers have formed a
symbiotic relationship in which the colleges profits by acting as
business' gatekeeper and as a shield against civil-rights lawsuits.
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05/17/2007 2:55:40 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Black boys' culture works against school, study says
The achievement gap
separating black boys from just about everyone
else springs from a powerful, anti-education
culture rising in the black community, a local
black think tank argues in a new report.
Parents who undervalue education, and a
mass media that peppers youth with the quick,
shallow rewards of hip-hop lifestyle, are
steering alarming numbers of boys down a
dead-end path, PolicyBridge contends.
The report calls for public recognition of
a phenomenon crippling the black community and
the civic will to fight it. It's to be released
today via mailings to civic leaders and on the
group's Web site, www.policy-bridge.org.
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05/16/2007 5:58:21 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Interview with Senator Lamar Alexander on the America COMPETES (Creating
Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology,
Education, and Science) Act
1. Senator
Alexander, you are the only U.S. Senator who has also been U.S.
Secretary of Education. Has being in the Senate changed your
beliefs about the federal role in education from when you were
Secretary?No! I've
always been a skeptic about the federal role in education. I've
been around so long that I've taken about every possible
position, which means I've learned as I've gone. Generally
speaking, I still believe that most of what can be done to
improve schools has to be done first at home and second in the
local school. There is a natural limit about what can be done
from Washington to improve the quality of education locally,
which is why I have always preferred the higher education model
to the K-12 model for federal involvement in education. In
higher education, we basically recognize the autonomy of
individual institutions and give the money to the students and
let it follow them to the institution of their choice. We give
billions of research dollars not to individual professors to
dish out but to competitive processes that are peer reviewed.
Having said that, the one thing I have learned in the last
four years is that No Child Left Behind despite its problems had
a real value, and that is putting a harsh spotlight on the
inadequate education that some children, mostly minority
children, were getting. That forced schools and citizens across
the country to pay more attention to that. Requiring states to
set their standards and to publish them has helped these
children. The question for us now is where to go in the next
five years.
4. It seems as if every decade or so there is a new
federal push to improve our K-12 public schools. First, we responded
to the Soviet Sputnik in 1958 by passing the National Defense
Education Act. Then there was the famous Nation at Risk study in
1983.In 1991, you worked with President George H.W. Bush and the
Nation's governors to formulate America 2000 with its five ambitious
national education goals. During the Clinton Administration we had
the School to Work Opportunities Act. In 2001 No Child Left Behind
came into being. In the aggregate, what have we learned about the
impact of these federal reform efforts on the quality of our
schools?
What I've learned is that sometimes they make a big
difference. I was just in a hearing with five Nobel Prize winners
from the United States. Almost all of them were beneficiaries of the
Sputnik era when we increased scholarships and grants for
researchers. They're home-grown talent. They didn't come from India
or China or some other country. On the other hand, most of our
efforts in K-12 have had at best mixed results. So what I've learned
is that the higher education model we use which involves autonomy,
competition, choice, innovation and marketplace is better than the
command and control model we use for K-12 where we fund dozens of
different programs and set standards. I know the two systems are
different, but they are not that much different. I think we can
learn a lot from the extensive federal involvement to help create
the best system of colleges and universities in the world; and how
different that model is from federal involvement in K-12.
5. When you were Secretary of Education, you used to
say that complacency is the Nation's chief educational problem.
You stated further that even in well-to-do suburbs, our high
school graduates could not compete with their peers in Western
Europe, Japan, and the emerging economic "tigers" of Asia.
Relative to when you were Secretary in 1992, how competitive are
today's schools?I think some of our
schools are among the best in the world. For example,
Maryville, the town where I grew up in Tennessee, had good
public schools when I went there and has it today. They have
high standards in every subject, high achievement scores, and
students who have high aspirations and go to good colleges and
universities. And Maryville is a middle income town. It's not a
town of rich people. I think our danger in America is one of
complacency, laziness and an attitude of taking for granted the
fact that our brainpower advantage since World War II has
created a situation where we create 30 percent of the world's
wealth every year for 5 percent of the people, which is the
percentage that live in the United States. We're overlooking the
fact that the Chinese, Indians, Europeans, and peoples
throughout the world have the same brains and have figured out
how to make this a much more competitive world. It may not be
Sputnik that mobilizes us but a decrease in our standard of
living that mobilizes us.
6. How does the America COMPETES (Creating
Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology,
Education, and Science) Act that you are co-sponsoring fit with
your long-term view of the direction of American education?
I'm delighted with the America COMPETES Act
which just passed the Senate 88 to 8 after two and a half years
of bi-partisan work. What was interesting about that was when we
asked the National Academy of Sciences to tell us exactly what
we need to do to keep our brainpower advantage and to put that
in priority order, they put K-12 first. They put it ahead of
funding early career researchers. They put it ahead of
increasing funding for the Department of Energy's Office of
Science and the National Science Foundation.What I like about it
is that in math and science and the critical foreign languages
it will inspire tens of thousands of people to come into
teaching and help us retrain teachers who are there now. And it
will hopefully inspire their students by using our national
laboratories and universities in summer institutes and training
programs to introduce them to the excitement of math and
science. I can't think of anything more exciting for a student
than to spend some time at Oak Ridge National Laboratory with a
Nobel Laureate like the kind of people I met today at the
hearing. So I like very much the recommendations of the National
Academy of Sciences, and I am delighted that the Senate has
enacted virtually all of their recommendations.
7. Study after study confirms the American
business community is fed up with our public schools and they
have been for a long time:
ü1
million kids drop out of school each year or roughly 5500 kids
every day
ü1/3
who begin 9th grade will never receive a high school
diploma or GED
üHalf
of our African-American and Hispanic kids never make it to the
10th grade.
üReading
scores among our 12th graders have deteriorated since
1992 despite getting higher grades and taking tougher courses.
ü Only
1/4 of today's 12th graders are proficient in math.
üHalf
of community college entrants and a quarter of 4-year college
entrants need remedial math or English.
üBusinesses
contend they cannot find enough entry-level workers with decent
basic skills and work habits.
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05/15/2007 2:29:44 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
U.S. Secretary of Education
Margaret Spellings today released the findings of
the Academic Competitiveness Council (ACC) and its
recommendations to integrate and coordinate federal
education programs in science, technology,
engineering and mathematics (STEM). The Deficit
Reduction Act, signed into law by President Bush in
February 2006, established the Academic
Competitiveness Council, led by Secretary Spellings,
to review all federal programs with a focus on math
and science education and to report its findings to
Congress.
"We must all work together to give students
the math and science skills they need to compete and
thrive in the global economy," Secretary Spellings
said. "Currently there are more than 100 programs
that focus on science, technology, engineering and
mathematics education spread across 13 agencies, yet
little is known about the impact of these programs
on student performance. That's why as Congress
considers competitiveness legislation I urge them to
review the ACC report and focus investments in
programs that demonstrate measurable effects on
student achievement or fill gaps in the large
portfolio of existing programs."
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05/14/2007 12:47:14 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
'No Child' law gets mixed marks from educators
Five years after the federal accountability law
No Child Left Behind changed the way schools operate nationwide,
several Iowa educators said good things eventually happened at
schools that were labeled because students fell short of goals laid
out in the law.
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05/13/2007 12:00:00 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
|
Jeffrey on assignment - no post today |
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05/12/2007 12:00:00 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
|
Jeffrey on assignment - no post today |
|
05/11/2007 8:38:30 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Portland schools’ low-income students thrive on
regimented learning, but affluent families seek more
flexibility
Portland Public Schools
students, especially low-income ones, are
spending more time with their heads buried in
books, learning to read in kindergarten,
deciphering math and cramming in still more with
evening homework.
Zeroing in on the basics has paid off:
Low-income elementary students are doing better
than ever. Who could argue with what it takes to
make that happen?
Parents, that's who.
Specifically, middle-income parents whose
children will enter kindergarten already
reading, thanks to stellar preschools and
evening story time. They look at the worksheets
and the phonics drills and wonder: How could my
child possibly enjoy this?
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05/10/2007 12:00:00 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
|
No post today - Jeffrey is on assignment |
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05/09/2007 2:21:41 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Union sues to stop year-round Indianapolis Public Schools classes
Teachers union members have filed a
complaint against Indianapolis Public Schools and asked a
state board to halt an IPS plan to put four schools on a
year-round schedule that would add 25 days to their
calendars.
IPS had told teachers that they would not be able to
use any sick or personal leave during those additional 25
days and did not announce the new school calendar until
April, after many teachers had made summer plans.
"If IPS is allowed to make all of these changes
without bargaining and discussion, teachers will have their
lives completely changed by being required to work 25
additional days which could interfere with child care
obligations, vacations, other jobs, and their current place
of employment," the complaint reads.
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05/08/2007 3:51:24 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
|
New Documentary "The Dropout
Chronicles" Examines Obstacles High School Students Face in
Graduating
Premieres May 9th at 8:30 PM
ET/PT on MTV2 with Sneak Peek on MTV May 9th at 2PM ET/PT "Be
the Voice" Winner to Join MTV President Christina Norman, First
Lady Laura Bush, Tim Russert and Nation's Foremost Authorities
on Dropout Crisis at "National Summit on America's Silent
Epidemic" May 9th in Washington, D.C.
In an effort to help change the course of America's dropout
crisis – which each year more than 1 million U.S. high school
students drop out.
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05/07/2007 11:53:16 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Officials' Silence Puts Parents 'at
Arm's Length'
Dawn
Mosisa said she found an
information void when she
tried to follow up on her
daughter's story about a
teacher who allegedly hit
another second-grader at
Maryvale Elementary School
in Rockville. Likewise,
scores of parents at
Lakewood Elementary School,
also in Rockville, said they
had a hard time finding out
why a teacher they
considered top-notch was
recommended for dismissal.
They also felt their input
was ignored.School
officials said they are
required to hold back
information because of
privacy laws, union
contracts and potential
lawsuits. Some acknowledged
that a more open policy
would help families handle
the repercussions of
incidents involving
teachers. But the officials
said there is little they
can do.
Schools nationwide are
calling on parents to get involved. The Maryland
State Board of Education endorsed a broad range
of family outreach initiatives in a 2005 report
that called public education "a shared
responsibility."
Yet some parents in Montgomery County and
elsewhere have discovered limits on the
get-involved policy when they ask questions
about individual teachers, whether those queries
are about alleged abuse of students or a
decision to fire a popular instructor.
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05/06/2007 10:42:10 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
College redesign: More bang for buck or bogus?
In some ways,
teaching college hasn't changed much since the Middle Ages. The
professor lectures, the students listen and take notes. Inevitably,
a few heads nod while others drift into daydream.
Jettisoning the massive lecture hall is the focus of a trend
called course redesign that's gaining ground in universities across
the nation, including at most of the Alamo Community Colleges
campuses.
In redesigned
courses, students sit at computers and work through online
textbooks, exercises or readings at their own pace. Class time is
saved for small-group discussion and activities, or traded in
altogether for time in laboratories, where tutors roam around
helping students.
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05/05/2007 12:00:00 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
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Jeffrey traveling - no post today |
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05/04/2007 4:56:27 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
A legal fight puts
the brakes on Utah's voucher program
It's doubtful but
not impossible that Utah will have a functioning school voucher
program by fall after the Utah Board of Education on Thursday opted
to seek legal counsel before adopting rules to set up the program.
Upset by the delay, voucher supporters expect a lawsuit.
''Anything's on the table considering that they're not abiding
by the law,'' said Leah Barker, a spokeswoman for Parents for Choice
in Education. "I hope this isn't another tactic to delay the
thousands of moms and dads who [want vouchers]."
The state's Parent Choice in Education Act, the broadest school
voucher program in the nation, is on hold pending a public vote
after voucher foes collected enough signatures to force a referendum
on the matter. Yet a second law, which amended the first, remains on
the books and could be applied to start the program, according to an
opinion from Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff.
That opinion, while not legally binding, could give the state
school board legal cover to move forward, Kristina Kindl, an
education specialist in the A.G.'s office, told the board's law and
policy committee.
Yet most board members were more comfortable missing a May 15
deadline than possibly overstepping their authority to fill gaps in
the second law, which lacks several key provisions from the first.
The board also decided to ask Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.
to request a repeal of the second law - commonly referred to by its
bill name, HB174 - until the public votes vouchers up or down.
"I'm not willing to fill those holes without [answers to the]
legal and ethical questions," said Debra Roberts, a board member
from Beaver. "All we're saying right now is, why are we going
through all this process if we can ask the Legislature to do the
honorable thing and pull back until the public votes."
The voucher law would provide $500 to $3,000 from Utah's general
fund to help parents of public school students pay for private
school tuition. To enact the law, the state school board must adopt
a policy rule outlining how staffers will implement and oversee the
voucher program.
A draft rule based on the original law was poised for final
passage Thursday. But with the original law on hold and facing a
public repeal, the rule has no foundation, said Jean Welch Hill, a
lawyer at the Utah Office of Education.
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05/03/2007 10:23:39 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test reading down
Hundreds more Palm Beach
County third-graders could be held back this
year, based on reading scores released Wednesday
showing a decline on the Florida Comprehensive
Assessment Test after four straight years of
improvement.In some schools, the
percentage of students failing the reading test
doubled.
Across the state, third-grade reading scores
dropped for the first time since the test was
administered in 2001. Scores improved in only
six of 67 school districts, prompting
head-scratching among everyone from classroom
teachers to the state commissioner of education.
State officials tried to deflect attention
from the one-year dip and focus on the long-term
improvement. They characterized the 2006 scores
as a "spike" and this year as a return to
normalcy.
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05/02/2007 2:17:22 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
A debate about the value of school suspensions
Some of Connecticut's most troubled public
schools suspended misbehaving students so often last year that more
than one-third of their students were thrown out at least once,
state figures show.
One elementary school in Bridgeport issued out-of-school suspensions
to 60 percent of its students - some of them several times.
Ordering children out of school is a longstanding and widely used
form of punishment across the U.S., but that could change soon in
Connecticut. Lawmakers are considering a bill that would permit
out-of-school suspensions only for students deemed too dangerous or
disruptive to be in school.
The bill, which passed unanimously in the House of Representatives a
week ago, would require schools to provide alternative in-school
suspension programs in most cases. The proposal is pending in the
Senate.
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05/01/2007 2:34:39 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
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Children 'damaged by exam factories'
Schools under the Labour
Government have been turned into "factories" that churn out
exam results but fail to educate children properly, according to a
leading Government adviser.
In a damning indictment of Tony Blair's school
reforms, Alan Smithers, the professor of education at Buckingham
University, says the Government has "done quite a lot of harm" to
children by subjecting them to repeated tests.
Addressing a conference today, he will say that
the Prime Minister has produced a generation of children regarded as
the most unhappy in the western world.
Under Mr. Blair, there has been a significant
increase in funding for schools, coupled with a year-on-year rise in
test scores for children aged 11, 14 and 16.
But Prof Smithers, an expert on school
standards, says there is mounting evidence that children's
self-esteem and long-term development is being undermined by the
target-driven culture in state schools. This move is driving rising
numbers to educate children in the private sector.
The comments come days after teachers said
five-year-olds were being prevented from playing in water and sand
trays at primary school because they were being drilled to pass
national tests.
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04/30/2007 3:19:54 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
They are
highly educated, have massive earning
potential and were brought up to believe
that sexual equality was their right.
But a new kind of post-feminist is
emerging that would have the
suffragettes turning in their graves.
The neo-conservative housewife has given
up her high-status job, grown out her
power bob and stays at home with the
children and the vacuum cleaner.
Of course there is nothing new
about women giving up careers to look
after children but these housewives — or
“home managers” as many prefer to be
called — are evangelical about home life
and want the world to know that life
without shoulder pads is much more
fulfilling than kicking butt in the
boardroom.
The American writer Danielle
Crittenden is a champion for this
reinvented breed of homemaker in her new
book amandabright@home. Crittenden’s
theories on modern motherhood have put
her at the top of the feminists’ hate
list.
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04/29/2007 8:06:39 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
HISD examines charter school success
It sounds like a simple formula to fix broken
public schools: Require students to spend more time in class. Ask
parents to sign contracts committing to be involved. Hire teachers
who believe every child is college material.
Popular charter schools such as the Knowledge Is Power Program
and YES Prep Public Schools follow such rules, and both have waiting
lists of students who want to attend.
With enrollment declining in the Houston Independent School
District, the impending expansion of successful charter schools here
raises questions about whether traditional districts could — or
should — play copycat.
But it would be difficult for traditional districts, which
have more students and more red tape, to make big changes. It also
would require schools to spend their money differently, on teacher
salaries instead of football, perhaps.
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04/28/2007 2:07:11 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
An Interview with Morten Flate Paulsen: Focusing on His Theory of
Cooperative Freedom in Online Education
The theory claims that adult students often
seek individual flexibility and freedom. At the same time, many need
or prefer group collaboration and social unity. These aims are
difficult to combine. There is a tension between the urge for
individual independence and the necessity to contribute in a
collective learning community. Thus, cooperative learning seeks to
develop virtual learning environments that allow students to have
optimal individual freedom within online learning communities. Some
of the pedagogical and administrative challenges with regard to
accommodating both individual freedom and cooperation are explained
in my 2003 article Theory of Cooperative Freedom
In 1992, Rosalie Wells described gating as a pacing technique
that denies students access to information before they have
completed all prerequisite assignments. The acronym COG –
Cooperative Gating – has evolved as a result of writing this paper.
It signals that students must complete a task to get access to a
cooperative resource. This could for example be used as a stimulus
for motivating students to answer in-text questions. They are
allowed to see what others have answered only if they provide an
answer others may read.
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04/27/2007 6:27:04 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Teachers leaving
profession in droves
...after six years in the trenches
[teaching] -- transferred from campus to campus, forbidden
from organizing field trips and ordered to teach math only
after lunch -- Goyne left the profession. Teachers stifled
by bureaucracy and blocked from making decisions in their
own classrooms are leaving teaching in droves, according to
a new study by Cal State University's Teacher Quality
Institute.
Nearly 22 percent of California teachers leave
teaching after four years, according to the Public Policy
Institute of California. With this type of exodus, the
Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning projects a
33,000-teacher shortage in California by 2015.
At high-poverty schools, one in 10 teachers leaves
each year, either for a different campus or a new occupation
entirely.
The 1,900
teachers surveyed by the institute said they left mainly
because of the endless amounts of paperwork, constant
interruptions and fruitless meetings that take time away
from actual instruction, said Ken Futernick, principal
author of the study and director of K-12 Studies at the
institute.
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04/26/2007 6:27:04 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Former Gov. Roy Romer will lead a $60
million, nonpartisan campaign to hurtle education to the top of
the presidential-election agenda, an unprecedented push for
major school reform on a federal scale.
Philanthropists Bill Gates and Eli Broad announced
Wednesday that they will fund "Ed in '08" - a force of "public
awareness and action" with "troops" in up to a dozen states and
an interactive website to mobilize the public.
The project, run like a presidential campaign for a single
issue, is an attempt to show voters that America's education
system is slipping in the global economy and to pressure
presidential candidates for solutions.
"We need to have fundamental overhaul," said Romer, who
was superintendent of Los Angeles schools for six years after
serving three terms as Colorado governor. "Our expectations are
too low. We want to make sure that education is elevated as the
No. 1 priority."
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04/24/2007 5:49:22 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
A Boom for D.C. Charter Schools
Demand for the District's
publicly funded, independently operated charter
schools is at a high -- enrollment has risen an
average of 13 percent annually since 2001. If
the trend continues, more students will attend
charter schools than traditional public schools
by 2014, according to a study last year by Fight
for Children, a nonprofit advocacy organization.
In a rapidly shifting educational
landscape, at least a dozen charter schools that
opened a few years ago in church basements or
vacant shops are pursuing state-of-the-art
campuses, a sign that the city's once-fledgling
charter movement is maturing.
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04/23/2007 2:07:48 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
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New-age math doesn't add up
It's called reform math, discovery math,
constructivist math, fuzzy math. I think of it as new-age math, and
believe it is one reason why last year nearly half the 10th-graders
in Washington public schools failed the mathematics portion of the
high-school graduation test. It is also one reason American kids do
so poorly when measured against kids from Europe and East Asia.
New-age math, which is used in most schools today (including
many private schools), came packaged with a garden basket of
fragrant thoughts. "It was hands-on," recalls Seattle math teacher
Martha McLaren. "Make math fun. Small groups. Kids learning to work
together, to 'appreciate the differences.'
One of the leading new-age series, TERC's
"Investigations," leads the sixth-grade student to scissor out parts
of a disk and paste them over other parts. The book tells the
student, he has discovered the number pi. The lesson does not
require the student to solve any problems with pi. It does not list
the formula c=2 pi r. Instead, it prances on to a lesson about how
to estimate the area of a baby's hand by counting squares on graph
paper.
The new-age math has several attributes. It tends to introduce
topics in a roundabout way that aims for a eureka moment. That is
the "discovery" part. It introduces many subjects early, focusing on
concepts rather than calculation. That is the "constructivist" part.
It sometimes wants the student to estimate an answer rather than
find the right one. That is the "fuzzy" part. It demands written
explanations of how an answer was arrived at, often in "math
journals." That is the part parents find most baffling.
New-age math uses games, colored blocks, dice, poker chips and
other manipulatives. It requires working in groups. If you let kids
struggle and come up with their own solutions, they'll learn it
better.
None of these things is necessarily bad. A good teacher may
use a game or lead the students to a eureka moment. But there are
drawbacks. With group work, McLaren says, there is a tendency for
"the majority to struggle and other students to show them the
answers."
The new-age math takes time. "They'll give you
one problem and ask you to find five ways to solve it," says Seattle
math teacher Linh-co Nguyen. "And that takes up a whole hour of
class time." The idea is that the student who works through five
ways will have it down solid. Maybe, but it might be better to learn
one good way.
Always, the new crowds out the old. What's getting crowded out
with new-age math is solving problems with paper and pencil. Kids
are taught to use calculators. The result, says McLaren, who
substitutes across the Seattle district: "In the seventh grade, you
can ask students what's 38 take away 3, and a lot of them have to
use a calculator for that — probably 30 percent in the average
class. Kids don't know basic addition and subtraction. They haven't
been taught long division."
Nguyen, who substitutes, has been in eighth-grade math classes
in Seattle where not one student would volunteer the equation for
the area of a rectangle. [Area=length X width]
Ted Nutting, who teaches calculus at Ballard High, says,
"Supposedly, reform math is heavier in concepts but weaker in
skills. But in my experience, kids are weaker in both." He says the
weakness is most noticeable in "B" and "C" students.
The official measure of math skills is the Washington
Assessment of Student Learning. The WASL is a new-age test, with
many questions being as much about explanations as answers. Some are
more of logic than math — making the WASL a better test for the
college-bound than the high-school grad expected to know basic
algebra and fractions. At the same time, Washington, D.C.,
consultant Michael Cohen, who has reviewed the WASL, says the actual
math in it is seventh-grade level.
Consider that. To graduate from high school, our state was
going to require kids to demonstrate knowledge of
seventh-grade math — and because of the way we teach them,
and the way we test them, half of them can't do it.
And after high school? At community colleges, half the
students take remedial math. At the University of Washington,
atmospheric-sciences professor Cliff Mass says, "I saw a profound
drop in math skills starting in the mid-'90s." New-age math, he
says, has created "a whole generation of students who can't do
fractions."
"I have students who want to do meteorology," he says. "They
can't do the math — and they have to give up their careers."
Some of the teachers quoted here — Mass, Nutting, Nguyen,
McLaren — are involved in Where's the Math? (www.wheresthemath.com),
a group that promotes international-standard math or, as math
teacher Marta Gray calls it, "Real math. We want
real math."
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04/22/2007 5:59:24 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Too many empty seats in classrooms
"I don't have an excuse for him not attending
school. I really don't."
It's a story frequently repeated in Marion County schools. A
Star Editorial Board analysis found that about 13 percent of
students in the county's public schools -- roughly 16,000
children -- recorded 10 or more days of unexcused absences in
the 2005-06 school year.
The high absentee rate is occurring amid an environment of
intense accountability for teachers and administrators. Teachers
can lose their jobs and even entire schools can be shut down if
standards aren't met. But the frequency with which students miss
school begs a couple of questions: Can children learn if they
aren't in the classroom? And should educators be held
responsible for ensuring that students are in school, a job that
primarily is parents' responsibility?
"Truancy is a symptom of a problem, not the problem itself,"
says Gaylon Nettles, the state Department of Education's chief
attendance officer. "There is some reason why this kid didn't go
to school."
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04/21/2007 10:41:41 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
LAUSD
report card: All F's
Los Angeles Unified is disorganized, lacks
financial controls and suffers from a "pervasive" lack of
accountability, says a highly anticipated management audit of the
nation's second-largest school district.
The $350,000 report, commissioned by Superintendent David
Brewer III shortly after he was hired last fall, lays out a scathing
litany of organizational, financial and administrative shortcomings
in the 707,000-student district.
"The lack of accountability is pervasive throughout the
organization at all levels," says the report compiled by Evergreen
Solutions of Tallahassee, Fla. "The current culture in LAUSD is one
typified by not responding to priorities and deadlines, and there is
no sense of urgency among managers."
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04/20/2007 11:12:44 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
THE COMMISSION ON NCLB LEFT AMERICA BEHIND
It just MUST be that the recent report by the
Commission on NCLB was written by Secretary of Education, Margaret
Spellings and her people. It is not possible that the 15
Commissioners, a group of reasonable people with reasonable amounts
of intelligence and who have not been living under a rock for the
past 5 years, could not detect some of the really serious problems
with NCLB. Even the staunchest supporters such as Checker Finn and
his Manhattan Institute have given up on it, realizing that it is a
total failure.
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04/19/2007 5:28:21 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Reading First Paying Off, Education Dept. Says
Students
in the Bush administration's
embattled $1 billion-a-year
reading program have
improved an average of about
15 percent on tests
measuring fluency over the
past five years, according
to an analysis of data by
the Education Department.
The Reading First
program, a central part of
the No Child Left Behind
law, has been criticized by
congressional Democrats who
say it has been riddled with
conflicts of interests and
mismanagement. The House
education committee is
holding an oversight hearing
on the matter Friday.
The data, scheduled to be released today,
indicate that students have benefited from the
program, which provides grants to improve
reading in kindergarten through third grade.
"That's the irony," said John F. Jennings,
president of the Center on Education Policy.
"The program was poorly -- even unethically --
administered at the federal level, yet it seems
to be having a positive effect in schools."
A department official said the data show
that the number of students in Reading First
programs who were proficient on fluency tests
increased on average over the past five years by
16 percent for first-graders, 14 percent for
second-graders and 15 percent for third-graders.
On comprehension tests, it increased 15 percent
for first-graders, 6 percent for second-graders
and 12 percent for third-graders. The official
said the analysis is based on results from 16
states that have the most complete data.
"The results show that Reading First is an
extremely effective program that is helping our
nation's neediest students get the skills they
need to read," said Amanda Farris, a deputy
assistant education secretary who oversees the
program.
Critics said the
results were not so impressive, considering how
much money has been spent on the program. They
said the test scores are meaningless because
they are not compared with the performance of
other students, who nationwide are doing better
in reading.
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04/18/2007 11:47:25 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Rod Paige Warns of a 'Death
Grip' by Unions
President Bush's
first-term education secretary,
Rod Paige, is sitting in his office on the 75th floor of the
Empire State Building, the leather of his black cowboy boots
creaking beneath the cuffs of his pinstriped suit, and talking about
the "death grip," the "stranglehold," that teachers' unions have on
public education in America.
His new book is titled "The War Against Hope: How Teachers'
Unions Hurt Children, Hinder Teachers, and Endanger Public
Education." The unions, he writes, are "arrogant" and "destructive."
They defend incompetent teachers and oppose merit pay for teachers
who excel. "No special interest is more destructive than the
teachers' unions, as they oppose nearly every meaningful reform," he
writes.
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04/17/2007 2:27:41 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Persistence pays on high school exit exam
At first they didn't succeed, so they tried,
tried again.
Of about 40,000 students who failed the mandatory California High
School Exit Examination last year, about 45% have enrolled for a
fifth year of high school or an adult education program, according
to new figures from the California Department of Education. About
4,800 passed after taking the test once more.
The data also show that this year's class of graduating seniors has
a pass rate of 91.2%, more than 2 percentage points higher than the
class of 2006 at this point last year. Black students improved by
4.5 percentage points, more than any other subgroup. Overall
improvements were similar within the Los Angeles Unified School
District.
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04/16/2007 1:18:38 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Computers belong in
the classroom
There's been a deliberate effort to discredit
and eliminate technology in schools. Don Knezek, who heads the
International Society for Technology in Education, teaches
technology is our last best hope for keeping up as schools in China,
India and the Philippines crank out brilliant prodigies.
USC's programmers are developing questions to assess students'
learning styles and eagerness to improve their grasp of material.
They are tweaking the software to predict where the student's
acquisition of information will lead, tossing up new challenges at a
pace that the student will find motivating. They're watching
students use their work at several campuses in the district and
adapting accordingly.
Computers are already helping students learn and will become
increasingly important year by year. When a good teacher and good
technology get together, watch out.
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04/15/2007 12:33:53 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
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Western homeschoolers need political asylum from democracy - This
is a "must read." Germany is reuniting with its past as a "Police
State." Also be sure to jot down the "Home School Legal Defense
Association" (link below).
A growing crackdown on homeschool
families – most of whom are Christian – is the "edge of the night
that's coming" for believers, according to an expert in the field.
This is very scary!
Michael P. Farris, cofounder of the
Home
School Legal Defense Association, says his concern is not just
for Germany,
where the government is being especially intolerant, but other
democracies too.
"Germany is the only Western democracy taking this
incredibly hard-line approach, but there are growing clouds on a
number of national horizons," Farris told WND in an interview after
his recent travels to review the status of homeschooling.
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04/14/2007 12:00:00 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
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No post today |
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04/13/2007 5:23:54 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Follow the Money...this $85 billion is a just the "tip" of the Education
Treasure Chest.
U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has
launched reviews of the department's ethics and financial disclosure
policies in response to questions raised through far-ranging
investigations of the student loan industry, the agency said in a
statement last night.
The actions by Spellings are part of the fallout from an
expanding probe of the $85 billion-a-year student loan industry.
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04/12/2007 2:14:46 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Harvard Family Research Project - "Family Involvement in Early Childhood
Education"
Family involvement matters for young children's
cognitive and social development. But what do effective involvement
processes look like, and how do they occur? This research brief
summarizes the latest evidence based on effective involvement—that
is, the research studies that link family involvement in early
childhood to outcomes and programs that have been evaluated to show
what works.
The conceptual framework guiding this research review is
complementary learning. Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP)
believes that for children and youth to be successful from birth
through adolescence, there must be an array of learning supports
around them. These learning supports include families, early
childhood programs, schools, out-of-school time programs and
activities, higher education, health and social service agencies,
businesses, libraries, museums, and other community-based
institutions. HFRP calls this network of supports complementary
learning. Complementary learning is characterized by discrete
linkages that work together to encourage consistent learning and
developmental outcomes for children. These linkages are continuously
in place from birth through adolescence, but the composition and
functions of this network changes over time as children mature.2
"Family Involvement Makes a Difference" is a set of research
briefs that examines one set of complementary learning linkages:
family involvement in the home and school. As the first in the
series, this brief focuses on the linkages among the family, early
childhood education settings, and schools. Future papers will
examine family involvement in elementary school, middle school, and
high school settings. Taken together, these briefs make the case
that family involvement predicts children's academic achievement and
social development as they progress from early childhood programs
through K–12 schools and into higher education.
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04/11/2007 9:24:40 AM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Over 90 million children worldwide are denied
the opportunity to a quality, basic education. This year, Americans
will join up to remind our leaders that Education is a Human
Right.
Click on the above link to learn about the
Global Campaign for Education.
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04/10/2007 1:49:22 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
Santa Ana Unified School District administrator
has apologized to grade school teachers for a district policy that
called for falsifying class rosters in order to retain state funding
for small classes, and pledged that rosters would be corrected to
accurately reflect the number of students in each classroom,
according to teachers and a union official.
The probe was prompted by a Times report that the district falsified
documents and misused substitute teachers in an effort to retain the
$16 million in state funding it receives for keeping kindergarten
through third-grade classes at an average ratio of 20 students per
teacher.
Teachers at the grade schools said their classes were actually much
larger than the district was contending — accusations that, if
proved, could cost the district some of the state funds.
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04/09/2007 1:07:10 PM |
posted by: Jeffrey D. Proud |
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Tech workers, get ready
for offshoring - |