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        Proud Foundation Vision & Mission   

• Make Parent Driven Education America's Educational Model

• Use Educational Quality Assurance to maximize comprehension

• Use Technology to achieve outstanding learning

• Be the World's Best in Academics

Megasmart email: jeff@proud.com

Jeff's Education Blog

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.

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.

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!

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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!)

"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."

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.

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.

3-year brain lag found in ADHD kids - They can catch up to their peers, says a reassuring study.

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.

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.