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RURAL EDUCATION HEADLINES
North Carolina's severe teacher shortage will only get worse if it isn't
addressed, a new report says. The state loses more than 13 percent of
its 86,000 teachers each year to retirement, schools in other states or
other professions, according to the report by the N.C. Center for Public
Policy Research, a nonpartisan, nonprofit governmental-research
organization. In some districts, particularly poor, rural ones, the
annual turnover rate is more than 20 percent.
http://www.newsrecord.com/news/education/teacher_shortage_082404.htm
After their elementary school was closed as a cost-cutting measure,
Graysville, Ind.-area residents succeeded in opening a charter school.
Rural Community Academy has 90 students from full-day kindergarten
through sixth grade and uses a community-based curriculum, which meets
state standards but is more hands-on than the typical public school.
Although funded through a combination of
state support and local property tax dollars based on enrollment, it
does not receive public funding for capital projects, debt service, or
transportation and thus, must rely on fund-raising, grant-writing, and
penny pinching frugality to make ends meet.
http://www.tribstar.com/articles/2004/08/25/news/news01.txt
The
Gitga'at community of Hartley Bay is located 145 kilometers southeast of
Prince Rupert. The school there houses just 55 students from
kindergarten to Grade 12. Tiny and remote, with a close relationship
with the local Tsimshian band council, Hartley Bay is perfectly suited
for an experiment in a new style of teaching. Instead of taking notes
from a chalkboard, First Nations students at Hartley Bay learn from
their elders by visiting members of the community to learn the
traditional names and uses of plants.
http://www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=4486
Nearly four years ago, clergy from the three main churches in Condon
looked out at their congregations and saw despair. Farmers were going
under, businesses going bankrupt, and schools being closed. So they and
their County commissioners called a town meeting to gather ideas from
farmers and non-farmers alike. The solution: add value to commodity
crops by planting “custom” wheat. Whatever
the customer wants, local farmers will provide a wheat to meet the need.
www.oregonlive.com/business/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/business/109334872412430.xml
An
estimated 3,500 Arizona children are expected to log on to education's
newest trend of virtual schooling, as the state's cyberschools — offered
by both private companies and school districts — report increases in
enrollment this year over last school year. Children from Page to Globe
and the farthest corner of the Navajo Reservation are enrolling in the
long-distance schools.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0823cyber23.html
This past school year,
fifth-grader Daniel Kennedy Jr. was the only student at
Harney School's final term. The tiny
school's history offers a glimpse into the vanishing world of the
state's rural schoolhouses and their prairie communities.
http://www.teachermagazine.org/tmstory.cfm?slug=01range.h16
EVENTS, WORKSHOPS, & OPPORTUNITIES
McREL is
offering a new, year-long professional development program for school
leaders based on
Balanced Leadership, our in-depth
examination of effective leadership drawn from 30 years of research. The
series of three workshops (totaling seven days of professional development)
are paired with ongoing, online support to help participants learn from
research where to focus school improvement efforts and how to effectively
lead those efforts.
www.mcrel.org/fellows
The Wind
River Rural Systemic Initiative (WRRSI) and Texas Instruments (TI) are
sponsoring a T3 Regional Leadership Conference on the appropriate use of
technology in science, technology, engineering and mathematics education in
Jackson Hole, Wyo. on Oct. 13-15, 2004. The ERC at McREL is supporting the
participation of 20 teachers with the cost of their registration. Please
contact Earl Legleiter at McREL (elegleiter@mcrel.org,
303-632-5630) to apply.
The 2004
Annual NREA Convention will be in Indianapolis, Indiana, from October 19-22,
2004. This year’s theme is "Rural Schools: Crossroads to Our Future —
Charting a New Direction!" Be sure to visit the McREL exhibit booth at this
year’s convention.
www.nrea.net/2004NreaConvention.htm
McREL
and Cardinal Stritch University invite you to attend the inaugural
Conference on Leadership for the Advancement of Learning and Service, held
on Sept. 23-25 in Milwaukee. This conference crosses disciplines and
sectors, recognizing that effective leadership requires bridging boundaries.
It is designed to inform and support the development of leaders who are
value-centered, mindful, and poised to transform their organizations and
communities through learning and service.
Featured keynote presenters include Sarah Lightfoot Lawrence of Harvard
University, Richard Teerlink, retired chairman and CEO of Harley-Davidson,
Inc., and Sally Helgesen, author of “Thriving in 24/7.”
http://leadershipconference.stritch.edu/
NASA's
Genesis spacecraft will soon swing by Earth and jettison a capsule filled
with particles of the Sun that may ultimately tell us more about the genesis
of our solar system. On Sept. 8,
tune in to NASA TV
to watch as a helicopter snags the capsule out of mid-air over the Utah
desert. Download free McREL-created, standards-based
student learning activities that focus on the return of the Genesis
solar wind samples, helping students to understand: a) why sample return is
necessary for this mission, b) what will happen during the recovery process,
and c) how mission scientists and engineers dealt with the special
challenges faced in a mission to collect and return solar samples.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2004-207
McREL,
in partnership with Fort Hays
State
University, is interested in
your online professional development needs. We invite science teachers to
take this short survey to inform our future development efforts in the area
of online learning. To take the survey, please use Internet Explorer and go
to
http://www.comtracker.com/survey/form6.asp?sID=1342&rID=54468700840872
RESEARCH & REPORTS
13.
Starting teacher salaries discouraging prospects
Can higher starting salaries attract
undergraduate students to careers in K-12 teaching? If so, what salary
levels might be needed? To what extent do personality and work values
influence the salary level that would attract these students to
teaching? What other characteristics of the teaching profession reduce
its attractiveness to these students? New focus group research conducted
by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) finds that pay
level is a significant factor making teaching a less attractive career
option for college undergraduates, many of whom said they’d consider
teaching if it paid substantially more than their current occupational
choice.
http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v11n50/
A
new report from the Southeast Center
for Teacher Quality (SECTQ) titled
Unfulfilled Promise: Ensuring High Quality Teachers for Our Nation's
Students concludes that NCLB’s emphasis on subject-specific
knowledge has compelled southeastern states (Ala.,
Geo.,
N.C., and
Tenn.) to lower qualification
standards for teachers. SECTQ also reports that rural and urban schools
have difficulty finding and keeping teachers, because they cannot
compete with the higher salaries offered by suburban districts.
http://www.teachingquality.org/Unfulfilled_Promise.htm
High-speed, two-way broadband Internet access is coming to rural America with the successful launch of
a satellite from French Guiana. Sometime in 2005, fast,
continuous broadband service will become available to families,
telecommuters, small offices, and schools virtually everywhere in rural America. Visit the
Organizations Concerned about Rural Education (OCRE) Web site to learn
more:
http://www.ruralschools.org/
The
Learning First Alliance (LFA) has developed "A Practical Guide to
Promoting America's Public Schools," a new communications tool to help
educators and others interested in education promote the value of public
education in the United States.
The messages outlined in the guide are based on an analysis of public
opinion data conducted by LFA, a permanent partnership of 12 leading
U.S.-based education associations.
http://www.learningfirst.org/publications/pubschools/
A
new study from the W.K. Kellogg foundation comparing total per-person
federal spending in rural areas to total per-person federal spending in
metro areas during the period 1994-2001 concludes that during this
period, the federal government spent more than two times (and sometimes
up to five times) as much per capita on metropolitan community
development as it did on rural community development.
http://www.wkkf.org/Pubs/Federal_Spending_for_Rural_00376_03977.pdf
RESOURCES & INFORMATION
For
the 2005-06 school year, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM)
will award grants of up to $2,000 each to high school 9-12 mathematics
teachers who develop classroom materials or lessons that connect math to
other fields. Materials may be in the form of books, visual displays,
computer programs or displays, slide shows, videotapes, or other
appropriate medium. The focus of these materials should be on showing
the connectivity of mathematics to other fields or to the world around
us. Recipients must be members of NCTM, have three or more years of
mathematics teaching experience, and currently teach mathematics in
grades 9-12 at least 50 percent of the school day.
http://www.nctm.org/about/met/pappas.htm
The
National Aeronautics and Space Administration will train core educators
as a team to conduct interdisciplinary aerospace activities in school
districts. Activities included in the program are lectures,
demonstrations, and hands-on classroom activities than supplement
ongoing curriculum. All teachers of middle school students from rural
and urban communities are eligible to apply. Application deadline: None.
http://aesp.nasa.okstate.edu/URCEP/index.html
The
U.S. Department of Education is seeking exemplary school dropout
prevention programs for national recognition. Up to 10 public schools
and/or school districts nationwide that have made noteworthy progress in
reducing student dropout rates will be honored through the Department's
new National School Dropout Prevention Program Recognition Initiative.
Application deadline: 9/17/04.
www.ed.gov/programs/dropout/preventiondropout.html
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