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COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT: WHY COMMUNITIES NEED IT
MORE THAN EVER
Community engagement is probably easier to understand for what it
isn't. It isn't public relations, it isn't political advocacy. Both
of those areas are important and necessary. But their primary
purposes are, respectively, to inform people about something or to
enroll them in doing something. "The primary purpose of engagement
is for organizations, institutions, leaders and the community itself
to listen and learn, "declares David Moore, vice president of
Collaborative Communications, in a new publication from the
Foundation for Orange County (Fla.) Public Schools, a local
education fund. "The act of coming together to express aspirations,
concerns and opinions and to listen and learn about what others have
to say generates trust, connections, clarity and over time direction
for action. That is how I would start a definition of community
engagement." Most people agree that helping children succeed is
everyone's responsibility. The problem is if they aren't a parent or
a teacher, we don't really give them much to do to act on that
responsibility other than pay taxes and vote. If we want people to
be engaged, we have to create tangible opportunities and structures
for them to do things. This means organizations and institutions
have to work differently and it means we have to help citizens learn
new skills to act on the responsibility. We have spent a long time
telling people they didn't need to do anything else but vote and pay
taxes. And now that we want them back involved, we have to work at
it over time to make it work. The good thing is that when we stop
and listen and give people a chance to talk about their hopes and
dreams for their community and the kids in the community, they get
excited about the possibilities and want to act and they also want
to see institutions act to make things better.
DEATH & TAXES: A GUIDE TO HOW YOUR FEDERAL DOLLARS ARE SPENT
The 2008 federal discretionary budget request for the United States
is $1.075 trillion. At the link below, you can find a graph that
depicts the president’s budget request for 2008. It will be debated,
amended, and approved by Congress, ideally by October 1, to begin
the next year. The discretionary budget includes spending that must
be approved by Congress every year. It is paid for largely with your
federal income taxes and includes all departments within the federal
government. Unlike Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which
are paid for by separate taxes, the discretionary budget is a
uniquely revealing look at our national priorities. It fluctuates
yearly according to the wishes of the president, the power of the
Congress, and the will of the people. Overall, military/national
security funding represents $717 billion or 67 percent of the
President’s discretionary budget. Non-military/security spending is
$358 billion or 33 percent. Click the link below to examine specific
agency budgets, including the Department of Education.
DO CHARTER SCHOOL OUTPERFORM REGULAR SCHOOLS?
IT DEPENDS
Praised by some and scorned by others, charter schools have long
been hailed as the savior or spoiler of public education in America.
Now, a study by California researchers trying to learn at last which
kind of public school works better -- charter or traditional -- has
reached this Zen-like conclusion: It all depends. For elementary
schools, forget the charter. Go with traditional. For middle
schools, head to the charter. For high schools, well, it's a
toss-up. And for those who are dead-set on sending their children to
a charter, the ones managed by a company or a nonprofit organization
generally outperformed the ones run by local groups. With the
research still inconclusive and contradictory, more research is
needed, reports Nanette Asimov in the San Francisco Chronicle.
EFFORT TO REDUCE RACIAL ISOLATION IN SCHOOLS
FAILS
An agreement hailed four years ago as a way to end the overwhelming
racial isolation in Hartford, Conn.’s public schools has failed, a
new independent review of the landmark Sheff v. O'Neill school
desegregation case says. Trinity College researchers will issue a
report showing, in stark numbers, how little progress has been made
toward creating magnet schools that draw a mix of white and
non-white students, or toward getting the city's mostly black and
Hispanic student population into mostly white suburban schools. The
report shows that magnet schools, instead of drawing white suburban
children into the city, have been more popular among black and
Hispanic suburban families. It also found that gains under a program
allowing city children to enroll in suburban schools have ground to
a halt, reports Robert A. Frahm in the Hartford Courant.
IS RECESS A FRIVOLOUS WASTE OF TIME WITH NO
APPARENT OUTCOMES?
Elementary school recess has no teacher-designed objectives, and
many school districts throughout the country have abolished recess
in favor of more time for academic learning. The schoolyard is
notorious for being the place where children are most likely to
squabble over equipment, call each other hurtful names, make
disgusting faces, and mock, taunt, or bully younger children in
order to demonstrate their own superiority. These two major concerns
prompt the question, "Should recess remain a feature of a school’s
ongoing programming?" Opponents to recess are quick to answer "no."
However, many policymakers are unaware of the substantial physical
and social changes that recess can provide over time, as the child
is promoted to advanced grade levels. According to Rhonda Clements
in TC Record, recent research has indicated that physical play
increases the growth of the fundamental nervous centers of the
brain, thus boosting the child’s mental efficiency. When considering
the emotional and social benefits of recess, policymakers also
should remember that the schoolyard is a setting for increased group
interaction, language development, and emotional growth. This is
especially true when the child plays with peers of different ethnic
backgrounds, physical abilities, and age groups. Unlike the
classroom setting that organizes children according to the same
chronological age for learning, the schoolyard allows mixed age
groups to interact in a social context. Children can develop an
appreciation and tolerance for each other’s differences by sharing
cultural games, hand-clapping chants, and other ethnic
understandings. Small group games also can foster a child’s
self-control, perseverance, and feelings of loyalty. In addition,
recess serves as an outlet for releasing stress.
CLOSING THE TEACHER QUALITY GAP IN
PHILADELPHIA: NEW HOPE & OLD HURDLES
A new study of teacher staffing issues in the School District of
Philadelphia, by authors Elizabeth Useem, Robert Offenberg, and
Elizabeth Farley, outlines the degree to which the district has
succeeded in upgrading teachers' professional credentials,
recruiting and retaining them, and equitably distributing
experienced and credentialed teachers across all types of schools.
Since the passage of NCLB and the state's takeover of the district
in 2001, the district has succeeded in improving the certification
rates of its teachers, especially new teachers, and in drastically
cutting the number of emergency-certified teachers and classroom
vacancies. It also has improved new teacher retention and has
modernized and decentralized its hiring process. At the same time,
it has not been able to change the pattern of having the least
qualified teachers in schools serving the highest percentages of
poor and minority students nor its poor long-term rate of teacher
retention. The district is also challenged to speed up and simplify
its hiring and school placement process and to hire more minority
teachers.
VIRTUAL HIGH SCHOOLS AS LABORATORIES OF REFORM
Spreading rapidly, virtual schools are leading innovation in areas
that traditional schools have struggled for decades to improve. They
are personalizing student learning and extending it beyond the
traditional school day. They are creating new models for teaching --
with opportunities to easily observe, evaluate, and assist
instructors. And they are pioneering performance-based education
funding models. But this important trend in public education has
gone largely unnoticed in the cacophony of policy proposals and
solutions being put forth to improve the nation's public schools. In
a new Education Sector report, Bill Tucker shows how the practices
found in virtual schools are bringing about reforms that have long
eluded traditional public schools and prompting educators and
policymakers to question and change key components of our
traditional, classroom-based public system. Tucker spotlights some
of the most successful models of virtual schooling and provides
policy recommendations, for both school reformers and virtual school
leaders to help improve quality, spur innovation, and use virtual
schooling to strengthen current reform efforts.
STATES TAKING ACTION ON WEAK OVERSIGHT OF
CYBERSCHOOLS
It has been an active spring when it comes to state policymaking
targeting online schools, writes Erik Robelen in Education Week.
Colorado, Indiana, South Carolina, Pennsylvania and Kansas are all
developing measures to address insufficient oversight of online
schools. In Kansas, state officials are responding to a state report
in April that found that despite rigorous policies for overseeing
the state’s cyber schools, the state department of education’s
actual oversight of them has been "weak." A Colorado measure creates
a new division of online learning within the state department of
education to oversee virtual education. The division will certify
the authorizers of online programs that serve students across
district lines, with an eye towards ensuring quality. Also,
authorizers of online programs will now have to give the state
annual reports on each program they oversee, with details on how the
programs have met quality standards, data on students and teachers,
and other information. Some virtual school advocates said they
worried that the state might seek to overregulate virtual learning
and discourage its expansion. But they suggested that in the end,
state lawmakers’ reaction was measured.
CANCELED SCHOOL PLAY ABOUT IRAQ BRINGS OUT
REAL DRAMA
Sixteen Connecticut students, eight boys and eight girls, all
members of an advanced drama class, have found themselves in a
bewildering maelstrom of wartime controversy. What should have been
a simple hour-long spring play, like thousands of others during the
season of senioritis and proms, instead has become a media-driven
touchstone, not only of the rife divisions in the country but of the
free speech rights -- and intellectual abilities -- of high school
students as they explore the complexities and horrors of war. In
March, the principal of Wilton High, Timothy Canty, canceled the
production of the play after one student and her mother complained
that the script was unbalanced and disrespectful to those in Iraq.
Early versions of the script, based entirely on the words of real
soldiers in combat, included profane language, graphic descriptions
of violence, and a moral ambiguity that seemed to question the
justness of the war. Mr. Canty felt its performance would hurt
families that had lost loved ones or had family members serving
overseas. The cancellation, reports Harry Bruinius in the Christian
Science Monitor, only served to draw the attention of national
media, prominent playwrights, and a host of others concerned that a
student play would be censored for critiquing the war in Iraq. The
controversy has assured it a larger, broader audience than the
school stage would have: A number of professional theater companies
are hosting the student production, including The Public Theater in
Manhattan (June 15), one of the more renowned venues in New York.
EDUCATIONAL IMPROVEMENT STARTS AT HOME ... NOW
Once again, the air is filled with headlines and recriminations
about the quality of our schools and whether our students can
compete in the world. Is all this bemoaning about American education
justified? Studies are unclear about this, writes Dorothy Rich. What
is clear is that when it comes to education, there has been an
over-focus on the role of the school and insufficient focus on the
role of the family. It’s significant, as schools let out, to
remember what every family can do at home to enable children to
become stronger students and citizens. Taking nothing away from
hardworking teachers and besieged schools, the truth remains this:
The family, regardless of income and educational background, can use
opportunities, now, this summer, to make a truly positive impact on
children’s attitudes and behaviors that determine school success.
This is true for families even on the tightest time schedules. Click
below to learn a few of the steps that can make the biggest
difference for your children. In the light of what we are learning
about how many children today are feeling lonely, it is more
important than ever for families to use time off from school to help
children feel loved and be able to do better when schools come back
into session again.
PUBLIC SCHOOL ENDOWMENTS ON THE RISE
Kindergartners got a cooking club to help them learn about
nutrition, hygiene and teamwork. Students got a classroom
surround-sound system so they can clearly hear the teacher. High
school students got to build electric cars as a way to explore
physics concepts. Those projects were all paid for through public
school endowments, reports Jennifer Gonzalez in the Plain Dealer
(Cleveland). More commonly found at colleges, endowments are
becoming increasingly important in elementary and high schools as
operating budgets get squeezed. An endowment is a type of special
savings account for money that is donated or taken in through
fundraising events. The money is invested, and some of each year's
earnings is spent on selected projects while the principal remains
untouched. The money cannot be used to pay for regular expenses like
teacher salaries or construction projects. The Lorain, Ohio school
district, which has a $1.4 million endowment, awarded $63,500 in
grants to teachers and other employees this year. Over the past
three years, the number of applications has jumped from 39 to 64.
Dean Schnurr, the district's spokesman, also serves as the
endowment's executive director. "Many times we can't do the things
we want to do for students" because of budget restrictions, he said.
"The endowment fund provides an opportunity that otherwise wouldn't
be available to students."
INTERNET ACCESS IN U.S. PUBLIC SCHOOLS &
CLASSROOMS: 1994-2005
This report presents 11 years of data from 1994 to 2005 (no survey
was conducted in 2004) on Internet access in U.S. public schools by
school characteristics. It provides trend analysis on the percent of
public schools and instructional rooms with Internet access and on
the ratio of students to instructional computers with Internet
access. The report contains data on the types of Internet
connections, technologies and procedures used to prevent student
access to inappropriate material on the Internet, and the
availability of hand-held and laptop computers to students and
teachers. It also provides information on teacher professional
development on how to integrate the use of the Internet into the
curriculum, and the use of the Internet to provide opportunities and
information for teaching and learning.
MISUNDERSTOOD MINDS
For one in five students, learning is an exhausting and frustrating
struggle. Often mistakenly called "lazy" or "stupid" by their
teachers, classmates, and even their families, these children may be
suffering from debilitating learning problems. If not addressed, the
problems can have a devastating impact on the students' self-esteem
and future academic and social success. The PBS documentary
"Misunderstood Minds" shines a spotlight on this painful subject,
following the stories of five families as, together with experts,
they try to solve the mysteries of their children's learning
difficulties. Produced and directed by Michael Kirk, this 90-minute
special shows the children's problems in a new light, and serves as
a platform to open a nationwide dialogue on how best to manage
young, vulnerable, and misunderstood minds. Parents, teachers, and
students looking for the scientific explanations behind learning
differences and strategies to aid success in school can find both on
the companion website for Misunderstood Minds. The site includes
profiles of the students in the documentary, as well as sections on
Attention, Reading, Writing, and Mathematics. Interactive
activities, called Experience Firsthand, are designed to give site
visitors a sense of what it may be like for a student struggling
with a basic skill.
HIGH-QUALITY CHILD CARE FOR LOW-INCOME
CHILDREN OFFSETS RISK OF LATER DEPRESSION
Young adults from low-income families who were in full-time early
educational child care from infancy to age five reported fewer
symptoms of depression than their peers who were not in this type of
care, according to a new report by FPG researchers. The early
educational intervention also appears to have protected the children
to some extent against the negative effects of their home
environments. |
