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Inaugural reflections: public education is testing ground for
national 'unity of purpose'
In a special post-inaugural message to NewsBlast readers, PEN's
president, Wendy D. Puriefoy writes, "Of the many challenges and
opportunities that President Obama highlighted in his historic and
inspiring inaugural speech, the summons to a national "unity of
purpose" resonates deeply within me as an advocate for high-quality
public education. America's public education system remains the
intersection where the promises of equality and freedom must be
ultimately tested and proved... At Public Education Network, we
believe that access to a high-quality public education is a civil
right. Securing this right for all children demands of our nation
and each citizen an inviolable resolve to directly address the
educational disparities and inequities that we have too long
suffered and tolerated -- which are an ongoing, yet preventable,
national tragedy. Only a democratically informed process of school
improvement will deliver the desired results of improved academic
achievement, provision of necessary resources, and the creation of
safe and healthy learning environments which our nation must hold
itself accountable to secure for all children."
Work hard. Be nice. Don't sort.
In an essay in The Washington Post, Jay Mathews weighs the
imperatives of teaching versus sorting, and asks which will win out
in this era of accountability. "Is it best to strain ourselves and
our children trying to raise everyone to a higher academic level,"
he asks, "or does it make more sense to prepare each child for a
life in which he or she will be comfortable?" The preferable
alternative is clear to Mathews, who argues that sorting out the
high achievers from the low, whom he characterizes as
"less-advanced" or "later-maturing," is tantamount to racism, since
these categories frequently organize themselves along racial and
socioeconomic lines. What is less clear to him is which impulse will
win out. His antidote to "sorting" or what used to be known as
"tracking" is the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), a network of 66
schools, mostly public charters, in 19 states and the District of
Columbia, which he profiles in his new book "Work Hard. Be Nice: How
Two Inspired Teachers Created the Most Promising Schools in
America."
An education system increasingly segregated
A new study finds that black and Latino students are more segregated
from white students than at any time since the Civil Rights
movement, and are more often educated at failing schools, reports
Reuters. The trends are "the result of a systematic neglect of civil
rights policy and related educational and community reforms for
decades," said Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project
at the University of California, which issued the findings. Orfield
gave several demographic explanations for the trend. As the
percentage of white students shrinks -- whites now make up 56
percent of the U.S. school population -- they are less integrated
with students who are nonwhite. In addition, increasing residential
segregation in the country dictates racial composition of schools
unless education authorities take specific measures to create and
maintain integration. According to Orfield, residential segregation
has intensified due to lax enforcement of the Fair Housing Act,
which forbids discrimination in housing and was set up to foster
equality in the housing market. The overall segregating trend was
strengthened due to the 2007 Supreme Court decision on voluntary
desegregation, which removed pressure on local authorities to foster
integration. The report calls on President Obama to address these
issues.
See the report at
http://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/deseg/reviving_the_goal_mlk_2009.pdf
Historic swearing-in spurs a national teach-in
The inauguration of President Barack Obama prompted a teachable
moment nationwide that outstripped previous ceremonies, The New York
Times reports. Television sets were pulled into classrooms, students
bused to huge viewing venues, and spiritual retreats interrupted,
all so that students could witness and participate in the historic
inauguration of the country's first African-American president. "We
are totally committed to reading, writing, science and history,"
said Linda Lane, deputy superintendent of instruction in Pittsburgh.
"But we also know that some history doesn't come out of a book. Some
history you get to be part of." Many school districts issued
teaching guides for the occasion, and schools in Montgomery County,
Md., had the day off. While schools in districts that voted heavily
for John McCain, such as those in Oklahoma, didn't plan to take
particular note of the event, enthusiasm was found in some
Republican strongholds. "Partisanship, that's over," said Martha
McIntosh, chairwoman of the social sciences department at Dana Hills
High School in Orange County, Calif., "All my little McCain-ites are
excited about the inauguration."
Recipe for disaster
In an essay in The Washington DC Examiner, Erica Jacobs considers
the rigidities of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which she
says has been applied like a baking recipe -- i.e. as if various
properties and ingredients, properly mixed, will produce a uniform
result of 100 percent proficiency each time. Since this approach has
led to widespread instances of good schools labeled underperforming
because of the struggles of one small subgroup of students, states
have argued they need more flexibility in applying the formulas for
adequate yearly progress. In its waning days, the Bush Department of
Education announced pilots in nine states that would permit
"Differentiated Accountability," which will allow states to "target
resources and interventions" in innovative ways to lowest-performing
schools. "NCLB now grants that there's more than one way to make a
cookie," Egan writes, "yet some of their stipulations, released last
week in the form of letters to all state governors, have the
mysterious sound of a recipe calling for 5/9 of a teaspoon of
vanilla or 3/10 of a cup of sugar." This is all for naught, in
Egan's opinion, since what the recipe promises -- 100 percent
proficiency by 2014 -- is an impossibility.
'Prom Night Mississippi'
Fifty-four years after Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka,
Kansas and 30 years after black students began attending its high
school, Charleston, Miss., had its first integrated prom. The event,
which took place last year and was fully funded by Charleston native
and actor Morgan Freeman, is the subject of a new documentary that
premiered at Sundance and was also funded by Mr. Freeman, The
Associated Press reports. "Prom Night Mississippi" chronicles the
prom from its initial pitch by Freeman to the town school board
through its acceptance by the students and its planning to the night
itself. Director Paul Saltzman interviewed students, parents, and
townspeople as the prom took shape, even as a separate, white-only
prom was planned by a small number of families (which Saltzman was
not allowed to film). The integrated prom cost Freeman $17,000 and
was "money very well spent," the actor said. "The kids are not going
to want to go backwards. They've got their toe in the water, and the
water's warm." Another integrated prom is planned for this year.
School climate: a critical component
An article in Education Leadership outlines ways that educators can
assess their school's climate, which a growing body of research has
confirmed is crucial to students' academic achievement and healthy
development. "Although No Child Left Behind is full of rhetoric
about the importance of character education and supportive learning
environments," the authors state, "it only requires accountability
systems to measure reading, math, physical violence, and (recently)
science scores. These are all meaningful indicators of education
quality, but education policymakers have become increasingly aware
that NCLB-type accountability is too narrowly focused." School
climate data, they argue, are not only complementary to academic
assessments, but measure and support learning. They report that
researchers and the National School Climate Council (2007) agree
that four major factors shape school climate: safety, relationships,
teaching and learning, and the institutional environment, and the
article lists the dimensions of these four major factors, excerpted
from the Center for Social and Emotional Education's (CSEE)
Comprehensive School Climate Inventory, for which they provide a
link, as well as additional resources.
See the report:
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=12063
Free tutoring yields negligible benefit, according to analyses
Free tutoring available to struggling students is having little
impact in Michigan or nationally, according to analyses by The
Detroit Free Press, the state of Michigan, and the Center for
Education Policy. "It's not being taken advantage of by students,
those who are taking advantage of it are not showing improvement in
test scores, and the providers are not being rigorously monitored,"
said Jack Jennings, president of the Center for Education Policy,
whose study assessed free tutoring programs across the country. The
results for Michigan were similar, but described as having neither a
negative nor a positive impact by Nancy McCrohan of Public Policy
Associates, the firm hired by the Michigan Department of Education
to conduct a student-by-student study of the Michigan tutoring
program. "It's very hard to impact a standardized test like MEAP
[Michigan's assessment test] with a short-term intervention," she
explained, adding that students typically receive only 20 to 40
hours of tutoring in a school year. The Free Press reviewed fifth-,
eighth- and ninth-grade MEAP results for 2005, 2006 and 2007 in
selected subjects for schools required to provide tutoring, and
found that these schools showed improvements that were less than the
statewide average.
For
reading problems, think globally but act locally
"While a deficiency in reading may look like an across-the-board
failure, it is often a local problem in just one or two of the
components that add up to the ability to read," write Alan Kazdin
and Carlo Rotella in Slate Magazine. "Reading, like golfing or
playing the guitar, is not one big global skill but a constellation
of many smaller ones." The authors narrow the culprit skills to
several overlapping components: vocabulary, comprehension,
phonological awareness, decoding, and fluency. Their recommendations
for beefing up these skills are the now commonplace instructions for
parents of young children: talk to your child, encourage speech-like
sounds, read to your child and have books around, and make reading a
peaceful, enjoyable exercise. A parent-child reading routine should
continue through elementary school, and should include asking the
child anticipatory and inferential questions. "Parents should take
heart in remembering that mundane low-pressure practice during games
and other activities with you can make an enormous difference," the
authors counsel. "Even a slightly increased sensitivity to breaking
down sounds or rhyming, even a slightly heightened familiarity with
books and motivation to engage with them, can provide a significant
boost at school."
Significant scientific learning takes place outside the classroom
A new report from the National Research Council stresses that
scientific learning undertaken in informal settings like museums or
through educational television can significantly contribute to
scientific understanding, according to Science Daily. "Learning is
broader than schooling, and informal science environments and
experiences play a crucial role," said Philip Bell, co-chair of the
committee that wrote the report, and associate professor of learning
sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle. "These
experiences can kick-start and sustain long-term interests that
involve sophisticated learning." The study notes that these types of
informal experiences can have a particular impact on groups that are
typically underrepresented in science, such as women and certain
minorities. For those who design scientific experiences in
non-academic settings such as museums, the report offers a number of
guidelines for engaging visitors, and also offers recommendations
for professional and volunteer staffs of institutions and programs
that interact with the public about science.
Also see
http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12190#toc
BRIEFLY NOTED
Assessments now count toward GPA in Missouri
Under a new system in Missouri, student scores on state assessment tests in certain subjects will comprise from 10 to 25 percent of a student's final grade.
Budget cuts will cripple districts in Mississippi
The Mississippi Education Superintendent says more than 20 school
districts won't be able to absorb the budget cuts Gov. Haley Barbour
is making for K-12 public education.
KIPP charters to unionize in NYC
Teachers at two Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) middle schools in
New York City have voted to unionize, according to The New York
Times. Teachers said the organizing drive came about because they
wanted a stronger voice on the job, because the demands on them were
so rigorous, and because they wanted to insure a fair discipline and
evaluation system.
Recovery School District widens
Louisiana's board of education has given approval to a state
takeover of 10 low-performing schools in East Baton Rouge and Caddo
parishes, expanding the state's Recovery School District beyond the
boundaries of New Orleans.
Cultivating minority youth in the sciences
The Saturday Science Academy at Charles Drew University of Medicine
and Science in South Los Angeles gives minority youth of all incomes
the opportunity to realize their dreams of becoming physicians,
scientists or engineers.
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"American
Association of School Librarians: Collaborative School Media Library
Award"
The AASL Collaborative School Library Media Award recognizes and
encourages collaboration between school library media specialists
and teachers in meeting goals through joint planning of a program,
unit, or event in support of the curriculum and using media center
resources. Maximum award: $2,500 to the recipient's school library
media center. Eligibility: school library media specialists and
teachers who have worked together to execute a project, event, or
program to further information literacy, independent learning, and
social responsibility using resources of the school library media
center. The library media specialist must be a personal member of
the AASL. Deadline: February 2, 2009.
"Humane
Society of the United States Youth: KIND Teacher Award"
The Humane Society Youth National KIND Teacher Award recognizes an
outstanding teacher who consistently incorporates humane and
environmental education into his or her curriculum. Maximum award:
recognition. Eligibility: teachers K-6. Deadline: February 15, 2009.
"BP:
A+ for Energy Grants"
BP's A+ for Energy program gives grants for implementing creative
and innovative educational programs to teach students about energy
use, alternative and sustainable energy types and sources, and
energy conservation. Maximum award: $10,000. Eligibility: teachers
K-12 in Alabama, California, Illinois, Indiana, New Mexico, Ohio,
South Carolina, and Texas. Deadline: March 9, 2009.
"U.S.
Dept. of Education: Teaching Ambassador Fellowship"
The U.S. Department of Education is accepting applications for the
2009-2010 Teaching Ambassador Fellowship program, which offers
highly motivated, innovative public school teachers the opportunity
to contribute their knowledge and experience to the national
dialogue on public education. Washington Fellows become full-time
federal employees at the U.S. Department of Education in Washington,
D.C., participating in policy discussions and working alongside
staff on education programs and strategies aimed at educational
improvement. Classroom Fellows remain in their local schools under
their regular teaching contracts and provide their experience and
perspectives to the Department through various assignments and
part-time projects. Maximum award: fellowship compensated at the
federal GS-12 level. Eligibility: state certified pre-K-12 public
school teachers of all subjects who have spent at least three years
in the classroom. Deadline: March 16, 2009.
"Nike:
Jordan Fundamentals"
The Jordan Fundamentals Grant Program recognizes outstanding
teaching and instructional creativity in public secondary schools
that serve economically disadvantaged students. Maximum award:
$10,000. Eligibility: public K-12 teachers in the U.S. Deadline:
April 15, 2009.
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