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April 17, 2009 The long shadow of Columbine, 10 years later Though fewer than half of the country's 50 million public school students are old enough to have been in school on April 20, 1999, the effects of the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Col., are far-reaching, writes USA TODAY. The attacks spurred widespread introduction of in-school safety measures such as surveillance cameras, limited entrances and exits, and lock-down drills, all of which middle- and high-school students have come to accept as a way of life. As Cedric Drew, a seventh-grader in Roanoke, Va., observed, "You never know when somebody's going to come into school with a machine gun." Since Columbine was in a prosperous town with little violence, and because the attackers seemed clean-cut, not troublemakers, the killings brought new focus to the effects of bullying and school climate. "These are rage shootings," explains Harvard Medical School psychologist William Pollack, "kids suffering from depression, largely creating public suicides in school environments where they feel alienated." Across the nation, he says, beneath "that iceberg of shootings, is bullying, disconnection, and just cold, unconnected school climates of a certain sort, in which, if kids don't feel frightened, they feel turned off." Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-04-13-columbine-lessons_N.htm Related: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-04-13-columbine-myths_N.htm Additional resources: http://www.colorado.edu/cspv/safeschools/ One in 50 children homeless A new report from the National Center on Family Homelessness finds that one in every 50 American children is now homeless, approximately 1.5 million. "America's Youngest Outcasts: State Report Card on Child Homelessness" offers a comprehensive, state-by-state analysis of child homelessness, ranking the 50 states in terms of severity. "Children without homes are on the frontline of the nation's economic crisis," says Ellen L. Bassuk, president of the National Center on Family Homelessness and associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She added that as numbers of home foreclosures rise, child homelessness will rise correspondingly. According to the report, children experiencing homelessness have twice the rate of moderate-to-severe health conditions compared to middle-class children, and twice the incidence of emotional problems. Homeless children struggle in school, with an average of 16 percent lower proficiency in math and reading, and an estimated graduation rate below 25 percent overall. It's possible to end child homelessness within a decade, the report says, using dedicated funds from local, state, and federal governments, combined with reallocated dollars. Making homeless children a priority must come from the top, and "this is a perfect opportunity for President Obama to ensure that the Interagency Council on Homelessness expands its focus to include children and families," and coordinates its efforts with similar congressional activities. Read more: http://www.homelesschildrenamerica.org/ Incorporating 'executive control' into playtime for Pre-K In an article in The Wall Street Journal, Sue Shellenbarger describes the "Tools of the Mind" curriculum, which, along with other new teaching programs, is positively impacting behavior issues in preschool children. According to Shellenbarger, the rise in problem behaviors in small children has been variously attributed to: pressure on teachers to stress math and reading over emotional skills; family instability; a decline in playtime; heavy use of child care; and a rise in learning problems like attention-deficit disorder. These new programs give children more time for dramatic or pretend play, and build lessons in self-control into the school day. Playtimes incorporate training in "executive function," or the mental ability to control impulses and focus on new information. "It's the kind of play you and I engaged in during the summer, when you'd play the same thing for a month," says Deborah Leong, psychology professor at Metropolitan State College, Denver, and co-creator of the "Tools of the Mind" curriculum. Today, Leong points out, few parents open their doors in the summer to let children rove around the neighborhood. The Tools curriculum is in use in about 400 mainstream and Head Start classrooms in seven states, and 400 more teachers will be trained this year. Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123914405198998725.html Philly's district-run schools outperform privatized schools A new study from Johns Hopkins University has found that pupils at district-run schools in Philadelphia outpaced privatized peers on state exams, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. The report in the May issue of The American Journal of Education looked at test scores of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders at 88 city schools from 1997 through 2006. "By 2006, the achievement gap between the privatized group and the rest of the district was greater than it was before the intervention," states Vaughn Byrnes, author of the study. This jibes with earlier studies, and comes at a critical moment for Philadelphia's privatization experiment, largest of its kind in the country. Of the 18 school contracts due for renewal, 12 are managed by for-profit EdisonLearning. Jeanne Allen, school-choice advocate, says the study should be looked at in context -- outside managers took on the lowest-performing schools. Helen Gym, a founder of Parents United for Public Education, disagrees: "Philadelphia is probably the last major urban city that's experimenting with [privatization] -- it's on the tail end, not the cutting edge," she said. "We don't think these managers have given us the result they promised, despite millions of dollars and years and years of time." Read more: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/education/20090409_Study__District-run_Phila__schools_top_manager-run_ones.html Community organizing on education breeds comprehensive change in Oakland A six-year study by the Annenberg Institute documents how low-income communities of color have organized to improve their local schools. In the first of seven case studies, Annenberg's research team describes the success of Oakland (Calif.) Community Organizations (OCO) in building a district-wide movement that's created 48 small schools dedicated to student achievement. "Building a Districtwide Movement for Small Schools Reform" analyzes documents, surveys, interviews, and student performance measures. As a result of OCO's organizing efforts, it found, both teachers and principals in Oakland conclude that small schools give students more individualized academic supports. Both teachers and parents say school climate -- school safety in particular -- has improved, and say parent-teacher relationships, and (for teachers) shared faculty decision-making have been positively affected. In the view of the Annenberg's researchers, OCO's organizing gives important lessons on community- and educator-generated reform, and illustrates the challenges and opportunities associated with these reforms. Read more: http://www.annenberginstitute.org/pdf/Mott_Oakland_high.pdf Signals from the White House on NCLB Provisions for education funding in the stimulus bill may give "clues" as to the position of the Obama administration on the impending overhaul of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), according to The New York Times. To receive federal education aid, the bill dictates that governors must raise statewide standards to a new, tougher benchmark: High school graduates must succeed without remedial classes in college, the workplace, or the military. Governors must also ensure that the most effective teachers will be assigned equitably to all students in their states, rich and poor, and governors must commit to building statewide data systems to link teachers with student test scores. In theory, this last component will help administrators identify effective and ineffective teachers, but is unpopular with teacher unions, who have otherwise been generally supportive of the president's vision for reform of the country's schools. Currently, 6,000 of the nation's 95,000 schools are designated as needing corrective action or restructuring due to falling short of testing targets under the present terms of NCLB. Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/education/15educ.html?_r=1&ref=education An urgent need for national accounting A recent policy brief from the Alliance for Excellent Education calls for a national accounting of graduation rates, currently absent in American public education. "At a time when a delivery package can be tracked from one side of the country to the other," writes author Eric Richmond, "students continue to disappear from schools without anyone noticing." Richmond makes a strong call for overall transparency, with graduation rates made available to students, parents, policymakers, and other stakeholders. Graduation data must also affect adequate yearly progress. Accountability for student subgroups is important, so schools don't sacrifice some student outcomes for higher average test scores. The brief also recommends that federal policy set "a high, universal graduation goal, such as 90 percent of students graduating in four years, and an aggressive but attainable minimum growth target," rather than allow weak, state-proposed graduation goals, as is now the case. Minimum growth targets should obtain to all schools, not just higher-performing ones, and every state must have the capacity to calculate a four-year adjusted cohort rate by SY 2010–11. Accurate and transparent coding practices are critical for comparable implementation of graduation rates across states. The Department of Education must also ensure that schools don't improperly exclude students, or count as graduates students who don't meet national definitions. Read more: http://www.all4ed.org/files/ESC_FedPolicyGRA.pdf Getting at the underlying structure for better math comprehension New research from Vanderbilt University finds that students better internalize math when taught concepts over procedures, according to Science Daily. The findings give new insight as to effective math instruction, and add to the growing body of research that indicates students are better taught through conceptual instruction versus simple procedural direction. "With conceptual instruction, teachers explain a problem's underlying structure. That type of instruction enables kids to solve the problems without having been taught specific procedures, and also to understand more about how problems work," said Percival Matthews, co-author of the study and doctoral student at Vanderbilt. "When you just show them how to do the problem, they can solve it, but not necessarily understand what it's about. With conceptual instruction, they are able to come up with the procedure on their own." Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090410143809.htm See the report: http://sitemason.vanderbilt.edu/news/releases/2009/04/10/you-do-the-math-explaining-basic-concepts-behind-math-problems-improves-childrens-learning.77421 Born citizens, but still impoverished and fearing deportation A new report from the Pew Hispanic Center highlights a growing dilemma in the immigration debate, according to The Associated Press. Growing numbers of children of illegal immigrants are born in this country, and are nearly twice as likely to live in poverty as those with American-born parents. These children struggle and face uncertainty alongside parents who fear deportation, toil largely in low-wage jobs, and suffer layoffs in an ailing economy. Pew's analysis estimates that 11.9 million illegal immigrants were living in the United States as of March 2008 -- 5.4 percent of the U.S. work force. In 2003, 2.7 million children of illegal immigrants, or 63 percent, were born here. Children of illegal immigrants hold a delicate place in the United States. On the one hand, the Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that these children, citizens or not, were entitled to a public school education. On the other hand, immigrants and their families are among the poorest in the country, easily exploited by employers and subject to arrest at any time. Children who are U.S. citizens cannot petition for their parents to become legal U.S. residents until they are at least 21. Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/wire/sns-ap-illegal-immigration,1,5791776.story See the report: http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=107 BRIEFLY NOTED Golf and therapy dogs help sick kids Two cuddly canines help kids afflicted with all kinds of physical and emotional problems. http://tinyurl.com/cnp4ps Hungry children in Vermont prompt concern Alarmed by reports of hunger signs, Vermont's legislature has proposed a bill that automatically would enlist lower-income children for school lunches, and provide nutritious snacks and meals during after-school and summer programs. http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20090414/NEWS03/904140301/1004/NEWS03 This beat is his recital, he thinks it's very vital... Stanford biologist uses rap music as teaching aid. http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_12108869?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com Mean, green, school bus fleet The U.S. EPA has awarded nearly $2 million to the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality to support a clean-diesel project, which includes school buses. http://www.casperstartribune.com/articles/2009/04/10/news/wyoming/18ea282bd45b04b6872575930083a4f9.txt On yet another side of the spectrum, more cutbacks Across Connecticut, funding for gifted students is another casualty of the recession. http://www.courant.com/news/education/hc-gifted-education-cuts-0410.artapr10,0,7511596.story 'Science princess' studies brain metabolism and Alzheimer's Disease Fifteen-year-old Jasmine Roberts advances to the Intel International Science Fair in Reno, Nevada. http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/k12/article990602.ece Sour economy places athletics in jeopardy Many school districts are discarding sports programs or considering painful cuts, despite the broad popularity of those activities. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/03/23/27sports.h28.html NEW GRANT & FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES PreK-3rd Data Resource Center: Summer Workshop The PreK-3 Summer Workshop offers an introduction to longitudinal data sets that analyze development and educational achievement of children from pre-kindergarten to early elementary school grades. Special attention will be paid to school, family, and other contexts that shape children's potential to succeed in school and in life. Maximum award: full-program stipend. Eligibility: Participants from all disciplines are encouraged to apply. All applications must include a curriculum vitae and cover letter indicating interest in the workshop, summarizing research interests and experiences. Deadline: May 1, 2009. http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/PREK3RD/spotlight/summer-workshop.html MetLife/National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts: Arts Education Program The MetLife Foundation Partners in Arts Education Program enhances arts learning in K-12 public schools by supporting community school of the arts/public school partnerships that serve large numbers of public school students. Maximum award: $20,000. Eligibility: members of the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts. Non-member organizations should submit a membership application and first-year dues payments at least one week prior to submitting an application. Applicants must be located in certain cities – see guidelines. Deadline: May 26, 2009. http://www.nationalguild.org/programs/partners.htm Saucony: Run For Good The Saucony Run For Good Program encourages active and healthy lifestyles in children, and offers grants to communities and non-profit organizations that initiate and support running and fitness programs for kids. Maximum award: varies. Eligibility: 501(c)3 youth organizations with programs that increase participation in running to positively impact the lives of participants. Deadline: June 13, 2009. http://www.sauconyrunforgood.com/ Ezra Jack Keats Foundation: Mini-grants The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation offers mini-grants to school and public libraries for programs that encourage literacy and creativity in children. Programs relating to the work of Ezra Jack Keats are welcome, but not required. Maximum award: $500. Eligibility: public schools and libraries located anywhere in the United States, including Puerto Rico and Guam. Deadline: September 15, 2009. NSTA/Math Solutions: Mickelson ExxonMobil Teachers Academy The Mickelson ExxonMobil 2010 Teachers Academy offers a five-day program designed to provide third- through fifth-grade teachers with knowledge and skills to motivate students to pursue careers in science and math. Maximum award: all-expenses-paid, five-day program in July 2010 in Jersey City, NJ. Eligibility: third- through fifth-grade teachers in the United States. Deadline: October 31, 2009. http://www.sendmyteacher.com/send_your_teacher.php QUOTE OF THE WEEK "When you believe that all students can learn and have the opportunity to prove it, a wonderful thing happens. You see a light come on, a face smiles, a quiet determination, a few tears —- from students, parents and even teachers. There is nothing else that touches you so profoundly as knowing that you are the one who made that difference." -Debra Lary, science teacher, Newton, Georgia http://www.ajc.com/printedition/content/printedition/2009/04/13/readered0413.html QUOTE OF THE WEEK "Each child represents either a potential addition to the protective capacity and enlightened citizenship of the nation or, if allowed to suffer from neglect, a potential addition to the destructive forces of a community... The interests of the nation are involved in the welfare of this array of children no less than in our great material affairs." -Theodore Roosevelt (U.S. president) The PEN Weekly NewsBlast, published by Public Education Network, is a free electronic newsletter featuring resources and information about public school reform, school finance, and related issues. The NewsBlast is the property of Public Education Network, a national association of 79 local education funds working to improve public school quality in low-income communities throughout the nation. Please forward this e-mail to anyone who enjoys free updates on education news and grant alerts. Some links in the PEN Weekly NewsBlast may change or expire after their initial publication here, and some links may require local website registration. People wishing to add a NewsBlast subscription can go to PEN's website (http://www.publiceducation.org) and follow the instructions in the lower left-hand section of the homepage. Current subscribers can unsubscribe by clicking the appropriate link near the bottom of the NewsBlast mailing. If you use spam filters to protect your inbox, you may wish to take a moment right now to add PEN@publiceducation.org to your e-mail address book, spam-software whitelist, or mail-system whitelist. Adding the address will help ensure that you receive the NewsBlast and that your e-mail software displays HTML and images properly. |
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