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September 11, 2009 |
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| Grassroots campaign asks America to 'Rethink Learning Now' |
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"Why are we tolerating a national culture of testing," asks Sam Chaltain of the Forum for Education and Democracy, "When we all know from personal experience that what we need is a national culture of learning?" In an op-ed on the Anderson Cooper 360 blog, Chaltain advocates a "subtle shift in thinking," returning the national conversation on education to what we know about learning and the core conditions that support it. To bring this about, he and others have launched a national grassroots campaign and asked people to reflect on what they already know to be true about powerful learning, to share those personal stories, and then to use that collective wisdom to help the country better understand what a healthy, high-functioning learning environment actually looks like. The Rethink Learning Now campaign (rethinklearningnow.com) is soliciting personal stories from across the country as it begins to outline a core set of essential conditions that schools can cultivate. "As that list takes shape," Chaltain writes, "We'll all be better equipped to hold ourselves, our lawmakers, and our local communities more accountable to implementing policies that are based more clearly on what young people need in order to thrive - and stay - in school, and not just on what is easiest to quantitatively measure."
Read more | Visit the campaign | See PSAs on Youtube | Back to top
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| Cultivating minority teachers in homogeneous environments |
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By examining the social and cultural factors that hinder learning for minority teachers in culturally homogenous environments, Virginia State researchers Linda Noel-Batiste and Tiffany Toledo write in the American School Board Journal that school boards and administrators can assess how to help teachers of color develop professionally by giving particular attention to their unique challenges. "Simply stated," the authors write, "it's the little things that count." Smiles, greetings, and brief conversations in daily interaction convey acceptance and tear down invisible barriers to communication. The authors furnish a list of both positive and negative behaviors that teachers of color typically encounter. On the positive side: respect of cultural identity; acknowledgment, instead of dismissal, of suggestions; opportunities to serve as teacher leaders; support in parent-teacher conferences; and responsiveness to concerns and requests for help. Negative behaviors are: frequent confusion over "unusual" names; minimization of teacher achievements; questioning of ability to teach; addressing of parental concerns with department members or team members instead of directly; and failure to acknowledge students' success. While these would be boosting or demoralizing to any teacher, in a context where isolation is already felt, effects are amplified.
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| Chicago tries targeted, intensive support for highest risk kids |
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In a city whose student death toll is a "national embarrassment," a major new program by Chicago Public Schools Chief Ron Huberman has identified students most likely to end up shot, and will connect them with full-time mentors and part-time jobs to stem youth violence in city neighborhoods, according to The Chicago Tribune. The $30 million effort, which targets 200 youth, also includes money for training security guards and aims to change the trajectory of teen violence in city neighborhoods. "These kids have lots of sticks in their lives, and we want to work on the carrot approach," Huberman explains. "If we don't offer enough of a carrot to alter their lifestyle, they won't bite." Last school year, 34 students were killed and another 290 shot on the streets of Chicago; the prior year, 23 students were killed and 211 shot, according to district totals. While no deaths occurred inside schoolhouse walls, Huberman wants schools to take the lead in addressing the problem. The schools chief, a former Chicago police officer, hopes a data-driven rather than emotional approach can break new ground.
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| Teachers: crucial to creating 'meaningful education for kids' |
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In an interview in Teacher Magazine, Gregory Michie, teacher-educator and author of the well-received Holler if You Hear Me, reflects on social perceptions of urban students since the book's publication in 1999, and on the challenges of teaching students with backgrounds different from one's own. In the introduction to the second edition of his book, Michie relates he was disconcerted to find the Library of Congress had classified his book about nine years in a Chicago classroom under the rubric of "socially handicapped children." While it would be disingenuous to think of all students as the same regardless of background, urban students are, he says, still "thought about in terms of what they don't have, aren't capable of, and lack, rather than the promise and possibility they have." The book was brought out in a series entitled Teaching for Social Justice, which Michie describes thus: "Teaching for social justice is teaching with an eye on the bigger picture. Teaching with an eye on issues of equity and justice means in part, bringing those issues into the classroom. On the other hand, it means as a teacher, seeing yourself as part of this bigger picture." Being in the classroom with kids, Michie says, is "where it's at," and he often contemplates returning: "Classroom teachers are the most important piece in trying to create meaningful education for all kids."
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| A high-quality teaching tide lifts all boats |
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In a study to be released in October in American Economics Journal: Applied Economics, researchers found that high-quality teachers had a "spillover effect," raising the caliber of their colleagues around them, according to Education Week. The study, based on an analysis of 11 years of data on North Carolina school children, has broad implications for school staffing practices and for the current debate over merit-pay plans for teachers. "If it's true that teachers are learning from their peers, and the effects are not small, then we want to make sure that any incentive system we put in place is going to be fostering that and not preventing it," said C. Kirabo Jackson, an assistant professor of labor economics at Cornell University and co-author of the report. "If you give the reward at the individual level, all of a sudden my peers are no longer my colleagues-they're my competitors. If you give it at the school level, then you're going to foster feelings of team membership, and that increases the incentive to work together and help each other out." Observers now wonder: Does the new teacher's arrival motivate peers to do better, or does that teacher help other teachers by doing some of the teaching? Or are teachers themselves learning?
Read more | See an abstract of the report | Back to top
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| SPED vouchers lead to no mass exodus |
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A new study from the Manhattan Institute indicates that the number of public school students diagnosed with the mildest form of learning disability, Specific Learning Deficit (SLD), has trebled over the past three decades, jumping from 1.8 percent to 5.6 percent, with 40.7 percent of all SPED students identified as SLD by the end of that period. According to the report, a limited but growing body of research suggests that financial and other incentives may be responsible for the increase in designations, the diagnoses of which are, in the opinion of the authors, "difficult to distinguish from ordinary cognitive deficit." By looking at programs in Florida, one of four states with special education voucher programs, the study examines whether such programs change the likelihood that students will be diagnosed with SLD. One theory was that parental pressure would increase designations, since parents with a preference for private education would lobby to have their child diagnosed. What the report found, however, was that SPED voucher programs appear to reduce a local public school's financial incentive to diagnose a marginal student as suffering from SLD, since this would offer him the chance to leave the public school, enter a private school, and take his funding with him.
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| Public education bias toward private investment |
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In a piece in The Huffington Post, Tom Vander Ark laments that, unlike other areas in need of innovation - health care, energy production and transmission, and transportation, for instance - public incentives for private investment in education have been discouraged and in some ways prohibited. "Most of this is just disguised job protection, Vander Ark writes. "The rest is historical bias." Unlike the Department of Energy, for instance, public-private partnerships are prohibited. The $650 million Invest in Innovation Fund (i3) for school districts will soon be given out to those who, in Vander Ark's opinion, have little ability to invest in, manage, or scale innovation. "If the US Department of Education was able to invest half of i3 in private ventures, it would be multiplied several times over by private investment (10x in some cases), it would fund scalable enterprises with the potential for national impact, and the innovation would be sustained by a business model." Barriers against for-profit companies in education weaken American competitiveness, he writes, allowing interesting schools and learning tools to be developed internationally, without American input or profit.
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| When money cancels other compensations |
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One of the most successful schools in the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), a charter network predicated on the idea that disadvantaged kids need more hours per day and days per week in school to achieve, finds its philosophy run aground on its recent unionization, NPR reports. Since students -- and teachers -- stay at Baltimore's Ujima Village middle school for nine and a half hours (compared to the typical seven), the teacher union ordered Ujima teachers must be paid for the extra time. At other KIPP schools nationally, teachers are given a compensatory stipend, which the union estimates is only 20 percent of what they are owed for their efforts. Ujima has had to raise teacher pay and cut hours, driving the school to the budgetary brink, according to Principal Josh Botel. Ujima teachers, who have said they thrive on the intense dedication that the school schedule fosters, have reported the loss of instructional time has undercut that dedication. According to reading teacher Tammy Coit, "Part of our compensation is the students' success we see. And having less time with the students and having the KIPP model compromised, really is taking away from that compensation."
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There he goes, poisoning the minds of America's youth
President's speech to schoolchildren advocates the radical liberal agenda of hard work and taking responsibility, no matter how tough the obstacles, for one's own success.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125240790076692075.html
Laura Bush also brainwashed: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-laura-bush8-2009sep08,0,7490849.story
'I've never seen so many people getting together and asking what they could do to help'
Thanks to collaboration from the community, school staff, and some federal Title 1 funding, Metcalfe Elementary School in Gainesville, Florida now has a "jewel of a science lab."
http://www.gainesville.com/article/20090910/GUARDIAN/909101037/1002?Title=A-jewel-of-a-science-lab
Alabama program grows its own teachers
The first Teach for Alabama graduate heads up first-grade class in Columbiana.
http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/metro.ssf?/base/news/1252570517170670.xml&coll=2
Way more fun than regular school, and a lot more recess
The After School Extended Learning Program, funded by Title 1 stimulus money, offers two 30-minute classes and snack time Mondays through Thursdays after regular school hours in Kearns, Utah.
http://www.sltrib.com/education/ci_13287271
Safe at Home for GLBT highschoolers
As part of an effort to provide a safe learning environment for students who identify themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or questioning their sexual orientation, a new entirely online school for them will launch in January 2010.
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/on-education/2009/08/07/virtual-school-hopes-to-offer-welcoming-community-for-gays.html |
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"The only risk to the nation's young people is boredom."
- Andrew Rotherham of eduwonk.com, upon reading the pre-release of the president's back-to-school speech.
http://www.eduwonk.com/2009/09/hide-the-kids.html
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