From: The News & Observer
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/education/wake/story/1245635.html
Author: T. Keung Hui, Staff Writer
RALEIGH - No doesn't mean no in the Wake County school system when it comes to parents who want to keep their children away from the Internet at school.
Wake County school officials say the Internet is too valuable an educational tool for them to completely bar students from using it at school, even when parents make that request. It's a case of parental rights pitted against what educators say is a skill that students need to know.
"They will not get unfettered access to school computers if parents object," said Bev White, the Wake school system's chief technology officer. "But there are educational situations where a child needs to go on the Internet with supervision."
That approach isn't good enough for Ranee Cloud, a Wake Forest mother who has tried to block her daughter from getting Internet access at elementary school. Cloud filed a grievance that was recently rejected by the Wake school board.
"The denial of access form is meaningless," Cloud said. "If they're going to ask if you want to deny access, then they should stand by their word."
In contrast, school officials in other Triangle districts say they do try to ban Internet access when parents make the request.
White said only 80 of Wake's more than 139,000 students are denied Internet access by their parents. Though other Triangle districts didn't have exact numbers, they said a very small number of parents deny permission.
The Internet is increasingly being used for tests, research projects and classroom exercises.
"How do you prepare student to be globally competitive in the 21st century without them having Internet access?" asked John Brim, assistant director and chief operating officer of the N.C. Virtual Public School.
Cloud is skeptical of how critical the Internet is at the elementary school level, where her daughter is a third-grader.
"When you're in elementary school, what's the problem with using an encyclopedia to do research, or a library book?" she asked.
But White said there can be a big difference when relying on encyclopedias that are not current. For instance, she said, a student researching U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee for president, would get a much different report from using an encyclopedia from going online.
In an age of tight budgets, White said, it's more economical for schools to have students do research online than buy the latest print materials. Schools that receive federal funding must install software that blocks access to objectionable material.
But Wake, like other school districts, says it can't block all material that might be considered objectionable.
Wake's inability to guarantee 100 percent protection is the reason Cloud doesn't want her 8-year-old daughter to go online at school. "It doesn't make any sense for them to say your child will see pornography and they can't prevent it," Cloud said. "I'm upset that the school system won't take responsibility for the children."
It's not that Cloud is a Luddite. Her husband is a computer programmer, and she has helped people design Web sites for more than a decade. The difference, she says, is that she can monitor her daughter's Internet use at home.
Cloud filled out the form denying her daughter access to the Internet or a school e-mail address. To her surprise, though, Cloud found out that her daughter was getting Internet access at school.
What Cloud didn't know is that the regulations and procedures adopted by administrators to carry out school board policy specifically allow teachers to provide Internet access when it comes to activities they are leading.
White said it's acceptable for a student to receive Internet access when the teacher is providing supervision. Even though the student can control the keyboard, White said, the teacher should be walking around the room to oversee what's on each monitor.
It's not an approach that other school systems say they use.
Terri Sessoms, a spokeswoman for the Johnston County school system, said that if a teacher is operating the mouse and performing the search or activity, a student whose parents denied Internet privileges may participate.
Though it would be handled school by school, teachers would be expected to work something out with parents, said Ray Reitz, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school system's chief technology officer.
In Durham, officials say they come up with alternative activities that don't require Internet access.
"You treat a parent who doesn't return their child's Internet access form in the same way as a parent who doesn't return a form for a field trip," said Stacey Wilson-Norman, Durham's assistant superintendent of elementary curriculum and instruction. "You honor that request."
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Monday, October 6, 2008
Kids keep adults in the dark about cyber bullying
From: eSchool News
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/around-the-web/index.cfm?i=55478
Primary Topic Channel: Safety & security
Online bullying could be more pervasive than you think.
Three out of four teens were bullied online over the last year, according to a study released this week by psychologists at the University of California at Los Angeles. And while that number may seem high at the outset, only 1 in 10 of those kids told their parents or another adult about it, the study showed.
The anonymous Web-based study surveyed 1,454 kids between the ages of 12 and 17. Of those, 41 percent reported between one and three cyberbullying incidents during the year; 13 percent reported four to six incidents; and 19 percent reported seven or more. In other words, no longer are victims of bullying relegated to the geeks and nerds of yore when it comes to the Internet.
The psychologists published the results of their research in the September issue of the Journal of School Health.
Many teens neglected to tell their parents about the incidents because they believed they "need to learn to deal with it," according to the research. Others kept it to themselves because they feared that their parents would cut back on their Internet access.
"Many parents do not understand how vital the Internet is to their social lives," said Jaana Juvonen, lead study author and a professor of psychology and chair of UCLA's developmental psychology program. "Parents can take detrimental action with good intentions, such as trying to protect their children by not letting them use the Internet at all. That is not likely to help parent-teen relationships or the social lives of their children."
Juvonen said it's important that parents talk with their kids about bullying well before it happens, as well as look for changes in teens' behavior.
However, it's also equally important to teach children the importance of not becoming bullies themselves, is it not? Surely if bullying is this prevalent online, it's not always a one-sided affair.
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/around-the-web/index.cfm?i=55478
Primary Topic Channel: Safety & security
Online bullying could be more pervasive than you think.
Three out of four teens were bullied online over the last year, according to a study released this week by psychologists at the University of California at Los Angeles. And while that number may seem high at the outset, only 1 in 10 of those kids told their parents or another adult about it, the study showed.
The anonymous Web-based study surveyed 1,454 kids between the ages of 12 and 17. Of those, 41 percent reported between one and three cyberbullying incidents during the year; 13 percent reported four to six incidents; and 19 percent reported seven or more. In other words, no longer are victims of bullying relegated to the geeks and nerds of yore when it comes to the Internet.
The psychologists published the results of their research in the September issue of the Journal of School Health.
Many teens neglected to tell their parents about the incidents because they believed they "need to learn to deal with it," according to the research. Others kept it to themselves because they feared that their parents would cut back on their Internet access.
"Many parents do not understand how vital the Internet is to their social lives," said Jaana Juvonen, lead study author and a professor of psychology and chair of UCLA's developmental psychology program. "Parents can take detrimental action with good intentions, such as trying to protect their children by not letting them use the Internet at all. That is not likely to help parent-teen relationships or the social lives of their children."
Juvonen said it's important that parents talk with their kids about bullying well before it happens, as well as look for changes in teens' behavior.
However, it's also equally important to teach children the importance of not becoming bullies themselves, is it not? Surely if bullying is this prevalent online, it's not always a one-sided affair.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
'RezEd' is educators' real ticket to virtual worlds
From: eSchool News
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/site-of-the-week/site/index.cfm?i=55415
For educators who are ready to take on the growing frontier of virtual worlds, a new online hub--RezEd--now exists to make the journey to alternative realities a little easier. Launched in beta format in mid-March, RezEd is a comprehensive virtual-world resource for educators, students, and those simply interested in learning what these increasingly popular worlds are all about. Developed by the nonprofit organization Global Kids through a grant from the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning initiative, the site brings attention to all aspects of learning across virtual worlds through resources such as weekly best practices, moderated discussions, and twice-monthly podcast interviews with students, educators, and experts in the field. Visitors to RezEd can learn about several virtual places and topics, such as Second Life, K-8 virtual worlds, virtual gaming in education, research on the sociology and ethics of virtual worlds, and more. RezEd "is a community that makes accessible and practical the type of research being done by many and connects them with practitioners in the field to inform their work," said Barry Joseph, director of the Online Leadership Program for Global Kids.
http://www.rezed.org
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/site-of-the-week/site/index.cfm?i=55415
For educators who are ready to take on the growing frontier of virtual worlds, a new online hub--RezEd--now exists to make the journey to alternative realities a little easier. Launched in beta format in mid-March, RezEd is a comprehensive virtual-world resource for educators, students, and those simply interested in learning what these increasingly popular worlds are all about. Developed by the nonprofit organization Global Kids through a grant from the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning initiative, the site brings attention to all aspects of learning across virtual worlds through resources such as weekly best practices, moderated discussions, and twice-monthly podcast interviews with students, educators, and experts in the field. Visitors to RezEd can learn about several virtual places and topics, such as Second Life, K-8 virtual worlds, virtual gaming in education, research on the sociology and ethics of virtual worlds, and more. RezEd "is a community that makes accessible and practical the type of research being done by many and connects them with practitioners in the field to inform their work," said Barry Joseph, director of the Online Leadership Program for Global Kids.
http://www.rezed.org
Friday, September 26, 2008
Using Twitter as an Education Tool
From: Search Engine Watch
http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3630980
By Ron Jones
Are you using Twitter yet? If not, you may want to read how other educators are using Twitter as an education tool.
For those who are coming up to speed, Twitter lets you broadcast or microblog your messages (140 characters max) to a group of friends or other subscribers, who can receive them as text messages, called a "tweet," to your subscribers and their mobile phones. Since almost everyone has a mobile phone now this makes Twitter more effective as a communication tool.
Twitter in Academia
David Parry, assistant professor of Emerging Media and Communications at the University of Texas at Dallas, was a little apprehensive at first to use social media in the classroom, but after reading an article by Clive Thompson at Wired, he decided to give it a shot.
After giving his students a Twitter assignment one semester, Parry was curious to see how his students would react. He was surprised to see how it helped communicate with his students. After using it more and more he found "that it was one of the better things he did with the class." He then posted these tips for using Twitter in academia.
Some of the highlights were an increase of "class chatter" as the class started using Twitter to have conversations inside and outside of the class. It seemed to develop a sense of "classroom community" as students began to develop a sense of each other outside the classroom space. Other tips are:
Facilitate Active Learning
Educause produced a PDF article that talks about using Twitter to help engage students to facilitate active learning. It points out that "Metacognition, which is the practice of thinking about and reflecting on your learning -- has been shown to benefit comprehension and retention. As a tool for students or professional colleagues to compare thoughts about a topic, Twitter can be a viable platform for metacognition, forcing users to be brief and to the point -- an important skill in thinking clearly and communicating effectively. In addition, Twitter can provide a simple way for attendees at a conference to share thoughts about particular sessions and activities with others at the event and those unable to attend."
Storytelling
George Mayo, an eighth grade English teacher at Silver Spring International Middle School in Montgomery County, Maryland, recently used Twitter as a tool to collaboratively write a story by his students. Mayo invited his students and students around the world via his Many Voices Twitter account to add to an ongoing story with individual "tweets." After six weeks and the help of more than 100 students and six different countries, the story was finished.
"It was incredibly simple and really amazing," Mayo said. "My students and I would come in, and suddenly kids in China had written a chapter for the book." Afterward he made the book available for his students to download for free.
Paul R. Allison, a teacher at the East Bronx Academy in NY, built a site called Youth Twitter. This site allows teachers to edit students' tweets by granting them "administrator" status. This came out of a concern with the lack of control teachers had with Twitter.
These and other innovations are popping up everywhere as educators find more uses for Twitter and other social media tools to cater to 21st century students. Please feel free to send me any examples you have on how you have used Twitter to educate. I'd love to hear from you.
http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3630980
By Ron Jones
Are you using Twitter yet? If not, you may want to read how other educators are using Twitter as an education tool.
For those who are coming up to speed, Twitter lets you broadcast or microblog your messages (140 characters max) to a group of friends or other subscribers, who can receive them as text messages, called a "tweet," to your subscribers and their mobile phones. Since almost everyone has a mobile phone now this makes Twitter more effective as a communication tool.
Twitter in Academia
David Parry, assistant professor of Emerging Media and Communications at the University of Texas at Dallas, was a little apprehensive at first to use social media in the classroom, but after reading an article by Clive Thompson at Wired, he decided to give it a shot.
After giving his students a Twitter assignment one semester, Parry was curious to see how his students would react. He was surprised to see how it helped communicate with his students. After using it more and more he found "that it was one of the better things he did with the class." He then posted these tips for using Twitter in academia.
Some of the highlights were an increase of "class chatter" as the class started using Twitter to have conversations inside and outside of the class. It seemed to develop a sense of "classroom community" as students began to develop a sense of each other outside the classroom space. Other tips are:
- Instant feedback.
- Track a conference or seminar.
- Follow a professional or famous person.
- Public notepad.
- Writing assignments.
- Grammar.
- Maximizing the teachable moment.
Facilitate Active Learning
Educause produced a PDF article that talks about using Twitter to help engage students to facilitate active learning. It points out that "Metacognition, which is the practice of thinking about and reflecting on your learning -- has been shown to benefit comprehension and retention. As a tool for students or professional colleagues to compare thoughts about a topic, Twitter can be a viable platform for metacognition, forcing users to be brief and to the point -- an important skill in thinking clearly and communicating effectively. In addition, Twitter can provide a simple way for attendees at a conference to share thoughts about particular sessions and activities with others at the event and those unable to attend."
Storytelling
George Mayo, an eighth grade English teacher at Silver Spring International Middle School in Montgomery County, Maryland, recently used Twitter as a tool to collaboratively write a story by his students. Mayo invited his students and students around the world via his Many Voices Twitter account to add to an ongoing story with individual "tweets." After six weeks and the help of more than 100 students and six different countries, the story was finished.
"It was incredibly simple and really amazing," Mayo said. "My students and I would come in, and suddenly kids in China had written a chapter for the book." Afterward he made the book available for his students to download for free.
Paul R. Allison, a teacher at the East Bronx Academy in NY, built a site called Youth Twitter. This site allows teachers to edit students' tweets by granting them "administrator" status. This came out of a concern with the lack of control teachers had with Twitter.
These and other innovations are popping up everywhere as educators find more uses for Twitter and other social media tools to cater to 21st century students. Please feel free to send me any examples you have on how you have used Twitter to educate. I'd love to hear from you.
Stilling the Mind: An Interview with Linda Lantieri
From: edutopia
http://www.edutopia.org/linda-lantieri-how-to-relaxation
by Sharon Brock
Teachers can create moments of calm in the midst of classroom bustle -- and help students learn better.
Do your students have difficulty focusing, remaining calm, or managing their emotions? Do many of them seem chronically stressed? A new book offers hope, bolstered by practical tips, for helping them overcome these problems.
Being calm and paying attention are actual skills you can teach in the classroom, says Linda Lantieri, a twenty-three-year veteran of bringing social and emotional learning to New York City schools and a teacher for forty years.
In her new book, Building Emotional Intelligence: Techniques to Cultivate Inner Strength in Children, Lantieri, also a founding board member of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) and a cofounder of the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program, offers practical advice to do just that. An accompanying CD, narrated by emotional-intelligence pioneer Daniel Goleman, guides students through two relaxation and mindfulness activities aimed at helping them calm down and focus.
We caught up with Lantieri for her thoughts on how teachers can work with students to develop their emotional intelligence and how better stress management helps kids learn.
What can teachers do to help children with chronic stress?
Teachers can have regular routines and practices that still the mind and calm the body to release accumulated stress. With our New York City program, many classrooms have peace corners, where students can choose for themselves a time-in, as opposed to a teacher sending them to a time-out.
We also have daily quiet time, when we pause, honor silence, and go to a deeper place of wisdom that is within us. When we started, we weren't sure if the children would be responsive, but we are finding that they are hungering for it. As long as we keep nurturing that part of ourselves, it becomes stronger.
It's important that this quiet time is not fragmented. It needs to be built into the classroom ethos as a way of being. It's not just about taking ten minutes of quiet time, then having a frenzied experience the rest of the day. It's about focusing young people, as well as the teacher, in a more reflective way throughout the day.
How does stress affect learning?
The interesting part of the connection between stress and learning is that the prefrontal cortex of the brain is the area for paying attention, calming, and focusing as well as the area for short- and long-term memory.
So you need to focus in order to connect with your memory. And connecting with memory enables children to take in new knowledge, because they need to attach it to something they already know. When a child doesn't have strategies to decrease anxiety, there is less attention available to grasp new ideas, think creatively, solve problems, and make good decisions.
Also, when children are upset, nervous, or angry and cannot manage their distressing emotions, they are not in an optimal zone for learning and retrieving information. They may know something for the test, but they are not able to access it.
What is resilience, and why do some people have it, while others don't?
Resilience is the ability to successfully manage life and adapt to stressful events. Resilience is developed in childhood, when there are loving people available to help during difficult times, but if a child feels alone, resilience is not developed just because challenging things are happening.
Building resilience is about integrating what's happening by having support, safety, and love around the child. With our program, we hope children will become stronger than they were before because they will develop greater control of their thoughts and emotions and will be able to deal with future stressful situations in a more relaxed way.
What is mindfulness, why is it important, and how can we cultivate it in children?
We define mindfulness as being aware of what you're feeling, thinking, and experiencing when it's happening, without judgment. Mindfulness activities quiet the mind and develop self-awareness and the ability to pay attention.
The book has age-appropriate scripts to guide students in mindfulness activities. For the younger kids, we start with play adventures and use concrete props, such as a soft toy or a "breathing buddy" to help them watch their stomachs go up and down. Other examples include listening to a chime and having children raise their hands when they no longer hear the chime, or eating a raisin or an orange very slowly. These activities calm and focus students and prepare them to listen to the CD.
Why are these skills important outside of the classroom?
We first started this work after 9/11, and we have worked with hundreds of kids who ran for their lives that day. Some said that these children would be traumatized for the rest of their lives, but instead we asked, "What can we do to help these children heal and recover in a way that is real and truly builds the resilience back into them?" So we started researching and developing these programs.
We don't know when the next tragic event will happen. We don't have control over that, but we can teach children these skills of inner preparedness. We are living in such uncertain and challenging times that young people need to have this inner strength, this inner reservoir they can depend on and go to when difficulties arise, so that they are able to manage their stress, rather than seeing all things as a state of emergency where the fight-or-flight response goes off.
We aren't aspiring to make young people great meditators. We are helping them to become more loving, caring human beings and to develop inner resilience and competencies they can access for the rest of their lives.
How is this book different from other books on emotional intelligence?
Due to recent brain research on neuroplasticity, we know that brains are growing and creating neural pathways during childhood and through adolescence. What's new in this book is the focus on a repetitive practice that strengthens these neural pathways and teaches young people concrete skills to calm themselves and focus their attention.
This book also puts emphasis on self-awareness. One thing we hope both adults and young people realize is that they may be in a state of chronic stress and not be aware of it. In the book, there is a list of signs that teachers can look out for that indicate students are handling stress poorly, such as having a quick temper or a constant upset stomach.
I suggest showing students this list directly so they can be aware of and manage their stress themselves. We also know that chronic stress results in poor health outcomes, both mentally and physically.
http://www.edutopia.org/linda-lantieri-how-to-relaxation
by Sharon Brock
Teachers can create moments of calm in the midst of classroom bustle -- and help students learn better.
Do your students have difficulty focusing, remaining calm, or managing their emotions? Do many of them seem chronically stressed? A new book offers hope, bolstered by practical tips, for helping them overcome these problems.
Being calm and paying attention are actual skills you can teach in the classroom, says Linda Lantieri, a twenty-three-year veteran of bringing social and emotional learning to New York City schools and a teacher for forty years.
In her new book, Building Emotional Intelligence: Techniques to Cultivate Inner Strength in Children, Lantieri, also a founding board member of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) and a cofounder of the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program, offers practical advice to do just that. An accompanying CD, narrated by emotional-intelligence pioneer Daniel Goleman, guides students through two relaxation and mindfulness activities aimed at helping them calm down and focus.
We caught up with Lantieri for her thoughts on how teachers can work with students to develop their emotional intelligence and how better stress management helps kids learn.
What can teachers do to help children with chronic stress?
Teachers can have regular routines and practices that still the mind and calm the body to release accumulated stress. With our New York City program, many classrooms have peace corners, where students can choose for themselves a time-in, as opposed to a teacher sending them to a time-out.
We also have daily quiet time, when we pause, honor silence, and go to a deeper place of wisdom that is within us. When we started, we weren't sure if the children would be responsive, but we are finding that they are hungering for it. As long as we keep nurturing that part of ourselves, it becomes stronger.
It's important that this quiet time is not fragmented. It needs to be built into the classroom ethos as a way of being. It's not just about taking ten minutes of quiet time, then having a frenzied experience the rest of the day. It's about focusing young people, as well as the teacher, in a more reflective way throughout the day.
How does stress affect learning?
The interesting part of the connection between stress and learning is that the prefrontal cortex of the brain is the area for paying attention, calming, and focusing as well as the area for short- and long-term memory.
So you need to focus in order to connect with your memory. And connecting with memory enables children to take in new knowledge, because they need to attach it to something they already know. When a child doesn't have strategies to decrease anxiety, there is less attention available to grasp new ideas, think creatively, solve problems, and make good decisions.
Also, when children are upset, nervous, or angry and cannot manage their distressing emotions, they are not in an optimal zone for learning and retrieving information. They may know something for the test, but they are not able to access it.
What is resilience, and why do some people have it, while others don't?
Resilience is the ability to successfully manage life and adapt to stressful events. Resilience is developed in childhood, when there are loving people available to help during difficult times, but if a child feels alone, resilience is not developed just because challenging things are happening.
Building resilience is about integrating what's happening by having support, safety, and love around the child. With our program, we hope children will become stronger than they were before because they will develop greater control of their thoughts and emotions and will be able to deal with future stressful situations in a more relaxed way.
What is mindfulness, why is it important, and how can we cultivate it in children?
We define mindfulness as being aware of what you're feeling, thinking, and experiencing when it's happening, without judgment. Mindfulness activities quiet the mind and develop self-awareness and the ability to pay attention.
The book has age-appropriate scripts to guide students in mindfulness activities. For the younger kids, we start with play adventures and use concrete props, such as a soft toy or a "breathing buddy" to help them watch their stomachs go up and down. Other examples include listening to a chime and having children raise their hands when they no longer hear the chime, or eating a raisin or an orange very slowly. These activities calm and focus students and prepare them to listen to the CD.
Why are these skills important outside of the classroom?
We first started this work after 9/11, and we have worked with hundreds of kids who ran for their lives that day. Some said that these children would be traumatized for the rest of their lives, but instead we asked, "What can we do to help these children heal and recover in a way that is real and truly builds the resilience back into them?" So we started researching and developing these programs.
We don't know when the next tragic event will happen. We don't have control over that, but we can teach children these skills of inner preparedness. We are living in such uncertain and challenging times that young people need to have this inner strength, this inner reservoir they can depend on and go to when difficulties arise, so that they are able to manage their stress, rather than seeing all things as a state of emergency where the fight-or-flight response goes off.
We aren't aspiring to make young people great meditators. We are helping them to become more loving, caring human beings and to develop inner resilience and competencies they can access for the rest of their lives.
How is this book different from other books on emotional intelligence?
Due to recent brain research on neuroplasticity, we know that brains are growing and creating neural pathways during childhood and through adolescence. What's new in this book is the focus on a repetitive practice that strengthens these neural pathways and teaches young people concrete skills to calm themselves and focus their attention.
This book also puts emphasis on self-awareness. One thing we hope both adults and young people realize is that they may be in a state of chronic stress and not be aware of it. In the book, there is a list of signs that teachers can look out for that indicate students are handling stress poorly, such as having a quick temper or a constant upset stomach.
I suggest showing students this list directly so they can be aware of and manage their stress themselves. We also know that chronic stress results in poor health outcomes, both mentally and physically.
The Power of Our Words
From: ASCD
http://www.ascd.org/portal/site/ascd/template.MAXIMIZE/menuitem.459dee008f99653fb85516f762108a0c/?javax.portlet.tpst=d5b9c0fa1a493266805516f762108a0c_ws_MX&javax.portlet.prp_d5b9c0fa1a493266805516f762108a0c_journaltypeheaderimage=%2FASCD%2Fimages%2Fmultifiles%2Fpublications%2Felmast.gif&javax.portlet.prp_d5b9c0fa1a493266805516f762108a0c_viewID=article_view&javax.portlet.prp_d5b9c0fa1a493266805516f762108a0c_journalmoid=c92236c75cbfb110VgnVCM1000003d01a8c0RCRD&javax.portlet.prp_d5b9c0fa1a493266805516f762108a0c_articlemoid=148236c75cbfb110VgnVCM1000003d01a8c0RCRD&javax.portlet.prp_d5b9c0fa1a493266805516f762108a0c_journalTypePersonalization=ASCD_EL&javax.portlet.begCacheTok=token&javax.portlet.endCacheTok=token Author: Paula Denton
Teacher language influences students' identities as learners. Five principles keep that influence positive.
Think back to your childhood and recall the voices of your teachers. What kinds of words did they use? What tone of voice? Recall how you felt around those teachers. Safe and motivated to learn? Or self-doubting, insecure, even angry?
Teacher language—what we say to students and how we say it—is one of our most powerful teaching tools. It permeates every aspect of teaching. We cannot teach a lesson, welcome a student into the room, or handle a classroom conflict without using words. Our language can lift students to their highest potential or tear them down. It can help them build positive relationships or encourage discord and distrust. It shapes how students think and act and, ultimately, how they learn.
How Language Shapes Learners
From my 25 years of teaching and my research on language use, I've learned that language actually shapes thoughts, feelings, and experiences. (Vygotsky, 1978). Our words shape students as learners by
How can we ensure that our language supports students' learning and helps create a positive, respectful community? During the 20 years I've been involved with the Responsive Classroom, I have found this approach to be a good base for using language powerfully. The Responsive Classroom approach, developed by Northeast Foundation for Children, offers language strategies that enable elementary teachers to help students succeed academically and socially. Strategies range from asking open-ended questions that stretch students' thinking to redirecting students when behavior goes off-track. These strategies are based on the following five general principles.
1. Be Direct
When we say what we mean and use a kind, straightforward tone, students learn that they can trust us. They feel respected and safe, a necessary condition for developing self-discipline and taking the risks required for learning.
It's easy to slip into using indirect language as a way to win compliance. For example, as a new teacher, I tried to get students to do what I wanted by pointing out what I liked about other students' behavior. "I like the way May and Justine are paying attention," I would cheerfully announce while impatiently eyeing Dave and Marta fooling around in the corner.
When this strategy worked, it was because students mimicked the desired behavior so that they, too, would win praise from me, not because I had helped them develop self-control or internal motivation. And often, when I pointed out how I liked certain learners' behavior, the rest of the class ignored me. If I liked the way May and Justine were paying attention, that was nice for the three of us, but it had nothing to do with the rest of the class, who had more compelling things to do at the moment.
Moreover, comparative language can damage students' relationships. By holding May and Justine up as exemplars, I implied that the other class members were less commendable. This can drive a wedge between students.
Later in my career, I learned to speak directly. To call the students to a meeting, for example, I rang a chime to gain their attention (a signal we practiced regularly), then said firmly, "Come to the meeting rug and take a seat now." To Dave and Marta in the previous example, I'd say, "It's time to listen now." The difference in students' response was remarkable.
Sarcasm, another form of indirect language, is also common—and damaging—in the classroom. Sometimes teachers use sarcasm because we think it will provide comic relief; other times we're just tired, and it slips in without our even knowing it. If a teacher says, "John, what part of 'Put your phone away' don't you understand?" students will likely laugh, and the teacher may think she has shown that she's hip and has a sense of humor. But John will feel embarrassed, and his trust in this teacher will diminish. The position of this teacher may shift in the other students' eyes as well: They no longer see her as an authority who protects their emotional safety but as someone who freely uses the currency of insult. Much better to simply say, "John, put your phone away." If he doesn't, try another strategy, such as a logical consequence.
2. Convey Faith in Students' Abilities and Intentions
When our words and tone convey faith in students' desire and ability to do well, students are more likely to live up to our expectations of them.
"When everyone is ready, I'll show you how to plant the seeds." "You can look at the chart to remind yourself of our ideas for good story writing." "Show me how you will follow the rules in the hall." These teacher words, spoken in a calm voice, communicate a belief that students want to—and know how to—listen, cooperate, and do good work. This increases the chance that students will see themselves as respectful listeners, cooperative people, and competent workers, and behave accordingly.
Take the time to notice and comment on positive behavior, being quite specific: "You're trying lots of different ideas for solving that problem. That takes persistence." Such observations give students hard evidence for why they should believe in themselves.
3. Focus on Actions, Not Abstractions
Because elementary-age children tend to be concrete thinkers, teachers can communicate most successfully with them by detailing specific actions that will lead to a positive environment. For example, rather than saying, "Be respectful," it's more helpful to state, "When someone is speaking during a discussion, the rest of us will listen carefully and wait until the speaker is finished before raising our hands to add a comment."
Sometimes it's effective to prompt students to name concrete positive behaviors themselves. To a student who has trouble focusing during writing time, a teacher might say matter-of-factly, "What will help you think of good ideas for your story and concentrate on writing them down?" The student might then respond, "I can find a quiet place to write, away from my friends."
There is a place, of course, for such abstract terms as respectful and responsible, but we must give students plenty of opportunities to associate those words with concrete actions. Classroom expectations such as "treat one another with kindness" will be more meaningful to students if we help them picture and practice what those expectations look like in different situations.
Focusing on action also means pointing to the desired behavior rather than labeling the learner's character or attitude. I had a student who chronically did poor work when he could do better. In a moment of frustration, I said to him, "I don't think you even care!" This allowed me to vent, but it did nothing to help the student change. His energy went toward defending himself against my negative judgment, not toward examining and changing his behavior. Worse, such language can lead students to accept our judgment and believe that they indeed don't care.
It's more helpful in such situations to issue a positive challenge that names the behavior we want: "Your job today is to record five observations of our crickets. Think about what you'll need to do before you start." This moves the focus to what the student can do.
4. Keep It Brief
It's hard for many young children to follow long strings of words like this:
When you go out to recess today, be sure to remember what we said about including everyone in games, because yesterday some kids had an issue with not being included in kickball and four square, and we've talked about this. You were doing really well for a while there, but lately it seems like you're getting kind of careless, and that's got to change or …
By the end of this spiel, many students would be thinking about other things. Few could follow the entire explanation. Students understand more when we speak less. Simply asking, "Who can tell us one way to include everyone at recess?" gives them an opportunity to remind themselves of positive behaviors. If you have taught and led students in practicing the class's expectations for recess, students will make good use of such a reminder.
5. Know When to Be Silent
The skillful use of silence can be just as powerful as the skillful use of words. When teachers use silence, we open a space for students to think, rehearse what to say, and sometimes gather the courage to speak at all.
We can see the benefit of silence if, after asking a question, we pause before taking responses from students. Researchers have found that when teachers wait three to five seconds, more students respond, and those responses show higher-level thinking (Swift & Gooding, 1983; Tobin, 1980).
Three to five seconds can feel uncomfortably long at first. But if we stick to it—and model thoughtful pausing by waiting a few seconds ourselves to respond to students' comments—we'll set a pace for the entire classroom that will soon feel natural. Our reward will be classroom conversations of higher quality.
Remaining silent allows us to listen to students and requires us to resist the impulse to jump in and correct students' words or finish their thoughts. A true listener tries to understand a speaker's message before formulating a response. When we allow students to speak uninterrupted and unhurried, we help them learn because speaking is an important means of consolidating knowledge.
In my current role teaching educators Responsive Classroom strategies, I watch teachers incorporate these five principles of language into their daily communications with students, and I see them build classrooms where students feel safe, respected, and engaged. By paying attention to our language, we can use it to open the doors of possibility for students.
References
1 Swift, J. N., & Gooding, T. (1983). Interaction of wait time feedback and questioning instruction on middle school science teaching. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 20(8), 721–730.
2 Tobin, K. G. (1980). The effect of an extended teacher wait-time on science achievement. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 17, 469–475.
3 Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
http://www.ascd.org/portal/site/ascd/template.MAXIMIZE/menuitem.459dee008f99653fb85516f762108a0c/?javax.portlet.tpst=d5b9c0fa1a493266805516f762108a0c_ws_MX&javax.portlet.prp_d5b9c0fa1a493266805516f762108a0c_journaltypeheaderimage=%2FASCD%2Fimages%2Fmultifiles%2Fpublications%2Felmast.gif&javax.portlet.prp_d5b9c0fa1a493266805516f762108a0c_viewID=article_view&javax.portlet.prp_d5b9c0fa1a493266805516f762108a0c_journalmoid=c92236c75cbfb110VgnVCM1000003d01a8c0RCRD&javax.portlet.prp_d5b9c0fa1a493266805516f762108a0c_articlemoid=148236c75cbfb110VgnVCM1000003d01a8c0RCRD&javax.portlet.prp_d5b9c0fa1a493266805516f762108a0c_journalTypePersonalization=ASCD_EL&javax.portlet.begCacheTok=token&javax.portlet.endCacheTok=token Author: Paula Denton
Teacher language influences students' identities as learners. Five principles keep that influence positive.
Think back to your childhood and recall the voices of your teachers. What kinds of words did they use? What tone of voice? Recall how you felt around those teachers. Safe and motivated to learn? Or self-doubting, insecure, even angry?
Teacher language—what we say to students and how we say it—is one of our most powerful teaching tools. It permeates every aspect of teaching. We cannot teach a lesson, welcome a student into the room, or handle a classroom conflict without using words. Our language can lift students to their highest potential or tear them down. It can help them build positive relationships or encourage discord and distrust. It shapes how students think and act and, ultimately, how they learn.
How Language Shapes Learners
From my 25 years of teaching and my research on language use, I've learned that language actually shapes thoughts, feelings, and experiences. (Vygotsky, 1978). Our words shape students as learners by
- Affecting students' sense of identity. Five-year-old Don loves to sing but isn't good at it—yet. His music teacher says, "Let's have you move to the back row and try just mouthing the words." Such language can lead Don to believe not only that he is a bad singer, but also that he will always be a bad singer. But suppose the teacher says, "Don, you really love to sing, don't you? Would you like to learn more about it? I have some ideas." Such words support Don's budding identity as one who loves to sing and is learning singing skills.
- Helping students understand how they work and play. For example, an educator might comment on a student's writing by saying, "These juicy adjectives here give me a wonderful sense of how your character looks and feels." Naming a specific attribute—the use of adjectives—alerts the writer to an important strength in her writing and encourages her to build on that strength.
- Influencing our relationships with students. To a student who—once again—argued with classmates at recess, we might say either "Emory, if you don't stop it, no more recess!" or "Emory, I saw you arguing with Douglas and Stephen. Can you help me understand what happened from your point of view?" The former would reinforce a teacher-student relationship based on teacher threats and student defensiveness, whereas the latter would begin to build a teacher-student relationship based on trust.
How can we ensure that our language supports students' learning and helps create a positive, respectful community? During the 20 years I've been involved with the Responsive Classroom, I have found this approach to be a good base for using language powerfully. The Responsive Classroom approach, developed by Northeast Foundation for Children, offers language strategies that enable elementary teachers to help students succeed academically and socially. Strategies range from asking open-ended questions that stretch students' thinking to redirecting students when behavior goes off-track. These strategies are based on the following five general principles.
1. Be Direct
When we say what we mean and use a kind, straightforward tone, students learn that they can trust us. They feel respected and safe, a necessary condition for developing self-discipline and taking the risks required for learning.
It's easy to slip into using indirect language as a way to win compliance. For example, as a new teacher, I tried to get students to do what I wanted by pointing out what I liked about other students' behavior. "I like the way May and Justine are paying attention," I would cheerfully announce while impatiently eyeing Dave and Marta fooling around in the corner.
When this strategy worked, it was because students mimicked the desired behavior so that they, too, would win praise from me, not because I had helped them develop self-control or internal motivation. And often, when I pointed out how I liked certain learners' behavior, the rest of the class ignored me. If I liked the way May and Justine were paying attention, that was nice for the three of us, but it had nothing to do with the rest of the class, who had more compelling things to do at the moment.
Moreover, comparative language can damage students' relationships. By holding May and Justine up as exemplars, I implied that the other class members were less commendable. This can drive a wedge between students.
Later in my career, I learned to speak directly. To call the students to a meeting, for example, I rang a chime to gain their attention (a signal we practiced regularly), then said firmly, "Come to the meeting rug and take a seat now." To Dave and Marta in the previous example, I'd say, "It's time to listen now." The difference in students' response was remarkable.
Sarcasm, another form of indirect language, is also common—and damaging—in the classroom. Sometimes teachers use sarcasm because we think it will provide comic relief; other times we're just tired, and it slips in without our even knowing it. If a teacher says, "John, what part of 'Put your phone away' don't you understand?" students will likely laugh, and the teacher may think she has shown that she's hip and has a sense of humor. But John will feel embarrassed, and his trust in this teacher will diminish. The position of this teacher may shift in the other students' eyes as well: They no longer see her as an authority who protects their emotional safety but as someone who freely uses the currency of insult. Much better to simply say, "John, put your phone away." If he doesn't, try another strategy, such as a logical consequence.
2. Convey Faith in Students' Abilities and Intentions
When our words and tone convey faith in students' desire and ability to do well, students are more likely to live up to our expectations of them.
"When everyone is ready, I'll show you how to plant the seeds." "You can look at the chart to remind yourself of our ideas for good story writing." "Show me how you will follow the rules in the hall." These teacher words, spoken in a calm voice, communicate a belief that students want to—and know how to—listen, cooperate, and do good work. This increases the chance that students will see themselves as respectful listeners, cooperative people, and competent workers, and behave accordingly.
Take the time to notice and comment on positive behavior, being quite specific: "You're trying lots of different ideas for solving that problem. That takes persistence." Such observations give students hard evidence for why they should believe in themselves.
3. Focus on Actions, Not Abstractions
Because elementary-age children tend to be concrete thinkers, teachers can communicate most successfully with them by detailing specific actions that will lead to a positive environment. For example, rather than saying, "Be respectful," it's more helpful to state, "When someone is speaking during a discussion, the rest of us will listen carefully and wait until the speaker is finished before raising our hands to add a comment."
Sometimes it's effective to prompt students to name concrete positive behaviors themselves. To a student who has trouble focusing during writing time, a teacher might say matter-of-factly, "What will help you think of good ideas for your story and concentrate on writing them down?" The student might then respond, "I can find a quiet place to write, away from my friends."
There is a place, of course, for such abstract terms as respectful and responsible, but we must give students plenty of opportunities to associate those words with concrete actions. Classroom expectations such as "treat one another with kindness" will be more meaningful to students if we help them picture and practice what those expectations look like in different situations.
Focusing on action also means pointing to the desired behavior rather than labeling the learner's character or attitude. I had a student who chronically did poor work when he could do better. In a moment of frustration, I said to him, "I don't think you even care!" This allowed me to vent, but it did nothing to help the student change. His energy went toward defending himself against my negative judgment, not toward examining and changing his behavior. Worse, such language can lead students to accept our judgment and believe that they indeed don't care.
It's more helpful in such situations to issue a positive challenge that names the behavior we want: "Your job today is to record five observations of our crickets. Think about what you'll need to do before you start." This moves the focus to what the student can do.
4. Keep It Brief
It's hard for many young children to follow long strings of words like this:
When you go out to recess today, be sure to remember what we said about including everyone in games, because yesterday some kids had an issue with not being included in kickball and four square, and we've talked about this. You were doing really well for a while there, but lately it seems like you're getting kind of careless, and that's got to change or …
By the end of this spiel, many students would be thinking about other things. Few could follow the entire explanation. Students understand more when we speak less. Simply asking, "Who can tell us one way to include everyone at recess?" gives them an opportunity to remind themselves of positive behaviors. If you have taught and led students in practicing the class's expectations for recess, students will make good use of such a reminder.
5. Know When to Be Silent
The skillful use of silence can be just as powerful as the skillful use of words. When teachers use silence, we open a space for students to think, rehearse what to say, and sometimes gather the courage to speak at all.
We can see the benefit of silence if, after asking a question, we pause before taking responses from students. Researchers have found that when teachers wait three to five seconds, more students respond, and those responses show higher-level thinking (Swift & Gooding, 1983; Tobin, 1980).
Three to five seconds can feel uncomfortably long at first. But if we stick to it—and model thoughtful pausing by waiting a few seconds ourselves to respond to students' comments—we'll set a pace for the entire classroom that will soon feel natural. Our reward will be classroom conversations of higher quality.
Remaining silent allows us to listen to students and requires us to resist the impulse to jump in and correct students' words or finish their thoughts. A true listener tries to understand a speaker's message before formulating a response. When we allow students to speak uninterrupted and unhurried, we help them learn because speaking is an important means of consolidating knowledge.
In my current role teaching educators Responsive Classroom strategies, I watch teachers incorporate these five principles of language into their daily communications with students, and I see them build classrooms where students feel safe, respected, and engaged. By paying attention to our language, we can use it to open the doors of possibility for students.
References
1 Swift, J. N., & Gooding, T. (1983). Interaction of wait time feedback and questioning instruction on middle school science teaching. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 20(8), 721–730.
2 Tobin, K. G. (1980). The effect of an extended teacher wait-time on science achievement. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 17, 469–475.
3 Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
On the way: Nation's first tech-literacy exam
From: eSchool News
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/related-top-news/index.cfm?i=55483
From staff and wire reports
Primary Topic Channel: 21st Century skills
Tech literacy to be added to Nation’s Report Card beginning in 2012
For the first time ever, technological literacy will become part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation's Report Card, the test's governing board has announced.
Beginning in 2012, the test will measure students' proficiency with technology in addition to reading, math, science, history, writing, and other subjects. The new test will mark the first time students' technology literacy has been assessed on a national level.
The National Assessment Governing Board has awarded a $1.86 million contract to WestEd—a nonprofit educational research, development, and service agency based in San Francisco—to develop the 2012 NAEP Technological Literacy Framework.
Under this new contract, awarded through a competitive bidding process, WestEd will recommend the framework and specifications for the 2012 NAEP Technological Literacy Assessment. Ultimately, WestEd's work will lead to ways to define and measure students' knowledge and skills in understanding important technological tools, the Governing Board said. Board members then will decide which grade level—fourth, eighth, or 12th—will be tested in 2012.
"We are delighted to have WestEd help us lay the groundwork for an assessment in such an important area," said Darvin Winick, chairman of the Governing Board, which sets policy for NAEP. "Technology is changing and moving very fast, so accurate evaluation of student achievement in this area is essential."
NAEP's Technological Literacy Assessment comes at a time when there are no nationwide requirements or common definitions for technological literacy.
The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has developed a set of National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for students, and the No Child Left Behind Act requires that students demonstrate technological literacy by the end of the eighth grade.
Yet only a handful of states have adopted separate tests in this area, even as a growing chorus of business representatives and policy makers voices concern about the ability of American students to compete in a global marketplace and keep up with quickly evolving technology.
Several groups will help WestEd on this 18-month project, including ISTE, the Council of Chief State School Officers, the International Technology Education Association, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and the State Educational Technology Directors Association.
With this assistance, WestEd plans to convene two committees that will include technology experts, engineers, teachers, scientists, business representatives, state and local policy makers, and employers from across the country. The committees will advise WestEd on the content and design of the national tech literacy assessment.
In addition, hundreds of experts in various fields—as well as the general public—will be able to participate in hearings or provide reviews of the framework document as it is developed. Ultimately, the collaboration will reflect the perspectives of a diverse array of individuals and groups, the Governing Board said.
"WestEd has assembled a highly qualified team [composed] of exceptional organizations and knowledgeable individuals that bring a broad perspective on what students should know and be able to do in the area of technological literacy," said Steve Schneider, senior program director of WestEd's Mathematics, Science, and Technology Program. "We look forward to this opportunity to develop a framework that will guide the nation to a high-quality assessment of how our students meet the demands in this important international domain."
The Governing Board is slated to review and approve the technological literacy framework in late 2009.
"We all know that engineering and technologies in all forms—including computers, communications, energy usage, agriculture, medicine, and transportation—affect everything we hear, see, touch, and eat," said Alan J. Friedman, a physicist and member of the National Assessment Governing Board's Executive Committee. "With this new framework and the tests it will guide, we'll discover how well students today are learning to understand and use these immensely powerful tools."
Links:
National Assessment of Educational Progress
WestEd
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/related-top-news/index.cfm?i=55483
From staff and wire reports
Primary Topic Channel: 21st Century skills
Tech literacy to be added to Nation’s Report Card beginning in 2012
For the first time ever, technological literacy will become part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation's Report Card, the test's governing board has announced.
Beginning in 2012, the test will measure students' proficiency with technology in addition to reading, math, science, history, writing, and other subjects. The new test will mark the first time students' technology literacy has been assessed on a national level.
The National Assessment Governing Board has awarded a $1.86 million contract to WestEd—a nonprofit educational research, development, and service agency based in San Francisco—to develop the 2012 NAEP Technological Literacy Framework.
Under this new contract, awarded through a competitive bidding process, WestEd will recommend the framework and specifications for the 2012 NAEP Technological Literacy Assessment. Ultimately, WestEd's work will lead to ways to define and measure students' knowledge and skills in understanding important technological tools, the Governing Board said. Board members then will decide which grade level—fourth, eighth, or 12th—will be tested in 2012.
"We are delighted to have WestEd help us lay the groundwork for an assessment in such an important area," said Darvin Winick, chairman of the Governing Board, which sets policy for NAEP. "Technology is changing and moving very fast, so accurate evaluation of student achievement in this area is essential."
NAEP's Technological Literacy Assessment comes at a time when there are no nationwide requirements or common definitions for technological literacy.
The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has developed a set of National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for students, and the No Child Left Behind Act requires that students demonstrate technological literacy by the end of the eighth grade.
Yet only a handful of states have adopted separate tests in this area, even as a growing chorus of business representatives and policy makers voices concern about the ability of American students to compete in a global marketplace and keep up with quickly evolving technology.
Several groups will help WestEd on this 18-month project, including ISTE, the Council of Chief State School Officers, the International Technology Education Association, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and the State Educational Technology Directors Association.
With this assistance, WestEd plans to convene two committees that will include technology experts, engineers, teachers, scientists, business representatives, state and local policy makers, and employers from across the country. The committees will advise WestEd on the content and design of the national tech literacy assessment.
In addition, hundreds of experts in various fields—as well as the general public—will be able to participate in hearings or provide reviews of the framework document as it is developed. Ultimately, the collaboration will reflect the perspectives of a diverse array of individuals and groups, the Governing Board said.
"WestEd has assembled a highly qualified team [composed] of exceptional organizations and knowledgeable individuals that bring a broad perspective on what students should know and be able to do in the area of technological literacy," said Steve Schneider, senior program director of WestEd's Mathematics, Science, and Technology Program. "We look forward to this opportunity to develop a framework that will guide the nation to a high-quality assessment of how our students meet the demands in this important international domain."
The Governing Board is slated to review and approve the technological literacy framework in late 2009.
"We all know that engineering and technologies in all forms—including computers, communications, energy usage, agriculture, medicine, and transportation—affect everything we hear, see, touch, and eat," said Alan J. Friedman, a physicist and member of the National Assessment Governing Board's Executive Committee. "With this new framework and the tests it will guide, we'll discover how well students today are learning to understand and use these immensely powerful tools."
Links:
National Assessment of Educational Progress
WestEd
PBS launches new online community for educators
From: eSchool News
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/site-of-the-week/site/index.cfm?i=55337
PBS has unveiled a new online community for preK-12 educators that aims to support the advancement of digital media content in education. "PBS Teachers Connect" provides Web 2.0 tools and opportunities for teachers, school library media specialists, technology coordinators, early childhood educators, and other education professionals to share ideas, collaborate, and support the effective use of technology to enhance learning. The new online community is built around PBS Teachers, the web portal to the wide-ranging multimedia instructional resources and professional development services that PBS offers preK-12 educators. At no cost, educators can search more than 3,000 standards-based classroom activities, lesson plans, interactive resources, and other materials on the PBS Teachers web site, then easily bookmark, annotate, share, and manage their tagged content within the PBS Teachers Connect community. The site also enables educators to form shared-interest groups online. The community features a personalized home page for each user, enhanced user profiles, a searchable database of resources and community members, bookmarking tools, and discussion threads. Additional components, such as private messaging, community feeds, friend feeds, online events, and a digital media gallery, will be available this fall, PBS said.
http://www.pbs.org/teachers/connect
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/site-of-the-week/site/index.cfm?i=55337
PBS has unveiled a new online community for preK-12 educators that aims to support the advancement of digital media content in education. "PBS Teachers Connect" provides Web 2.0 tools and opportunities for teachers, school library media specialists, technology coordinators, early childhood educators, and other education professionals to share ideas, collaborate, and support the effective use of technology to enhance learning. The new online community is built around PBS Teachers, the web portal to the wide-ranging multimedia instructional resources and professional development services that PBS offers preK-12 educators. At no cost, educators can search more than 3,000 standards-based classroom activities, lesson plans, interactive resources, and other materials on the PBS Teachers web site, then easily bookmark, annotate, share, and manage their tagged content within the PBS Teachers Connect community. The site also enables educators to form shared-interest groups online. The community features a personalized home page for each user, enhanced user profiles, a searchable database of resources and community members, bookmarking tools, and discussion threads. Additional components, such as private messaging, community feeds, friend feeds, online events, and a digital media gallery, will be available this fall, PBS said.
http://www.pbs.org/teachers/connect
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Getting Sleepy
From: Teacher Magazine
http://www.teachermagazine.org/tm/articles/2008/09/23/tm_sleep.h20.html?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=mrss
By Anthony Rebora
Here’s a new angle on the teacher-quality issue: According to a study by researchers at Ball State University, many teachers may not be getting enough sleep at night to be fully effective in the classroom.
Some 43 percent of teachers surveyed said they slept an average of six hours or less per night, according to the study, while half admitted to missing work or making errors due to a “serious lack of sleep.” Nearly one-fourth said their teaching skills are “significantly diminished” due to lack of sleep.
The study, which is currently under review by the Journal of School Health, examined the survey responses of 109 teachers in one Indiana district. It is considered “preliminary and descriptive,” said Denise Amschler, a professor of physiology and health sciences and co-author of the study.
While the study doesn’t correlate teachers’ reported sleep problems with instructional quality or student performance, the researchers speculated that the potential effects on schools could be significant, based on what is known about job performance and lack of sleep.
“Sleepy teachers are at higher risk of providing insufficient supervision and inferior classroom instruction,” Amschler said in a press release.
Job-Related Stress
In a phone interview, Amschler noted that, based on her own and previous research, it appears teachers get less sleep than many other professional groups. In general, she said, about one-third of adults are reported to get an average of six or fewer hours of sleep per night.
Amschler believes that teachers’ sleep problems likely derive from the unique stresses of the job, including non-fixed hours, continuous grading and planning responsibilities, and concerns about students.
The study also notes that nearly 45 percent of the respondents said they also work part-time jobs in addition to teaching.
Amschler said that teachers with sleep issues tend to fall into two categories: 1) those who are overcommitted with work and family obligations and don’t get to bed until after midnight; and 2) those who go to bed at a reasonable time but can’t fall asleep because of worry or stress about school.
In an “open-ended” section of the survey, she said, many teachers acknowledged that they were concerned about the effects of sleep deprivation on their job performance.
Asked about recommendations for addressing the problem, Amschler said she’d like to see schools include teachers’ sleep needs in wellness policies.
“Teachers tend to suffer in silence,” she noted. “They need to know that there’s no shame in getting enough sleep.”
http://www.teachermagazine.org/tm/articles/2008/09/23/tm_sleep.h20.html?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=mrss
By Anthony Rebora
Here’s a new angle on the teacher-quality issue: According to a study by researchers at Ball State University, many teachers may not be getting enough sleep at night to be fully effective in the classroom.
Some 43 percent of teachers surveyed said they slept an average of six hours or less per night, according to the study, while half admitted to missing work or making errors due to a “serious lack of sleep.” Nearly one-fourth said their teaching skills are “significantly diminished” due to lack of sleep.
The study, which is currently under review by the Journal of School Health, examined the survey responses of 109 teachers in one Indiana district. It is considered “preliminary and descriptive,” said Denise Amschler, a professor of physiology and health sciences and co-author of the study.
While the study doesn’t correlate teachers’ reported sleep problems with instructional quality or student performance, the researchers speculated that the potential effects on schools could be significant, based on what is known about job performance and lack of sleep.
“Sleepy teachers are at higher risk of providing insufficient supervision and inferior classroom instruction,” Amschler said in a press release.
Job-Related Stress
In a phone interview, Amschler noted that, based on her own and previous research, it appears teachers get less sleep than many other professional groups. In general, she said, about one-third of adults are reported to get an average of six or fewer hours of sleep per night.
Amschler believes that teachers’ sleep problems likely derive from the unique stresses of the job, including non-fixed hours, continuous grading and planning responsibilities, and concerns about students.
The study also notes that nearly 45 percent of the respondents said they also work part-time jobs in addition to teaching.
Amschler said that teachers with sleep issues tend to fall into two categories: 1) those who are overcommitted with work and family obligations and don’t get to bed until after midnight; and 2) those who go to bed at a reasonable time but can’t fall asleep because of worry or stress about school.
In an “open-ended” section of the survey, she said, many teachers acknowledged that they were concerned about the effects of sleep deprivation on their job performance.
Asked about recommendations for addressing the problem, Amschler said she’d like to see schools include teachers’ sleep needs in wellness policies.
“Teachers tend to suffer in silence,” she noted. “They need to know that there’s no shame in getting enough sleep.”
Perspectives / Ode to Positive Teachers
From: ASCD
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Author: Marge Scherer
I've never set much store by positive thinking. At best, always looking on the bright side seems too Pollyannaish, and at worst, trying to pretend away harsh realities seems manipulative and dishonest. From my graduate school days, I recall the quip of a journalism professor: "In this country, only journalists are allowed to be negative." In that post-Watergate era, being critical was actually the hallmark of idealism and reform-mindedness.
Working with children so much, educators are professionally predisposed to be optimistic. After all, most teachers go into the profession to help members of the younger generation fulfill their hopes for the future. As with journalism, however, truly positive teaching is complicated and comes in different guises.
Take, for example, the late Professor Randy Pausch, whose iconic last lecture featured on YouTube is a testimony to positive thinking.1 Faced with a prognosis of death in his 40s, he pulls out all the stops to impart life lessons to his students. But the life lessons are cloaked in what he calls "head fakes." An amusing lecture that is ostensibly about fulfilling childhood dreams is really about the hard work of living your life. What is, on the surface, a lecture to college students studying technology is actually a legacy to his own children. In his teaching, Pausch also used "head fakes." Awed by his students' first "virtual world" projects, he told them, "These are good, but I know you can do much better."
Cindi Rigsbee, a middle school teacher, recalls in a Teacher Leaders Network column (2008) that when she began her career, every day was a battle. That was the year her mantra became, "If you make them the enemy, they win." She describes a more recent encounter with a 7th grader attempting to disrupt the class. Instead of responding harshly, she walked over to him, spoke calmly, and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. He grinned and went back to work. "Whatever it takes, build relationships," is her advice to teachers who struggle.
In Sweating the Small Stuff, David Whitman (2008) sketches portraits of successful inner-city schools taking a tough, even rigid, approach toward their students. Many of these schools unapologetically enforce a detailed code of conduct and have low tolerance for disorder. The attitude is paternalistic, and some of these school practices would seem old-fashioned, even disheartening, if that is all these schools offered. But these schools also follow through, make connections with students, tailor assistance for strugglers, and create a sense of community.
New teachers embarking on their first job invariably look forward to working with kids. Yet, they can quickly lose their positive attitudes when faced with difficult situations: kids who won't do homework, colleagues mired in the old ways, parents who defend the worst behavior of their offspring, policymakers who criticize schools, pressures to teach to tests, and an apparent lack of time to teach meaningfully.
In this issue, educators tell how they make negative situations positive and good situations better. They don't all do it in the same way. Some offer positive support for good behavior (p. 38); others adopt the stance of "a warm demander" (p. 54). Some concentrate on directly teaching positive behaviors (see, especially, p. 16). Still others teach students how to fight realities such as violence and bigotry (p. 44). Some "wage" peace in war-torn countries (p. 32). And our lead article celebrates joy, not to be confused with fun, although perhaps there is a place for fun, too (p. 8). All of our authors keep in mind the twin messages of teaching that should never be teased apart: "I care about you. And I care about your learning."
William Ayers, in an essay entitled "The Hope and Practice of Teaching" (2006), advises beginning teachers to reject the "Don't smile until Christmas" maxims of teaching and
start in a different place, with a faith that every child comes to you a whole and multidimensional being, much like yourself.... I want beginning teachers to... reject these cliches..., to stand on their own feet, and to make their way toward the moral heart of teaching at its best.
It is enough to restore your faith in positive thinking.
References
1 Ayers, W. (2006). The hope and practice of teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 57(3), 269–279.
2 Rigsbee, C. (2008, January 30). Positively teaching. Teacher Magazine. Available: www.teachermagazine.org/tm/articles/2008/01/30/20tln_rigsbee_web.h19.html
Whitman, D. (2008). Sweating the small stuff: Inner-city schools and the new paternalism. Washington, DC: Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
Endnote
1 To see and comment on the video, go to http://ascd.typepad.com/blog/2008/08/most-clicked-la.html
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Author: Marge Scherer
I've never set much store by positive thinking. At best, always looking on the bright side seems too Pollyannaish, and at worst, trying to pretend away harsh realities seems manipulative and dishonest. From my graduate school days, I recall the quip of a journalism professor: "In this country, only journalists are allowed to be negative." In that post-Watergate era, being critical was actually the hallmark of idealism and reform-mindedness.
Working with children so much, educators are professionally predisposed to be optimistic. After all, most teachers go into the profession to help members of the younger generation fulfill their hopes for the future. As with journalism, however, truly positive teaching is complicated and comes in different guises.
Take, for example, the late Professor Randy Pausch, whose iconic last lecture featured on YouTube is a testimony to positive thinking.1 Faced with a prognosis of death in his 40s, he pulls out all the stops to impart life lessons to his students. But the life lessons are cloaked in what he calls "head fakes." An amusing lecture that is ostensibly about fulfilling childhood dreams is really about the hard work of living your life. What is, on the surface, a lecture to college students studying technology is actually a legacy to his own children. In his teaching, Pausch also used "head fakes." Awed by his students' first "virtual world" projects, he told them, "These are good, but I know you can do much better."
Cindi Rigsbee, a middle school teacher, recalls in a Teacher Leaders Network column (2008) that when she began her career, every day was a battle. That was the year her mantra became, "If you make them the enemy, they win." She describes a more recent encounter with a 7th grader attempting to disrupt the class. Instead of responding harshly, she walked over to him, spoke calmly, and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. He grinned and went back to work. "Whatever it takes, build relationships," is her advice to teachers who struggle.
In Sweating the Small Stuff, David Whitman (2008) sketches portraits of successful inner-city schools taking a tough, even rigid, approach toward their students. Many of these schools unapologetically enforce a detailed code of conduct and have low tolerance for disorder. The attitude is paternalistic, and some of these school practices would seem old-fashioned, even disheartening, if that is all these schools offered. But these schools also follow through, make connections with students, tailor assistance for strugglers, and create a sense of community.
New teachers embarking on their first job invariably look forward to working with kids. Yet, they can quickly lose their positive attitudes when faced with difficult situations: kids who won't do homework, colleagues mired in the old ways, parents who defend the worst behavior of their offspring, policymakers who criticize schools, pressures to teach to tests, and an apparent lack of time to teach meaningfully.
In this issue, educators tell how they make negative situations positive and good situations better. They don't all do it in the same way. Some offer positive support for good behavior (p. 38); others adopt the stance of "a warm demander" (p. 54). Some concentrate on directly teaching positive behaviors (see, especially, p. 16). Still others teach students how to fight realities such as violence and bigotry (p. 44). Some "wage" peace in war-torn countries (p. 32). And our lead article celebrates joy, not to be confused with fun, although perhaps there is a place for fun, too (p. 8). All of our authors keep in mind the twin messages of teaching that should never be teased apart: "I care about you. And I care about your learning."
William Ayers, in an essay entitled "The Hope and Practice of Teaching" (2006), advises beginning teachers to reject the "Don't smile until Christmas" maxims of teaching and
start in a different place, with a faith that every child comes to you a whole and multidimensional being, much like yourself.... I want beginning teachers to... reject these cliches..., to stand on their own feet, and to make their way toward the moral heart of teaching at its best.
It is enough to restore your faith in positive thinking.
References
1 Ayers, W. (2006). The hope and practice of teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 57(3), 269–279.
2 Rigsbee, C. (2008, January 30). Positively teaching. Teacher Magazine. Available: www.teachermagazine.org/tm/articles/2008/01/30/20tln_rigsbee_web.h19.html
Whitman, D. (2008). Sweating the small stuff: Inner-city schools and the new paternalism. Washington, DC: Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
Endnote
1 To see and comment on the video, go to http://ascd.typepad.com/blog/2008/08/most-clicked-la.html
Monday, September 22, 2008
Schools fight losing battle against cell phones
From: eSchool News
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/around-the-web/index.cfm?i=55302
By Ben Fulton
Primary Topic Channel: Handheld technologies
Salli Robinson was first exposed to cell phones in the classroom when she taught health at Utah State University. Nothing, however, could prepare her for what she saw when she arrived at East High School.
"Students walk down the hall, talk to their friends and text at the same time," said Robinson, a counselor in the Salt Lake City school's GEAR UP program, which prepares high school students for college. "Teachers think they've got a handle on it, but they don't."
Socks and shoes make ideal hiding places for students with cell phones, Robinson said. So does the bend of a knee while sitting in class. Students with music file-equipped phones store them inside baggy coat sleeves, then rest their heads on top of their desks near the phones' speakers.
And don't bother trying to catch students in the act of texting their friends. Most are so agile they can text without looking at the phone, which is hidden under the desk as they look toward the blackboard paying mock attention to what the teacher is saying.
"It's a fact of life," Robinson said. "There's no way you could ban them. It would be too much of a logistical nightmare."
That doesn't mean Utah schools don't try to regulate them.
Approaches vary depending on the school, but in general, most districts allow students to bring phones to school as long as they remain off during class and instruction time, pose no disruption to school operations, and are not used to exploit personal or confedential information. Exceptions are made in cases of family and medical emergencies, but if a student is caught using a phone during class time, it's routinely confiscated and held captive for retrieval by the student's parent or guardian.
Since their arrival in schools, cell phones have been a source of annoyance, concern and even scandal in cases involving a small number of Utah students who've used them to swap nude photos. Students at Weber High School in Ogden rallied their cell phones en masse last week to send enough text messages to a country music station to win a visit from pop star Jessica Simpson, while students from Salt Lake City's Highland High School used a phone to record a fistfight later posted for online viewing.
But while school administrators experience occasional heartburn over how creatively students may use their cell phones, some believe the time has come for teachers and school staff to work with technology used by students, not against it.
At this month's meeting of the Utah Board of Education, board member Teresa Theurer warned fellow board members against restrictions on cell phones that might prove counterproductive as they craft a model policy regarding cell phones in schools. Theurer said her son's English teacher at Logan High School has found ways to incorporate cell phone text messaging and e-mail into lessons and assignments that engage students to a remarkable degree. Assignments are sent as text messages or e-mail attachments, Theurer said. She's also read accounts of teachers who use students' cell phones to "text" a class discussion, rather than discuss a topic in class.
"If you want to get a message to a teenager, you send a text message," Theurer said. "We need to incorporate what's going on in the world. We can't turn our backs on what's happening, because it's not all bad."
Restrictions on their use in schools aren't always consistent, however.
For Heather Angell, a 15-year-old freshman at East, the freedom to answer her phone depends on what class she's in. "I had a huge conversation in interior design," Angell said. "It depends on which teacher you have."
Her friend Lou Williams, also a 15-year-old East freshman, concurs. "If it's an elective class, they [teachers] don't care," she said. "If it's one of your main [academic core] classes, they care."
And cell phone shenanigans still abound. Chris Lessey, a 15-year-old freshman at East, recalled how one student he knows used a cell phone to photograph the posterior of a student-teacher, then used it as a background image on his cell phone.
Using the devices to cheat on exams is another issue. Administrators of college-entrance exams such as the ACT and SAT ban the devices outright in rooms where students take the test. Still, some students say stories of students using their phones to cheat are overblown.
"Nobody I know texts answers," Angell said. "Everyone would think you were a loser. People would delete your number from their phone, hypothetically speaking."
Students said their parents are complicit in keeping devices in the school environment. The convenience of easy communication is too great for discipline. Besides, what parent wouldn't want their child to have one in case of an emergency?
Paul R. Schulte, principal of Salt Lake City's Highland High School, points out the fight recorded by students at his school wielding a cell phone took place off campus. On campus, the school's policy is more successful, with students allowed to use their phones at lunchtime and outside the school only - never in the halls.
"The only thing we haven't seen here is a student who can shoot a basket and text at the same time," Schulte said. "Even that may be coming soon."
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/around-the-web/index.cfm?i=55302
By Ben Fulton
Primary Topic Channel: Handheld technologies
Salli Robinson was first exposed to cell phones in the classroom when she taught health at Utah State University. Nothing, however, could prepare her for what she saw when she arrived at East High School.
"Students walk down the hall, talk to their friends and text at the same time," said Robinson, a counselor in the Salt Lake City school's GEAR UP program, which prepares high school students for college. "Teachers think they've got a handle on it, but they don't."
Socks and shoes make ideal hiding places for students with cell phones, Robinson said. So does the bend of a knee while sitting in class. Students with music file-equipped phones store them inside baggy coat sleeves, then rest their heads on top of their desks near the phones' speakers.
And don't bother trying to catch students in the act of texting their friends. Most are so agile they can text without looking at the phone, which is hidden under the desk as they look toward the blackboard paying mock attention to what the teacher is saying.
"It's a fact of life," Robinson said. "There's no way you could ban them. It would be too much of a logistical nightmare."
That doesn't mean Utah schools don't try to regulate them.
Approaches vary depending on the school, but in general, most districts allow students to bring phones to school as long as they remain off during class and instruction time, pose no disruption to school operations, and are not used to exploit personal or confedential information. Exceptions are made in cases of family and medical emergencies, but if a student is caught using a phone during class time, it's routinely confiscated and held captive for retrieval by the student's parent or guardian.
Since their arrival in schools, cell phones have been a source of annoyance, concern and even scandal in cases involving a small number of Utah students who've used them to swap nude photos. Students at Weber High School in Ogden rallied their cell phones en masse last week to send enough text messages to a country music station to win a visit from pop star Jessica Simpson, while students from Salt Lake City's Highland High School used a phone to record a fistfight later posted for online viewing.
But while school administrators experience occasional heartburn over how creatively students may use their cell phones, some believe the time has come for teachers and school staff to work with technology used by students, not against it.
At this month's meeting of the Utah Board of Education, board member Teresa Theurer warned fellow board members against restrictions on cell phones that might prove counterproductive as they craft a model policy regarding cell phones in schools. Theurer said her son's English teacher at Logan High School has found ways to incorporate cell phone text messaging and e-mail into lessons and assignments that engage students to a remarkable degree. Assignments are sent as text messages or e-mail attachments, Theurer said. She's also read accounts of teachers who use students' cell phones to "text" a class discussion, rather than discuss a topic in class.
"If you want to get a message to a teenager, you send a text message," Theurer said. "We need to incorporate what's going on in the world. We can't turn our backs on what's happening, because it's not all bad."
Restrictions on their use in schools aren't always consistent, however.
For Heather Angell, a 15-year-old freshman at East, the freedom to answer her phone depends on what class she's in. "I had a huge conversation in interior design," Angell said. "It depends on which teacher you have."
Her friend Lou Williams, also a 15-year-old East freshman, concurs. "If it's an elective class, they [teachers] don't care," she said. "If it's one of your main [academic core] classes, they care."
And cell phone shenanigans still abound. Chris Lessey, a 15-year-old freshman at East, recalled how one student he knows used a cell phone to photograph the posterior of a student-teacher, then used it as a background image on his cell phone.
Using the devices to cheat on exams is another issue. Administrators of college-entrance exams such as the ACT and SAT ban the devices outright in rooms where students take the test. Still, some students say stories of students using their phones to cheat are overblown.
"Nobody I know texts answers," Angell said. "Everyone would think you were a loser. People would delete your number from their phone, hypothetically speaking."
Students said their parents are complicit in keeping devices in the school environment. The convenience of easy communication is too great for discipline. Besides, what parent wouldn't want their child to have one in case of an emergency?
Paul R. Schulte, principal of Salt Lake City's Highland High School, points out the fight recorded by students at his school wielding a cell phone took place off campus. On campus, the school's policy is more successful, with students allowed to use their phones at lunchtime and outside the school only - never in the halls.
"The only thing we haven't seen here is a student who can shoot a basket and text at the same time," Schulte said. "Even that may be coming soon."
Research Yields Clues on the Effects of Extra Time for Learning
From: Education Week
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/09/24/05narresearch_ep.h28.html?tmp=2021868717
By Debra Viadero
Vol. 28, Issue 05, Pages 16-18
Yet Results Are Inconclusive as Scholars Have Trouble Teasing Out Which Strategies Work Best
In the winter of 2003, when a string of storms closed schools for days on end in his home state of Maryland, researcher—and parent—Dave E. Marcotte wondered how all that lost learning time would affect students’ achievement.
The answer, as it turned out, was quite a lot. With fellow University of Maryland, Baltimore County scholar Steven W. Hemelt, Mr. Marcotte analyzed 20 years of data from state reading and math exams to find out how unscheduled interruptions, such as snow days or teacher strikes, affect students’ test scores. They found, for instance, that, in a year with five lost school days, which is the average number for Maryland, the number of 3rd graders who met state proficiency targets was 3 percent lower than in years with no school closings.
While that figure may seem low, the consequences for schools were pretty high. The researchers calculated that more than half the elementary schools that had been singled out by the state over the past three years for failing to make adequate progress would have been on target to pass if Mother Nature hadn’t interfered.
Mr. Marcotte’s findings, which were published this year in the Education Finance and Policy journal, cast in unusually concrete terms the kind of impact that lost—or extended—learning time can have on learning.
Since the work of the national education commission that gave birth to the report A Nation at Risk in 1983, one blue-ribbon panel after another has called for expanding learning time as a way to boost student achievement. Yet studies only recently have begun to document the potential impact that a little extra learning time might have in practice.
The research is also pretty thin on what the best strategies might be for lengthening the amount of time that students spend in school:
Would achievement improve more with a longer school year or a longer school day? Is a block schedule more effective than a “double dose” of core academic classes for students struggling in a particular subject? What about after-school programs? Studies over the past 25 or 30 years have provided helpful clues to those questions but no definitive answers.
Making Time Count
On one point, though, scholars agree. Giving students more time won’t, in and of itself, improve learning. It’s all about what educators do to make the most of any extra time they get.
“If you spoke with most scholars who have looked at the way time can be configured and expanded, I think you’d find that the general consensus is that, while time can be valuable in enhancing student learning, you can never ignore how it will be used,” said Harris Cooper, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University in Durham, N.C.
One reason that research has been slow to quantify time’s role in learning is that it’s hard to disentangle its effect from other improvement efforts going on simultaneously. The Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, network of schools provides a prime example.
The schools, most of which are charter schools in low-income neighborhoods, have won accolades for the impressive test-score gains their students make. But evaluations of KIPP schools have yet to figure out just what the schools are doing right.
Is it the academic culture, the rigorous classwork, the strict discipline and character-building lessons, or simply the fact that KIPP students spend 62 percent more time in school than peers in regular schools? The KIPP school day is typically eight and a half hours long, although some of that time is spent in after-school programs.
Students also attend half-day classes on Saturdays twice a month and then go to school two to three weeks longer in the summer, explains a report published last spring by the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank that supports expanded learning time.
“I’ve visited KIPP schools, and I think they’re doing just about everything right,” said John H. Bishop, an associate professor of human-resource studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. “Maybe the extra time makes it easier to do all those other things right, too.”
Mr. Bishop said Mr. Marcotte’s study of Maryland school closings is more convincing than most because it involved more than 1,000 schools and 20 years of test data, which allowed the researchers to compare scores for the same schools over time. And, because the exams take place on virtually the same day every year in March or April, schools have not yet made up lost days before exam time rolls around.
“You have this variation in the amount of time that kids are in school that’s completely out of educators’ control,” explained Mr. Marcotte, “so it’s the closest we can get to a random-assignment experiment.”
Muddied Results
Researchers Caroline M. Hoxby and Sonali Murarka, drew a similar conclusion last year in a study of 47 charter schools in New York City. As part of the ongoing study, in which students are assigned by lottery to regular public schools or one of the city’s charter schools, researchers looked at whether student-achievement gains could be linked to particular school characteristics, such as the length of the school year, Saturday classes, the years the school had been in operation, longer days, the math curricula used, or the availability of after-school programming.
“The longer school year was the one thing that really leapt out and was strong from the beginning,” said Ms. Hoxby, a Stanford University economist. Students learned more over the school year, the researchers found, when schools were in session for 190 days or more—about 10 days longer than is typical in U.S. schools.
Ms. Hoxby urged, though, against reading too much into the findings, which were based on just a year of test-score results.
“It could be that this really has a lot to do with a longer school year, or it could be something else about these schools,” she said. Further muddying the analysis, schools with longer years also tended to have longer school days. Moreover, the schools studied varied widely in the length of the school year, ranging from 178 to 220 instructional days.
Comparing learning time is tricky in most studies, because so much of the school day is frittered away in nonacademic activities, such as moving from class to class or passing out papers.
For example, a 1998 study by the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago found that students in that city typically received only 240 of the 300 minutes of instruction that schools were required to provide each day because of those kinds of day-to-day interruptions and delays.
Types of Time
For that reason, scholars long ago decided it was important to distinguish between allocated school time, allocated class time, instructional time, and academic learning time.
“Academic learning time is when students are actually learning, as opposed to getting bored or listening to something over the [public-address system],” said Julie Z. Aronson, a senior research associate at the San Francisco-based WestEd research organization. She reviewed the research on time and learning for a 1998 report for WestEd.
“If you can increase the time when students are really engaged at the appropriate level individually,” Ms. Aronson said, “then that does translate to higher achievement.”
Eleven years after A Nation at Risk, the National Commission on Time and Learning, in its own landmark study, suggested that one way to reclaim academic learning time might be block scheduling, which calls for dividing the school day into larger chunks of time for each subject.
While the approach was widely adopted, especially at the secondary school level, studies on whether students learn more in longer classes have so far yielded mixed results.
“I do think that’s something that looked more promising than it turned out to be,” said former panel member Christopher T. Cross, who is now the chairman of Cross & Joftus, an education consulting firm based in Bethesda, Md., and Danville, Calif.
Block plans might be more effective, however, if schools used them more strategically, according to Karen Hawley Miles, the executive director of Education Resource Strategies, a consulting group based in Watertown, Mass.
With her partners, Ms. Miles intensively studied high-performing small high schools in five cities across the country.
The researchers found that, while all the schools employed block scheduling, they did it in flexible and thoughtful ways. For instance, the schools might have scheduled a double block of time for science laboratories and a single block for regular science instruction. Another long block of time in the middle of the week might have been set aside for field trips or career internships, Ms. Miles said.
And, while all the schools had massaged their schedules to squeeze out more time for academics, they didn’t do so at the expense of learning in other subjects, such as the performing arts, she said.
“At first, we thought it was a positive trend,” Ms. Miles said, referring to the perceived tendency of schools around the country to cut out electives to devote more time to core academic subjects. “As we did more case-study work, though, we decided that was not so hot.”
Out-of-School Time
Outside the school day, after-school programs are drawing interest as a source for carving out more time for learning. Yet while much research has been done on such programs in recent years, it’s still hard to know what to make of the results.
In 2005, a rigorous, federally funded study by Mathematica Policy Research Inc., a Princeton, N.J., research organization, found students who attended after-school programs financed under the federal 21st Century Community Learning Centers program did not get any significant academic boost out of their experiences.
But a different group of researchers, looking at 35 after-school programs across the country that they considered top-notch, came to a markedly different conclusion. They found that disadvantaged students who regularly attended those programs for two years made greater gains in mathematics than did peers who spent more out-of-school time in unsupervised activities. Reading achievement, on the other hand, turned out to be more of a wash. The study was financed by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation of Flint, Mich. ("High-Quality After-School Programs Tied to Test-Score Gains," Nov. 28, 2007.)
Critics have pointed to design flaws in both studies.
Meanwhile, an interim federal report released in June approaches the after-school question from another angle, with some promising results. The idea behind the Evaluation of Enhanced Academic Instruction in After-School Programs, according to two of its authors, is to test the feasibility and effectiveness of specially created academic curricula for elementary school after-school programs.
“It’s sort of the next logical step,” said Fred Doolittle, a study co-author and a vice president of NDRC, formerly the Manpower Demonstration Research Corp. of New York City.
As part of that study, students in 50 after-school centers were randomly assigned to attend either the regular program or one of two kinds of academically oriented programs—Mathletics, a math program developed by Harcourt School Publishers, or Adventure Island, an adapted version of the Success for All reading program.
At the end of the school year, the researchers found that the math students had gained more ground on math tests than their counterparts in regular after-school programs. Overall, though, there were no significant differences in reading between the after-school reading group and children in the regular after-school program.
“In math, you could think of that growth as helping students grow by a tenth to a fifth more than they would in a regular school year,” said the lead author, Alison Rebeck Black of MDRC. “The increase in instructional time was 25 percent, so the increase in time lined up with the growth that we saw.”
Researchers are tracking the students for one more year, to see if the gains grow.
The Summer Effect
Some of the urgency behind pushes for expanding learning time has come from studies that document the dramatic degree to which disadvantaged students fall behind over the summer.
In the best known of those studies, sociologist Karl L. Alexander and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore found that both poor and better-off students make academic gains over the school year. But the more-disadvantaged students lose important ground over the summer months, presumably because they have fewer opportunities to go to camp, travel, buy books, or take part in other enrichment activities.
The researchers calculate that, by the time students reach 9th grade, two-thirds of the achievement gap between disadvantaged and better-off students owes directly to that so-called “summer learning loss.”
While some policymakers see year-round schooling as a way of making up for all that lost time, especially for disadvantaged students, few studies have found it to be an effective strategy. The reason: Most year-round schedules rearrange instructional time rather than extend it.
And, apart from Ms. Hoxby’s work on New York City’s charter schools, research on the academic benefits that come from adding days to the school year is thin and largely unreviewed, according to Mr. Cooper of Duke.
“My take on that is that, generally, you have to add 20, 35, or a sufficient amount of days,” he said, “so that adhering to the old curriculum—or stretching it out— is no longer possible, and educators really have to add new curricula.”
The pool of studies on summer-learning programs is deeper and potentially more promising, said Mr. Cooper, who in 2000 put together a meta-analysis of findings from 93 evaluations of summer school programs. Across the board, he found, such programs gave students a healthy learning boost, regardless of whether the programs were designed to tutor failing students, enrich children’s lives, or step up the pace of their learning.
“I would say there’s even stronger evidence around summer programs for disadvantaged students that combine academic support with social- and emotional-learning opportunities,” said Ron Fairchild, the executive director of the National Center for Summer Learning, at Johns Hopkins.
One such effort, Mr. Fairchild said, is Building Educated Leaders for Life, or BELL, a Boston-based, privately run summer program for urban elementary school children. In 2006, a randomized study involving 1,000 children in New York City and Boston found that participating students were a month ahead of their peers in the comparison group in reading after the six-week program.
Schools and districts are not likely, however, to embrace initiatives for extending learning time on a wide scale without solid proof to show that they work.
“Without some good evidence that these efforts can work much better than the alternatives,” Cornell’s Mr. Bishop said, “extended learning time will remain an option that some people choose but most people don’t.”
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/09/24/05narresearch_ep.h28.html?tmp=2021868717
By Debra Viadero
Vol. 28, Issue 05, Pages 16-18
Yet Results Are Inconclusive as Scholars Have Trouble Teasing Out Which Strategies Work Best
In the winter of 2003, when a string of storms closed schools for days on end in his home state of Maryland, researcher—and parent—Dave E. Marcotte wondered how all that lost learning time would affect students’ achievement.
The answer, as it turned out, was quite a lot. With fellow University of Maryland, Baltimore County scholar Steven W. Hemelt, Mr. Marcotte analyzed 20 years of data from state reading and math exams to find out how unscheduled interruptions, such as snow days or teacher strikes, affect students’ test scores. They found, for instance, that, in a year with five lost school days, which is the average number for Maryland, the number of 3rd graders who met state proficiency targets was 3 percent lower than in years with no school closings.
While that figure may seem low, the consequences for schools were pretty high. The researchers calculated that more than half the elementary schools that had been singled out by the state over the past three years for failing to make adequate progress would have been on target to pass if Mother Nature hadn’t interfered.
Mr. Marcotte’s findings, which were published this year in the Education Finance and Policy journal, cast in unusually concrete terms the kind of impact that lost—or extended—learning time can have on learning.
Since the work of the national education commission that gave birth to the report A Nation at Risk in 1983, one blue-ribbon panel after another has called for expanding learning time as a way to boost student achievement. Yet studies only recently have begun to document the potential impact that a little extra learning time might have in practice.
The research is also pretty thin on what the best strategies might be for lengthening the amount of time that students spend in school:
Would achievement improve more with a longer school year or a longer school day? Is a block schedule more effective than a “double dose” of core academic classes for students struggling in a particular subject? What about after-school programs? Studies over the past 25 or 30 years have provided helpful clues to those questions but no definitive answers.
Making Time Count
On one point, though, scholars agree. Giving students more time won’t, in and of itself, improve learning. It’s all about what educators do to make the most of any extra time they get.
“If you spoke with most scholars who have looked at the way time can be configured and expanded, I think you’d find that the general consensus is that, while time can be valuable in enhancing student learning, you can never ignore how it will be used,” said Harris Cooper, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University in Durham, N.C.
One reason that research has been slow to quantify time’s role in learning is that it’s hard to disentangle its effect from other improvement efforts going on simultaneously. The Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, network of schools provides a prime example.
The schools, most of which are charter schools in low-income neighborhoods, have won accolades for the impressive test-score gains their students make. But evaluations of KIPP schools have yet to figure out just what the schools are doing right.
Is it the academic culture, the rigorous classwork, the strict discipline and character-building lessons, or simply the fact that KIPP students spend 62 percent more time in school than peers in regular schools? The KIPP school day is typically eight and a half hours long, although some of that time is spent in after-school programs.
Students also attend half-day classes on Saturdays twice a month and then go to school two to three weeks longer in the summer, explains a report published last spring by the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank that supports expanded learning time.
“I’ve visited KIPP schools, and I think they’re doing just about everything right,” said John H. Bishop, an associate professor of human-resource studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. “Maybe the extra time makes it easier to do all those other things right, too.”
Mr. Bishop said Mr. Marcotte’s study of Maryland school closings is more convincing than most because it involved more than 1,000 schools and 20 years of test data, which allowed the researchers to compare scores for the same schools over time. And, because the exams take place on virtually the same day every year in March or April, schools have not yet made up lost days before exam time rolls around.
“You have this variation in the amount of time that kids are in school that’s completely out of educators’ control,” explained Mr. Marcotte, “so it’s the closest we can get to a random-assignment experiment.”
Muddied Results
Researchers Caroline M. Hoxby and Sonali Murarka, drew a similar conclusion last year in a study of 47 charter schools in New York City. As part of the ongoing study, in which students are assigned by lottery to regular public schools or one of the city’s charter schools, researchers looked at whether student-achievement gains could be linked to particular school characteristics, such as the length of the school year, Saturday classes, the years the school had been in operation, longer days, the math curricula used, or the availability of after-school programming.
“The longer school year was the one thing that really leapt out and was strong from the beginning,” said Ms. Hoxby, a Stanford University economist. Students learned more over the school year, the researchers found, when schools were in session for 190 days or more—about 10 days longer than is typical in U.S. schools.
Ms. Hoxby urged, though, against reading too much into the findings, which were based on just a year of test-score results.
“It could be that this really has a lot to do with a longer school year, or it could be something else about these schools,” she said. Further muddying the analysis, schools with longer years also tended to have longer school days. Moreover, the schools studied varied widely in the length of the school year, ranging from 178 to 220 instructional days.
Comparing learning time is tricky in most studies, because so much of the school day is frittered away in nonacademic activities, such as moving from class to class or passing out papers.
For example, a 1998 study by the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago found that students in that city typically received only 240 of the 300 minutes of instruction that schools were required to provide each day because of those kinds of day-to-day interruptions and delays.
Types of Time
For that reason, scholars long ago decided it was important to distinguish between allocated school time, allocated class time, instructional time, and academic learning time.
“Academic learning time is when students are actually learning, as opposed to getting bored or listening to something over the [public-address system],” said Julie Z. Aronson, a senior research associate at the San Francisco-based WestEd research organization. She reviewed the research on time and learning for a 1998 report for WestEd.
“If you can increase the time when students are really engaged at the appropriate level individually,” Ms. Aronson said, “then that does translate to higher achievement.”
Eleven years after A Nation at Risk, the National Commission on Time and Learning, in its own landmark study, suggested that one way to reclaim academic learning time might be block scheduling, which calls for dividing the school day into larger chunks of time for each subject.
While the approach was widely adopted, especially at the secondary school level, studies on whether students learn more in longer classes have so far yielded mixed results.
“I do think that’s something that looked more promising than it turned out to be,” said former panel member Christopher T. Cross, who is now the chairman of Cross & Joftus, an education consulting firm based in Bethesda, Md., and Danville, Calif.
Block plans might be more effective, however, if schools used them more strategically, according to Karen Hawley Miles, the executive director of Education Resource Strategies, a consulting group based in Watertown, Mass.
With her partners, Ms. Miles intensively studied high-performing small high schools in five cities across the country.
The researchers found that, while all the schools employed block scheduling, they did it in flexible and thoughtful ways. For instance, the schools might have scheduled a double block of time for science laboratories and a single block for regular science instruction. Another long block of time in the middle of the week might have been set aside for field trips or career internships, Ms. Miles said.
And, while all the schools had massaged their schedules to squeeze out more time for academics, they didn’t do so at the expense of learning in other subjects, such as the performing arts, she said.
“At first, we thought it was a positive trend,” Ms. Miles said, referring to the perceived tendency of schools around the country to cut out electives to devote more time to core academic subjects. “As we did more case-study work, though, we decided that was not so hot.”
Out-of-School Time
Outside the school day, after-school programs are drawing interest as a source for carving out more time for learning. Yet while much research has been done on such programs in recent years, it’s still hard to know what to make of the results.
In 2005, a rigorous, federally funded study by Mathematica Policy Research Inc., a Princeton, N.J., research organization, found students who attended after-school programs financed under the federal 21st Century Community Learning Centers program did not get any significant academic boost out of their experiences.
But a different group of researchers, looking at 35 after-school programs across the country that they considered top-notch, came to a markedly different conclusion. They found that disadvantaged students who regularly attended those programs for two years made greater gains in mathematics than did peers who spent more out-of-school time in unsupervised activities. Reading achievement, on the other hand, turned out to be more of a wash. The study was financed by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation of Flint, Mich. ("High-Quality After-School Programs Tied to Test-Score Gains," Nov. 28, 2007.)
Critics have pointed to design flaws in both studies.
Meanwhile, an interim federal report released in June approaches the after-school question from another angle, with some promising results. The idea behind the Evaluation of Enhanced Academic Instruction in After-School Programs, according to two of its authors, is to test the feasibility and effectiveness of specially created academic curricula for elementary school after-school programs.
“It’s sort of the next logical step,” said Fred Doolittle, a study co-author and a vice president of NDRC, formerly the Manpower Demonstration Research Corp. of New York City.
As part of that study, students in 50 after-school centers were randomly assigned to attend either the regular program or one of two kinds of academically oriented programs—Mathletics, a math program developed by Harcourt School Publishers, or Adventure Island, an adapted version of the Success for All reading program.
At the end of the school year, the researchers found that the math students had gained more ground on math tests than their counterparts in regular after-school programs. Overall, though, there were no significant differences in reading between the after-school reading group and children in the regular after-school program.
“In math, you could think of that growth as helping students grow by a tenth to a fifth more than they would in a regular school year,” said the lead author, Alison Rebeck Black of MDRC. “The increase in instructional time was 25 percent, so the increase in time lined up with the growth that we saw.”
Researchers are tracking the students for one more year, to see if the gains grow.
The Summer Effect
Some of the urgency behind pushes for expanding learning time has come from studies that document the dramatic degree to which disadvantaged students fall behind over the summer.
In the best known of those studies, sociologist Karl L. Alexander and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore found that both poor and better-off students make academic gains over the school year. But the more-disadvantaged students lose important ground over the summer months, presumably because they have fewer opportunities to go to camp, travel, buy books, or take part in other enrichment activities.
The researchers calculate that, by the time students reach 9th grade, two-thirds of the achievement gap between disadvantaged and better-off students owes directly to that so-called “summer learning loss.”
While some policymakers see year-round schooling as a way of making up for all that lost time, especially for disadvantaged students, few studies have found it to be an effective strategy. The reason: Most year-round schedules rearrange instructional time rather than extend it.
And, apart from Ms. Hoxby’s work on New York City’s charter schools, research on the academic benefits that come from adding days to the school year is thin and largely unreviewed, according to Mr. Cooper of Duke.
“My take on that is that, generally, you have to add 20, 35, or a sufficient amount of days,” he said, “so that adhering to the old curriculum—or stretching it out— is no longer possible, and educators really have to add new curricula.”
The pool of studies on summer-learning programs is deeper and potentially more promising, said Mr. Cooper, who in 2000 put together a meta-analysis of findings from 93 evaluations of summer school programs. Across the board, he found, such programs gave students a healthy learning boost, regardless of whether the programs were designed to tutor failing students, enrich children’s lives, or step up the pace of their learning.
“I would say there’s even stronger evidence around summer programs for disadvantaged students that combine academic support with social- and emotional-learning opportunities,” said Ron Fairchild, the executive director of the National Center for Summer Learning, at Johns Hopkins.
One such effort, Mr. Fairchild said, is Building Educated Leaders for Life, or BELL, a Boston-based, privately run summer program for urban elementary school children. In 2006, a randomized study involving 1,000 children in New York City and Boston found that participating students were a month ahead of their peers in the comparison group in reading after the six-week program.
Schools and districts are not likely, however, to embrace initiatives for extending learning time on a wide scale without solid proof to show that they work.
“Without some good evidence that these efforts can work much better than the alternatives,” Cornell’s Mr. Bishop said, “extended learning time will remain an option that some people choose but most people don’t.”
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Yemeni 10-year-old divorcee Nujood Ali goes back to school
From: Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-fg-nujood20-2008sep20,0,7766653.story?track=rss
By Delphine Minoui and Borzou Daragahi
SANA, YEMEN -- Still groggy, the schoolgirl brushed her hair, struggled to pull on her socks and snuggled into her school uniform: a green gown and a white head scarf.
By the time she gathered up her books and strapped on her backpack she was smiling and enthusiastic, her nervousness eclipsed by anticipation of the first day of class.
Like children across the world, 10-year-old Nujood Ali went back to school this month after a lengthy break. But Nujood hadn't been lazing about or playing hide-and-seek with her friends during the summer.
Instead, after she was pulled out of the second grade by her father earlier this year, she was married off to a man three times her age, who beat her and sexually abused her.
For many girls in this traditional society, where tribal custom and conservative interpretations of Islam dominate, that would have been the end of the story. But Nujood was outraged. She gathered up her courage and on the advice of an aunt went to court in April. She got the help of a lawyer and filed for divorce.
A judge quickly granted it.
And on Tuesday morning, the divorcee, possibly the world's youngest, once again became a schoolgirl.
"I'm very happy to be going back to school," she said, waiting in her ramshackle home for her younger sister Haifa to get ready. "I'm going to study Arabic, the Koran, mathematics and drawing. I will do that with my classmates and I will definitely make friends there.
"Nujood's unusual story of rebellion made her an international celebrity. Since The Times wrote of her in June, CNN, Elle magazine and other international media have come to this mountaintop capital to chronicle her tale.
Hordes of nonprofit organizations offered to help her get back to school, some even willing to foot the bill to send her abroad or to a fancy private academy, though they ignored Haifa, Nujood's little sister and best friend.
In the end, Nujood opted for a small, government-run public school relatively close to her home. She would begin where she left off, starting the second grade again.
Even then, it wasn't easy. One teacher said she worried that Nujood might disturb other students by talking about her sexual experiences.
The night before she went to school, Nujood said she dreamed of notebooks, drawings and new friends.
"When I left school, I learned how to count from one to 100," she said. "Now, I am going to learn how to count until a million."
Nujood said she wanted to study hard, to be able to attend university and become a lawyer like Shada Nasser, the well-known Yemeni human rights advocate who helped her get her divorce.
The girl's experience, and her ambition, have even served as an inspiration to her parents, uneducated rural people who moved to the capital's outskirts a few years ago and say they married her off to protect her from the dangers of the city.
"We were never asked if we wanted to go to school when we were children," said her father, Ali Mohammed Ahdal, who has two wives and 16 children.
"If we had a choice, we would have loved to study like Nujood."
On Tuesday morning, Nujood and Haifa climbed into a yellow taxi paid for by an Italian aid group and drove through the capital's smog-choked streets, passing vendors of the mildly narcotic khat leaves and the occasional shepherd.
Outside the schoolhouse, Nasser stood waiting, eager to share a day she had anticipated. "I can't believe we finally made it," said the attorney, who agreed to drop the rest of her caseload to take up Nujood's cause after the girl showed up alone in a Sana courthouse in April.
Nujood and Nasser were welcomed by Njala Matri, the principal of the school in Rawdha, a lower-middle-class neighborhood along the road to the city's international airport.
"You are welcome here. You can feel at home," she said, smiling at Nujood.
Only about half of Yemeni girls attend primary school. Last year, one of the school's 1,200 girls, a 13-year-old, dropped out to marry, though the legal age of consent is 15. "Now, she's a mother," Matri said in dismay.
Women's rights activists say child marriage is part of a vicious circle. Girls drop out of school and bear too many children, contributing to Yemen's high female illiteracy and exploding birth rate.
But on Tuesday, Nujood stepped through the school's gates into a vast courtyard, disappearing into a swarm of noisy classmates. Some paid her no mind, while others approached the girl who had become a local and international media star.
"I am so excited," she said, playing nervously with her hands.
A bell sounded and the students quieted down, forming lines for roll call before shuffling into classrooms of about 50 students each.
Nujood took a seat in the third row, neither at the front nor the back of the classroom.
The teacher, dressed in an all-covering black abaya, hushed the students and began the day's lesson by asking them to recite the national anthem as well as passages from the Koran.
Small hands shot into the air.
"Who can recite the Surat al-Hamd?" the teacher asked, referring to the first chapter of the Koran.
She saw Nujood's hand, and called her name.
"Nujood?" she said.
Nujood stood up and began, ending with: "Show us the straight path. The path of those whom You have favored. Not the path of those who earn Your anger nor of those who go astray."
"May God bless you," said the teacher.
"Let's give her a round of applause."
The others clapped as Nujood sat down, a little girl once again.
http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-fg-nujood20-2008sep20,0,7766653.story?track=rss
By Delphine Minoui and Borzou Daragahi
SANA, YEMEN -- Still groggy, the schoolgirl brushed her hair, struggled to pull on her socks and snuggled into her school uniform: a green gown and a white head scarf.
By the time she gathered up her books and strapped on her backpack she was smiling and enthusiastic, her nervousness eclipsed by anticipation of the first day of class.
Like children across the world, 10-year-old Nujood Ali went back to school this month after a lengthy break. But Nujood hadn't been lazing about or playing hide-and-seek with her friends during the summer.
Instead, after she was pulled out of the second grade by her father earlier this year, she was married off to a man three times her age, who beat her and sexually abused her.
For many girls in this traditional society, where tribal custom and conservative interpretations of Islam dominate, that would have been the end of the story. But Nujood was outraged. She gathered up her courage and on the advice of an aunt went to court in April. She got the help of a lawyer and filed for divorce.
A judge quickly granted it.
And on Tuesday morning, the divorcee, possibly the world's youngest, once again became a schoolgirl.
"I'm very happy to be going back to school," she said, waiting in her ramshackle home for her younger sister Haifa to get ready. "I'm going to study Arabic, the Koran, mathematics and drawing. I will do that with my classmates and I will definitely make friends there.
"Nujood's unusual story of rebellion made her an international celebrity. Since The Times wrote of her in June, CNN, Elle magazine and other international media have come to this mountaintop capital to chronicle her tale.
Hordes of nonprofit organizations offered to help her get back to school, some even willing to foot the bill to send her abroad or to a fancy private academy, though they ignored Haifa, Nujood's little sister and best friend.
In the end, Nujood opted for a small, government-run public school relatively close to her home. She would begin where she left off, starting the second grade again.
Even then, it wasn't easy. One teacher said she worried that Nujood might disturb other students by talking about her sexual experiences.
The night before she went to school, Nujood said she dreamed of notebooks, drawings and new friends.
"When I left school, I learned how to count from one to 100," she said. "Now, I am going to learn how to count until a million."
Nujood said she wanted to study hard, to be able to attend university and become a lawyer like Shada Nasser, the well-known Yemeni human rights advocate who helped her get her divorce.
The girl's experience, and her ambition, have even served as an inspiration to her parents, uneducated rural people who moved to the capital's outskirts a few years ago and say they married her off to protect her from the dangers of the city.
"We were never asked if we wanted to go to school when we were children," said her father, Ali Mohammed Ahdal, who has two wives and 16 children.
"If we had a choice, we would have loved to study like Nujood."
On Tuesday morning, Nujood and Haifa climbed into a yellow taxi paid for by an Italian aid group and drove through the capital's smog-choked streets, passing vendors of the mildly narcotic khat leaves and the occasional shepherd.
Outside the schoolhouse, Nasser stood waiting, eager to share a day she had anticipated. "I can't believe we finally made it," said the attorney, who agreed to drop the rest of her caseload to take up Nujood's cause after the girl showed up alone in a Sana courthouse in April.
Nujood and Nasser were welcomed by Njala Matri, the principal of the school in Rawdha, a lower-middle-class neighborhood along the road to the city's international airport.
"You are welcome here. You can feel at home," she said, smiling at Nujood.
Only about half of Yemeni girls attend primary school. Last year, one of the school's 1,200 girls, a 13-year-old, dropped out to marry, though the legal age of consent is 15. "Now, she's a mother," Matri said in dismay.
Women's rights activists say child marriage is part of a vicious circle. Girls drop out of school and bear too many children, contributing to Yemen's high female illiteracy and exploding birth rate.
But on Tuesday, Nujood stepped through the school's gates into a vast courtyard, disappearing into a swarm of noisy classmates. Some paid her no mind, while others approached the girl who had become a local and international media star.
"I am so excited," she said, playing nervously with her hands.
A bell sounded and the students quieted down, forming lines for roll call before shuffling into classrooms of about 50 students each.
Nujood took a seat in the third row, neither at the front nor the back of the classroom.
The teacher, dressed in an all-covering black abaya, hushed the students and began the day's lesson by asking them to recite the national anthem as well as passages from the Koran.
Small hands shot into the air.
"Who can recite the Surat al-Hamd?" the teacher asked, referring to the first chapter of the Koran.
She saw Nujood's hand, and called her name.
"Nujood?" she said.
Nujood stood up and began, ending with: "Show us the straight path. The path of those whom You have favored. Not the path of those who earn Your anger nor of those who go astray."
"May God bless you," said the teacher.
"Let's give her a round of applause."
The others clapped as Nujood sat down, a little girl once again.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
The Case for PEDs
From: Teacher Magazine
http://www.teachermagazine.org/tm/section/first-person/2008/09/17/tm_mcdaniel_web.h19.html?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=mrss
By Jennifer McDaniel
For the first time this year, my entire 9th grade class is on-task. Raina and Evan have stopped their awkward dance of first love, which for them involves one incessantly trying to stab the other with a pencil. Brittany has traded her lip-gloss for a pen and is intently filling out my graphic organizer. The group of boys in the back have stopped fidgeting. No gossip is being exchanged by the breathless girls who’ve claimed the large corner table. Everyone is, miraculously, working on the same thing at the same time. The room is almost silent.
Almost, because as I peer over each of my students’ shoulders to check their work, I can oh-so-faintly hear whatever they’ve cued up on their iPods. Sometimes the tinny beats are clear enough that I can guess the song; others are so quiet as to be indistinguishable. A few of the kids bop their heads. But none has to be reprimanded to quit goofing off and get their work done. When I tell them to wrap it up, about two minutes before the imminent bell, several look like they’ve been roused from a deep reverie.
My school does not allow the wearing of headphones in order to listen to a portable music player. I have to admit I wasn’t aware of this policy until that day, when I tried to allow my students to listen to my radio—while they worked—as a Friday afternoon treat. I’d never tested this cheap piece of equipment out, and unfortunately, my second floor corner classroom got hideous reception. I shrugged and apologized for getting their hopes up.
“Can we listen to these?” Nearly every kid in the room held up one of those shiny, sleek rectangles.
“I don’t know.” Even as a first-year teacher, I should have known better than to waver. They smelled weakness. Begging, groveling, and promises of stellar work ensued. I relented, with a few stipulations: Only one ear bud allowed, during independent work only, as a privilege that could easily be revoked if I decided a student wasn’t working diligently enough. I thought it would be a one-time incidence of rule tweaking, but it worked so effectively that it became a Friday ritual that we all looked forward to. I appreciated the tranquil environment and productivity of my students during a time that could easily be lost to early weekend syndrome; my students simply enjoyed listening to their music. But still, I knew I was opening myself up to a potential problem. A veteran teacher confirmed my suspicions when I asked for her consult.
“It’s a distraction, and you can’t control what they’re listening to. PEDs are not allowed.” She spoke with an urgency usually reserved for much more threatening acronyms, like WMD or SARS. She sighed at my apparently blank expression. “A personal electronic device?”
And that was apparently that. I stopped letting my students listen to their i-Pods, grudgingly, because I think the arguments against what I’d been doing are pretty flimsy. I grant that some people need absolute quiet to work their best, those that discover the library as a haven for study in college. But there seem to be just as many of us who can’t “enjoy the silence,” as the old Depeche Mode song would have us believe. Plenty of productive people work best with background noise, and as adults who can decide what’s best for us, we create such noise in a variety of ways: the radio during our morning commutes, the evening news as we cook dinner, the cozy chatter that envelopes us as we work or read at our favorite coffee shop. And how can anything be a bigger distraction than the 27 other warm bodies each of my students must avoid engaging with all day, every day, in order to stay on task? I can guarantee that iPods don’t talk back, no matter how much you harangue them.
The argument that allowing kids to listen to their iPods means relinquishing control of the content they’re taking in is admittedly a thornier one. Just as I cannot hear and censor my students’ thoughts, I cannot respond to an errant expletive or drug reference if I can’t hear it. But, since no one else can hear it, either, I feel this becomes a sort of tree-falling-in-the-forest argument. Again, I’m sure there’s some pretty explicit stuff rattling around in my students’ heads when they’re in my classroom, but as long as they’re not shouting it out for all to hear, they’re well within their rights. And despite all the hand-wringing about whatever musical styles the next generation adopts to shock us geriatrics, most kids listen to pretty innocuous, if obnoxious, stuff: top 40 pop, rock, and rap, mostly. And what’s the more pressing issue, anyway? Should I give up what has proved to be that most effective and elusive of rewards for good performance, one that my students actually care about earning, to safeguard against the chance of them hearing the same kind of language they already utter in the halls, the parking lot, and the restrooms?
The death of iPod Fridays saddens me. I’ve had to return to the old management standbys: cajoling and threatening. I’ve tried other rewards (granola bar, anyone?), but none hold the same allure that just thirty minutes of the freedom to listen to the music of one’s choice did. And ironically, without this music, Fridays haven’t been as quiet since.
http://www.teachermagazine.org/tm/section/first-person/2008/09/17/tm_mcdaniel_web.h19.html?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=mrss
By Jennifer McDaniel
For the first time this year, my entire 9th grade class is on-task. Raina and Evan have stopped their awkward dance of first love, which for them involves one incessantly trying to stab the other with a pencil. Brittany has traded her lip-gloss for a pen and is intently filling out my graphic organizer. The group of boys in the back have stopped fidgeting. No gossip is being exchanged by the breathless girls who’ve claimed the large corner table. Everyone is, miraculously, working on the same thing at the same time. The room is almost silent.
Almost, because as I peer over each of my students’ shoulders to check their work, I can oh-so-faintly hear whatever they’ve cued up on their iPods. Sometimes the tinny beats are clear enough that I can guess the song; others are so quiet as to be indistinguishable. A few of the kids bop their heads. But none has to be reprimanded to quit goofing off and get their work done. When I tell them to wrap it up, about two minutes before the imminent bell, several look like they’ve been roused from a deep reverie.
My school does not allow the wearing of headphones in order to listen to a portable music player. I have to admit I wasn’t aware of this policy until that day, when I tried to allow my students to listen to my radio—while they worked—as a Friday afternoon treat. I’d never tested this cheap piece of equipment out, and unfortunately, my second floor corner classroom got hideous reception. I shrugged and apologized for getting their hopes up.
“Can we listen to these?” Nearly every kid in the room held up one of those shiny, sleek rectangles.
“I don’t know.” Even as a first-year teacher, I should have known better than to waver. They smelled weakness. Begging, groveling, and promises of stellar work ensued. I relented, with a few stipulations: Only one ear bud allowed, during independent work only, as a privilege that could easily be revoked if I decided a student wasn’t working diligently enough. I thought it would be a one-time incidence of rule tweaking, but it worked so effectively that it became a Friday ritual that we all looked forward to. I appreciated the tranquil environment and productivity of my students during a time that could easily be lost to early weekend syndrome; my students simply enjoyed listening to their music. But still, I knew I was opening myself up to a potential problem. A veteran teacher confirmed my suspicions when I asked for her consult.
“It’s a distraction, and you can’t control what they’re listening to. PEDs are not allowed.” She spoke with an urgency usually reserved for much more threatening acronyms, like WMD or SARS. She sighed at my apparently blank expression. “A personal electronic device?”
And that was apparently that. I stopped letting my students listen to their i-Pods, grudgingly, because I think the arguments against what I’d been doing are pretty flimsy. I grant that some people need absolute quiet to work their best, those that discover the library as a haven for study in college. But there seem to be just as many of us who can’t “enjoy the silence,” as the old Depeche Mode song would have us believe. Plenty of productive people work best with background noise, and as adults who can decide what’s best for us, we create such noise in a variety of ways: the radio during our morning commutes, the evening news as we cook dinner, the cozy chatter that envelopes us as we work or read at our favorite coffee shop. And how can anything be a bigger distraction than the 27 other warm bodies each of my students must avoid engaging with all day, every day, in order to stay on task? I can guarantee that iPods don’t talk back, no matter how much you harangue them.
The argument that allowing kids to listen to their iPods means relinquishing control of the content they’re taking in is admittedly a thornier one. Just as I cannot hear and censor my students’ thoughts, I cannot respond to an errant expletive or drug reference if I can’t hear it. But, since no one else can hear it, either, I feel this becomes a sort of tree-falling-in-the-forest argument. Again, I’m sure there’s some pretty explicit stuff rattling around in my students’ heads when they’re in my classroom, but as long as they’re not shouting it out for all to hear, they’re well within their rights. And despite all the hand-wringing about whatever musical styles the next generation adopts to shock us geriatrics, most kids listen to pretty innocuous, if obnoxious, stuff: top 40 pop, rock, and rap, mostly. And what’s the more pressing issue, anyway? Should I give up what has proved to be that most effective and elusive of rewards for good performance, one that my students actually care about earning, to safeguard against the chance of them hearing the same kind of language they already utter in the halls, the parking lot, and the restrooms?
The death of iPod Fridays saddens me. I’ve had to return to the old management standbys: cajoling and threatening. I’ve tried other rewards (granola bar, anyone?), but none hold the same allure that just thirty minutes of the freedom to listen to the music of one’s choice did. And ironically, without this music, Fridays haven’t been as quiet since.
Teaching Secrets: What Kids Wish Teachers Knew
From: Teacher Magazine
http://www.teachermagazine.org/tm/articles/2008/09/17/02tln_wasserman.h20.html
By Laurie Wasserman
I was in our building a few weeks before school began, setting my room up for the new year. My friend and colleague was doing the same in her room, accompanied by her daughter Talia, now a high school sophomore, who enjoys helping Mom get ready for her new students.
Talia looked on as we freshened up our classrooms and began to reflect on her own middle school memories. We soon sat down for a spontaneous chat, and I asked her to talk from a student’s perspective about what middle school had been like for her. With those years still fresh in her memory, Talia offfered some candid insights from the other side of the teacher’s desk.
Talia adored her 8th grade U.S. history teacher, who engaged each of his classes in creating a classroom constitution during the first weeks of school. They wrote laws that needed to be followed and created ways to amend them as needed. Talia talked of his dedication to making learning fun and interesting by creating hands-on learning opportunities. Then she shared some other stories—about the foreign language teacher who put so much effort into her lessons, demonstrating a deep dedication to her subject, and the memorable science teacher who set up intriguing labs and projects that made Talia eager to come to school each day.
She also related sad stories about other teachers who often showed up late for class, or made cutting remarks about students’ intelligence and abilities. She poignantly recalled how such comments hurt her fellow classmates and lingered long after the teacher’s thoughtless outbursts.
As we continued our chat, I asked Talia to tell me what she wished teachers would know about their students. Here are some of her pointers:
http://www.teachermagazine.org/tm/articles/2008/09/17/02tln_wasserman.h20.html
By Laurie Wasserman
I was in our building a few weeks before school began, setting my room up for the new year. My friend and colleague was doing the same in her room, accompanied by her daughter Talia, now a high school sophomore, who enjoys helping Mom get ready for her new students.
Talia looked on as we freshened up our classrooms and began to reflect on her own middle school memories. We soon sat down for a spontaneous chat, and I asked her to talk from a student’s perspective about what middle school had been like for her. With those years still fresh in her memory, Talia offfered some candid insights from the other side of the teacher’s desk.
Talia adored her 8th grade U.S. history teacher, who engaged each of his classes in creating a classroom constitution during the first weeks of school. They wrote laws that needed to be followed and created ways to amend them as needed. Talia talked of his dedication to making learning fun and interesting by creating hands-on learning opportunities. Then she shared some other stories—about the foreign language teacher who put so much effort into her lessons, demonstrating a deep dedication to her subject, and the memorable science teacher who set up intriguing labs and projects that made Talia eager to come to school each day.
She also related sad stories about other teachers who often showed up late for class, or made cutting remarks about students’ intelligence and abilities. She poignantly recalled how such comments hurt her fellow classmates and lingered long after the teacher’s thoughtless outbursts.
As we continued our chat, I asked Talia to tell me what she wished teachers would know about their students. Here are some of her pointers:
- “Tell your stories about when you were our age.” Talia explained that when teachers share their own middle school stories—including some of their blunders or embarrassing moments—it makes them more human. Her mother, my colleague, told us she did this in her own classroom because she realized how much it meant to her students to hear about her own mistakes as a kid.
- “Teachers underestimate what kids can do, and what they know.” Often, Talia explained, teachers assume kids can’t tell if a teacher is unprepared for class. But of course they can. Students also appreciate good teaching, exciting lessons, test review games, and activities. Years later, the kids remember which teachers lacked respect for themselves or their students. They remember the sarcastic comments, as well as the kind and caring ones.
- “We love to see our work hung up on the board.” Talia shared how much it meant to come into a classroom and see her diligent efforts and those of her classmates prominently displayed. It meant the teacher was proud of you and willing to take the time to show off your hard work.
- “Read aloud to us. You’re never too old to be read aloud to.” Simply put, it strengthens the bond between teacher and students. It’s a gift from the teacher that students recognize.
- “Get us out from behind our desks.” Kids this age need to move around, and they love it when you’ve taken the time to plan opportunities for movement into your lessons. “We need to get physical,” Talia is saying. “It keeps us learning.”
- “You have to want to be around people, otherwise you make us miserable.” The kids know whether you’re a “people person” and enjoy the company of kids. And sadly, they know if you aren’t. Talia told us stories of some of her “hands off, impersonal teachers,” as well as the warm, friendly teachers that made a difference. They will always be remembered.
Most States Have Technology Standards for Teachers
From: EPE Research Center
http://www.edweek.org/rc/articles/2008/09/17/sow0917.h27.html
By Alexis Reed
http://www.edweek.org/rc/articles/2008/09/17/sow0917.h27.html
By Alexis Reed
In the 21st century, innovation in the classroom aims both to boost achievement on standardized examinations and to prepare students for life after graduation. That is a life in which technology plays an increasingly vital role. The Enhancing Education through Technology Act, part of the omnibus federal No Child Left Behind Act, seeks to raise student academic achievement by encouraging educators to integrate technology into the curriculum. Proponents have argued that teachers who are themselves competent users of instructional technology can deliver more innovative lessons in the classroom, increase the capacity of their students to use technology, and ultimately facilitate student learning. In Technology Counts 2008, the EPE Research Center found that 44 states have established standards for teachers that include technology. In most of those states, such standards are aligned with the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers, developed by the International Society for Technology in Education.
For more state-by-state data on technology policies and other topics, search the EPE Research Center's Education Counts database.
Technology Standards for Teachers (2007-08)
Monday, September 15, 2008
McCain, Obama Spar on Education
From: Education Week
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/09/17/04prez_ep.h28.html?tmp=1593041305
By David J. Hoff
Vol. 28, Issue 04, Pages 1,20-22
In TV Ads on School Issues, Campaigns Reach Back Years to Question the Opposition
The campaigns of Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama engaged in a sharp and testy exchange on education last week, making the topic the center of debate for the first time since the long race for the presidency began.
Neither candidate changed course on the policies he is promising to pursue. But Sen. Obama sought to distinguish himself from Sen. McCain in two public appearances, trying to portray himself as a bipartisan problem-solver for schools. Each campaign also released a hard-hitting TV ad attacking the other candidate’s record on education.
The attention to education in the first week of campaigning after the back-to-back Democratic and Republican conventions was heartening to some observers. But it’s unlikely that a substantive debate will emerge from the week’s activities, one political scientist said, because the campaigns appear to be focusing on the opposing candidate’s character and personality.
“As for [education] being a centerpiece, I don’t think that’s going to happen with just two months to go” before the election, said Paul Manna, an assistant professor of government at the College of William and Mary, who studies politics related to education. “It’s hard to see how it’s going to gain traction.”
Still, some tweaks to each candidate’s policy proposals have emerged in the wake of the conventions.
In what the Obama campaign called “a major policy speech” on Sept. 9 in Riverside, Ohio, Sen. Obama essentially summarized the proposals from his Democratic primary campaign, but added a notable new plank: He would double federal aid for charter schools, to $400 million a year.
“I will lead a new era of accountability in education,” Sen. Obama said in the speech. “But I don’t just want to hold our teachers accountable. I want you to hold our government accountable. I want you to hold me accountable.”
The next day, the Illinois Democrat visited Granby High School in Norfolk, Va., where he met with 9th graders and answered their questions on such topics as choosing a college and his experience as a community organizer in Chicago.
The Obama campaign also released a television commercial asserting that Sen. McCain “doesn’t understand” what it will take to improve schools. The McCain campaign responded quickly—by the end of the same day—with an ad of its own, which charged that Sen. Obama’s only legislative accomplishment on education was a Illinois bill mandating sex education for kindergartners. Many independent evaluators questioned the accuracy of the ad, which quoted from Education Week and other newspapers.
One Democratic activist said the timing of Sen. Obama’s speech and the depth of its content suggest that education issues may get a serious debate in the 2008 election. For much of the primary and general-election campaigns, economics and foreign policy have been the central focus of the candidates.
“It says something that [Mr. Obama is] talking about education fewer than 60 days before the election,” said Robert Gordon, a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a Washington think tank with ties to the Obama campaign and other Democrats.
“McCain sounds pretty good on education, but when you scratch even a little bit beneath the surface, there’s no there, there,” said Mr. Gordon, who has provided advice to Sen. Obama’s campaign.
An adviser to Sen. McCain took issue with that appraisal, saying that the Arizona Republican’s school choice proposals are a serious attempt change the existing education bureaucracy and would result in better schools.
“Senator McCain ... is interested in empowering families and speaking directly to the educational needs of Americans, as opposed to the system,” said Eugene W. Hickok, a former deputy secretary of education under President Bush who is advising the McCain campaign. “Whereas Obama, beyond his mantra of more money, more money, is really just supporting these traditional approaches to the system.”
Shift to Other Topics
In their speeches accepting the nominations of their respective parties, Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain pointed to their education policy proposals.
In his Aug. 29 speech in Denver, Sen. Obama promised to “meet our moral obligation to provide a world-class education.” He outlined an agenda to recruit new teachers and hold all educators accountable for meeting higher standards. ("Top-Notch Education 'A Moral Obligation,' Obama Tells Throng," Sept. 3, 2008.)
One week later, Sen. McCain called for increasing parents’ ability to choose schools for their children, especially those who attend schools with low student achievement. ("McCain Promises to 'Shake Up' Schools," Sept. 10, 2008.)
Sen. McCain reiterated the education themes from his convention speech early last week in an appearance on the cbs News show “Face the Nation.”
“Everyone has equal access to a school. But what’s the point of access to a failed school or a failing school?” Sen. McCain said. “We’ve got to give them more choice, more opportunity—all Americans.”
The substance of the candidates’ speeches played almost no role in last week’s dueling advertisements.
Such attack ads are common in presidential politics, but it’s rare that they hinge on the candidates’ education positions.
The dueling ads helped raise the profile of education in the campaign, but only temporarily. Soon after Sen. Obama’s speech and the debut of the ads, campaign coverage in the news media focused on allegations of personal slights.
The candidates did, however, address the subject of community service. On Sept. 11, the anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks, Sen. McCain and Sen. Obama appeared separately at a televised forum and discussed how such service efforts could help schools.
Adding Charter Schools
The events of the week didn’t significantly change the substance of the candidates’ positions on education.
Speaking at Stebbins High School in suburban Dayton, Sen. Obama tried to position himself as the candidate with the ability to bridge the partisan debates on education issues.
“For decades, they’ve been stuck in the same tired debates over education that have crippled our progress and left schools and parents to fend for themselves,” he said of policymakers in Washington. “It’s been Democrat versus Republican, vouchers versus the status quo, more money versus more reform. There’s partisanship and there’s bickering, but there’s no understanding that both sides have good ideas that we’ll need to implement if we hope to make the changes our children need.”
In arguing how he would move the debate forward, Sen. Obama listed the pieces of his education platform that have been in place since voters started casting ballots in the primaries. In addition to recruiting and training new teachers, Sen. Obama would experiment with new ways of paying them. He also would seek to spend $10 billion a year to expand access to prekindergarten programs, and he would create $4,000 tax credits for college tuition.
The Democratic nominee said he would aim to change the federal No Child Left Behind Act to improve the quality of tests and the way the law holds schools accountable for student performance. The senator also said he would fully fund the law, which is something that Democrats in Congress have long said President Bush has failed to do. In the current fiscal year, the nclb law’s programs are receiving $24.7 billion—or $14.7 billion less than the law authorizes for spending on them.
In Ohio, Sen. Obama added one new piece to his plan with his promise to double the funding for the federal program that supports the development and expansion of charter schools, which are publicly funded but operate independently. The program now receives $200 million a year.
Although a fresh addition to Mr. Obama’s agenda, the proposal wasn’t surprising, Mr. Gordon said. Sen. Obama has been a supporter of charter schools in his hometown of Chicago and has mentioned his support for them in speeches throughout the campaign.
Embracing Choice
The proposed new level of support for charters also appeared to be an attempt to counter the emphasis Sen. McCain put on school choice in his Sept. 4 acceptance speech.
But it was an incomplete response, said one policy analyst who supports programs that allow parents to choose among public and private schools.
“Charter schools are not full choice,” said Lance T. Izumi, the senior director of education studies at the Pacific Research Institute, a Sacramento, Calif., think tank. “There are still things that block charter schools from forming.”
Sen. McCain’s extended remarks on school choice, which constituted one of the most detailed policy discussions in his acceptance speech, deviated slightly from the campaign proposals he had outlined in earlier speeches and policy papers.
In those statements, the Republican nominee’s only mention of school choice was his support for expanding the 4-year-old federal pilot project offering vouchers for District of Columbia students to use at private schools.
“I think he does want school choice for everybody in this country, but where he can implement school choice broadly is primarily in the District of Columbia,” Mr. Hickok said.
Even though Sen. McCain’s convention speech implied he would offer broader choices than his policy positions suggest, Mr. Izumi said the issue deserved the amount of time Sen. McCain gave it because it was an example of his promise to scale back the government’s role in people’s lives. “It fit into his whole campaign theme of trying to bypass the government elites and to reach out to the common person,” Mr. Izumi said.
To deliver on the promise of school choice, Mr. Izumi added, Sen. McCain will need to produce a detailed explanation of the policies he would pursue. “He needs to assure people that he’ll have a practical plan at some point,” he said.
Although the profile of education in the 2008 campaign rose last week—even if only briefly—neither candidate has addressed the most significant issues facing federal education policy, said Chester E. Finn Jr., the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington-based think tank that supports standards and accountability.
NCLB Focus Sought
The next president must negotiate ways to solve the current problems with the nclb law, which requires states to assess students in reading and mathematics in grades 3-8 and once in high school, and requires states to intervene in schools that aren’t on track to reach the goal that all students be proficient in those subjects by the end of the 2013-14 school year.
“Everybody would like to talk about the wonderful way they could make education better,” said Mr. Finn, a former assistant secretary of education under President Reagan.
But, he said, neither candidate’s education plans address how to improve the rigor of states’ standards, how to improve interventions in schools that aren’t meeting the law’s goals, how to ensure that all classrooms have highly qualified teachers, and several other issues that have been difficult to implement under the bipartisan, 6½-year-old law, which was one of President Bush’s biggest domestic-policy initiatives.
With the law overdue for reauthorization, the next president needs to have a concrete plan to solve those problems, Mr. Finn said.
“It would be irresponsible not to,” he said. “These, after all, are the programs through which the lion’s share of federal money for education flows.”
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/09/17/04prez_ep.h28.html?tmp=1593041305
By David J. Hoff
Vol. 28, Issue 04, Pages 1,20-22
In TV Ads on School Issues, Campaigns Reach Back Years to Question the Opposition
The campaigns of Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama engaged in a sharp and testy exchange on education last week, making the topic the center of debate for the first time since the long race for the presidency began.
Neither candidate changed course on the policies he is promising to pursue. But Sen. Obama sought to distinguish himself from Sen. McCain in two public appearances, trying to portray himself as a bipartisan problem-solver for schools. Each campaign also released a hard-hitting TV ad attacking the other candidate’s record on education.
The attention to education in the first week of campaigning after the back-to-back Democratic and Republican conventions was heartening to some observers. But it’s unlikely that a substantive debate will emerge from the week’s activities, one political scientist said, because the campaigns appear to be focusing on the opposing candidate’s character and personality.
“As for [education] being a centerpiece, I don’t think that’s going to happen with just two months to go” before the election, said Paul Manna, an assistant professor of government at the College of William and Mary, who studies politics related to education. “It’s hard to see how it’s going to gain traction.”
Still, some tweaks to each candidate’s policy proposals have emerged in the wake of the conventions.
In what the Obama campaign called “a major policy speech” on Sept. 9 in Riverside, Ohio, Sen. Obama essentially summarized the proposals from his Democratic primary campaign, but added a notable new plank: He would double federal aid for charter schools, to $400 million a year.
“I will lead a new era of accountability in education,” Sen. Obama said in the speech. “But I don’t just want to hold our teachers accountable. I want you to hold our government accountable. I want you to hold me accountable.”
The next day, the Illinois Democrat visited Granby High School in Norfolk, Va., where he met with 9th graders and answered their questions on such topics as choosing a college and his experience as a community organizer in Chicago.
The Obama campaign also released a television commercial asserting that Sen. McCain “doesn’t understand” what it will take to improve schools. The McCain campaign responded quickly—by the end of the same day—with an ad of its own, which charged that Sen. Obama’s only legislative accomplishment on education was a Illinois bill mandating sex education for kindergartners. Many independent evaluators questioned the accuracy of the ad, which quoted from Education Week and other newspapers.
One Democratic activist said the timing of Sen. Obama’s speech and the depth of its content suggest that education issues may get a serious debate in the 2008 election. For much of the primary and general-election campaigns, economics and foreign policy have been the central focus of the candidates.
“It says something that [Mr. Obama is] talking about education fewer than 60 days before the election,” said Robert Gordon, a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a Washington think tank with ties to the Obama campaign and other Democrats.
“McCain sounds pretty good on education, but when you scratch even a little bit beneath the surface, there’s no there, there,” said Mr. Gordon, who has provided advice to Sen. Obama’s campaign.
An adviser to Sen. McCain took issue with that appraisal, saying that the Arizona Republican’s school choice proposals are a serious attempt change the existing education bureaucracy and would result in better schools.
“Senator McCain ... is interested in empowering families and speaking directly to the educational needs of Americans, as opposed to the system,” said Eugene W. Hickok, a former deputy secretary of education under President Bush who is advising the McCain campaign. “Whereas Obama, beyond his mantra of more money, more money, is really just supporting these traditional approaches to the system.”
Shift to Other Topics
In their speeches accepting the nominations of their respective parties, Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain pointed to their education policy proposals.
In his Aug. 29 speech in Denver, Sen. Obama promised to “meet our moral obligation to provide a world-class education.” He outlined an agenda to recruit new teachers and hold all educators accountable for meeting higher standards. ("Top-Notch Education 'A Moral Obligation,' Obama Tells Throng," Sept. 3, 2008.)
One week later, Sen. McCain called for increasing parents’ ability to choose schools for their children, especially those who attend schools with low student achievement. ("McCain Promises to 'Shake Up' Schools," Sept. 10, 2008.)
Sen. McCain reiterated the education themes from his convention speech early last week in an appearance on the cbs News show “Face the Nation.”
“Everyone has equal access to a school. But what’s the point of access to a failed school or a failing school?” Sen. McCain said. “We’ve got to give them more choice, more opportunity—all Americans.”
The substance of the candidates’ speeches played almost no role in last week’s dueling advertisements.
Such attack ads are common in presidential politics, but it’s rare that they hinge on the candidates’ education positions.
The dueling ads helped raise the profile of education in the campaign, but only temporarily. Soon after Sen. Obama’s speech and the debut of the ads, campaign coverage in the news media focused on allegations of personal slights.
The candidates did, however, address the subject of community service. On Sept. 11, the anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks, Sen. McCain and Sen. Obama appeared separately at a televised forum and discussed how such service efforts could help schools.
Adding Charter Schools
The events of the week didn’t significantly change the substance of the candidates’ positions on education.
Speaking at Stebbins High School in suburban Dayton, Sen. Obama tried to position himself as the candidate with the ability to bridge the partisan debates on education issues.
“For decades, they’ve been stuck in the same tired debates over education that have crippled our progress and left schools and parents to fend for themselves,” he said of policymakers in Washington. “It’s been Democrat versus Republican, vouchers versus the status quo, more money versus more reform. There’s partisanship and there’s bickering, but there’s no understanding that both sides have good ideas that we’ll need to implement if we hope to make the changes our children need.”
In arguing how he would move the debate forward, Sen. Obama listed the pieces of his education platform that have been in place since voters started casting ballots in the primaries. In addition to recruiting and training new teachers, Sen. Obama would experiment with new ways of paying them. He also would seek to spend $10 billion a year to expand access to prekindergarten programs, and he would create $4,000 tax credits for college tuition.
The Democratic nominee said he would aim to change the federal No Child Left Behind Act to improve the quality of tests and the way the law holds schools accountable for student performance. The senator also said he would fully fund the law, which is something that Democrats in Congress have long said President Bush has failed to do. In the current fiscal year, the nclb law’s programs are receiving $24.7 billion—or $14.7 billion less than the law authorizes for spending on them.
In Ohio, Sen. Obama added one new piece to his plan with his promise to double the funding for the federal program that supports the development and expansion of charter schools, which are publicly funded but operate independently. The program now receives $200 million a year.
Although a fresh addition to Mr. Obama’s agenda, the proposal wasn’t surprising, Mr. Gordon said. Sen. Obama has been a supporter of charter schools in his hometown of Chicago and has mentioned his support for them in speeches throughout the campaign.
Embracing Choice
The proposed new level of support for charters also appeared to be an attempt to counter the emphasis Sen. McCain put on school choice in his Sept. 4 acceptance speech.
But it was an incomplete response, said one policy analyst who supports programs that allow parents to choose among public and private schools.
“Charter schools are not full choice,” said Lance T. Izumi, the senior director of education studies at the Pacific Research Institute, a Sacramento, Calif., think tank. “There are still things that block charter schools from forming.”
Sen. McCain’s extended remarks on school choice, which constituted one of the most detailed policy discussions in his acceptance speech, deviated slightly from the campaign proposals he had outlined in earlier speeches and policy papers.
In those statements, the Republican nominee’s only mention of school choice was his support for expanding the 4-year-old federal pilot project offering vouchers for District of Columbia students to use at private schools.
“I think he does want school choice for everybody in this country, but where he can implement school choice broadly is primarily in the District of Columbia,” Mr. Hickok said.
Even though Sen. McCain’s convention speech implied he would offer broader choices than his policy positions suggest, Mr. Izumi said the issue deserved the amount of time Sen. McCain gave it because it was an example of his promise to scale back the government’s role in people’s lives. “It fit into his whole campaign theme of trying to bypass the government elites and to reach out to the common person,” Mr. Izumi said.
To deliver on the promise of school choice, Mr. Izumi added, Sen. McCain will need to produce a detailed explanation of the policies he would pursue. “He needs to assure people that he’ll have a practical plan at some point,” he said.
Although the profile of education in the 2008 campaign rose last week—even if only briefly—neither candidate has addressed the most significant issues facing federal education policy, said Chester E. Finn Jr., the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington-based think tank that supports standards and accountability.
NCLB Focus Sought
The next president must negotiate ways to solve the current problems with the nclb law, which requires states to assess students in reading and mathematics in grades 3-8 and once in high school, and requires states to intervene in schools that aren’t on track to reach the goal that all students be proficient in those subjects by the end of the 2013-14 school year.
“Everybody would like to talk about the wonderful way they could make education better,” said Mr. Finn, a former assistant secretary of education under President Reagan.
But, he said, neither candidate’s education plans address how to improve the rigor of states’ standards, how to improve interventions in schools that aren’t meeting the law’s goals, how to ensure that all classrooms have highly qualified teachers, and several other issues that have been difficult to implement under the bipartisan, 6½-year-old law, which was one of President Bush’s biggest domestic-policy initiatives.
With the law overdue for reauthorization, the next president needs to have a concrete plan to solve those problems, Mr. Finn said.
“It would be irresponsible not to,” he said. “These, after all, are the programs through which the lion’s share of federal money for education flows.”
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