Issues in Education: Schools
Please note: a number of reports in pdf format are available at the bottom of this page.
Student
Engagement Found to Rise as Class Size Falls
Article by Debra Viadero, Education
Week, posted online March 25, 2008
A new British study quantifies and confirms what many teachers have long believed: Students tend to be “off task” more often when they are in larger classes.
The report, by researchers from the University of London Institute of Education, was one of several studies on the educational effects of reducing class sizes that were presented here Monday on the first day of the annual meeting of the Washington-based American Educational Research Association. The March 24-28 event is expected to draw more than 15,000 education scholars from around the world before it ends on Friday.
Studies on class size have long suggested
that elementary school pupils tend to learn more in classes of 20 students or
fewer. The papers presented yesterday, which were based on studies conducted in
the United States and Hong Kong, as well as in the United Kingdom, extend and
deepen the discussion on that topic by looking more closely at what goes on
inside smaller and larger classes.
This
gender gap defies platitudes
Editorial, Rocky Mountain News, May 28,
2006
Nearly everyone involved with education is troubled by the large and persistent gaps in academic performance among racial and ethnic groups. Now the similarly large gap between boys and girls is beginning to get the serious attention it deserves as well.
But it's when you look at both factors simultaneously that the real puzzlement begins. A News report last week of the graduating class of 2005 in Denver Public Schools found that girls in any ethnic group are more likely to graduate from high school than boys in the same group. And the gaps are so large that black, white and Asian girls all graduate at higher rates than white boys.
We are probably on safe grounds ruling out any intention on the district's part to discriminate against white boys, so what else is going on? And not only in Denver, but in other big-city districts that have similar patterns?
The rite way
There is a way to help your students develop
into health young men and women-
by creating meaningful rites of passage beyond merely getting a driver's
license.
by Andrew Lines and Graham Gallasch (Australia)
Insights
Gained Into Arts and Smarts
Article by Debra Viadero, Education Week,
March 12, 2008
Findings released this week from three years of studies by neuroscientists and psychologists at seven universities help amplify scientists’ understanding of how training in the arts might contribute to improving the general thinking skills of children and adults.
“We tend to think of the artist, on the
one hand, and scientists and mathematicians, on the other, as fundamentally
different people,” said Elizabeth S. Spelke, one of the scholars who took part
in the research project. “I think the work done here suggests a much closer
connection between the cognitive processes that give rise to the arts and the
cognitive processes that give rise to the sciences.”
Smaller
Classes Don't Close Learning Gap, Study Finds
Article by Jay Mathews, Washington Post, March
10, 2008
For 20 years, a large study of class size in Tennessee, known as Project STAR, has raised hopes that reducing the number of children in inner-city classrooms to 17 or fewer would yield significant increases in achievement. It was by far the most authoritative finding in favor of reducing class size and was generally considered one of the most important educational studies of its time.
But a Northwestern University researcher, looking closely at the same data on thousands of students from kindergarten through third grade in 79 schools, has concluded that high achievers benefited more from the small classes than low achievers. Since low-income students in urban neighborhoods have lower achievement, on average, than students from more affluent families, the finding in the March issue of Elementary School Journal contradicts assumptions that class size reduction might have a significant effect on the gap between rich and poor students.
"While decreasing class size may increase achievement on average for all types of students, it does not appear to reduce the achievement gap within a class," Spyros Konstantopoulos, assistant professor at Northwestern's School of Education and Social Policy, said in a statement released by the university.
U.S.
educators seek lessons from Scandinavia
Article by Meris Stansbury, eSchoolNews,
March 3, 2008
A
delegation led by the Consortium
for School Networking (CoSN) recently toured Scandinavia in search of
answers for how students in that region of the world were able to score so high
on a recent international test of math and science skills. They found that
educators in
What the CoSN delegation didn’t find in those nations were competitive
grading, standardized testing, and top-down accountability—all staples of the
American education system.
A
New Majority
Low Income Students in the South's Public
Schools
Southern Education Foundation, November, 2007
For the first time in more than 40 years, the South is the only region in the nation where low income children constitute a majority of public school students — 54 percent. This report chronicles the growth over time in the number of low income students, long-standing patterns of underinvestment in public education, and the consequences of that underinvestment.
The message in the report is simply stated: poverty and lack of a good education beget poverty and inequality. The South is in the throes of a self-perpetuating vicious cycle.
Already home to 40 percent of the nation’s poor people, most of whom lack the skills to earn livable wages in the emergent technology- and information-driven global economy, the South urgently needs not only to improve but also to transform its public education systems. No one can seriously believe that the future will be bright when public school students, as a group, are dropping out in record numbers, failing to achieve to high standards, lacking in counseling, health and other services, going to college in small numbers, and failing disproportionately to graduate from college....
Stop
the Narrowing of the Curriculum by "Right-Sizing" School Time
Commentary by S. Paul Reville, Education Week
online,
October 22, 2007
"....It seems logical to conclude that if we want schools to do more than simply get all students to proficiency in reading and math, and we do, then we will have to give them more time for instruction in other subjects, as well as an array of enrichment activities. Our relatively arbitrary school schedule is not well-sized to meet these 21st-century objectives for learning. To be sure, there are some schools that need to make better use of existing time. But on average, a decade or more into this era of standards-based reform, educators are working hard and efficiently, and are finding that the instructional clock doesn’t adequately accommodate today’s academic demands. It takes more time to educate all students to a high standard of performance in core subjects, to adequately address a broad array of additional subjects, and to provide the kind of enriched education that most parents want for their children.
"The answer to the current 'narrowing of the curriculum' problem is not to abandon our fundamental commitment to a high standard of excellence and equity, embodied in our aspiration to achieve proficiency for all students. We should not consider lowering standards in basic subjects as a solution to the time problem in education. To do so would be to harm the very children that reform is designed especially to help. Instead, we should provide to each child the quality and quantity of instructional time needed to achieve our ambitious and wide-ranging goals for student learning. This is going to mean significantly expanded learning time to match our significantly expanded 21st-century learning goals—and particularly for those children with the biggest learning gaps...."
Study
Shows Reducing Class Size May Be More Cost-Effective
than Most Medical Interventions
Columbia University Mailman School of Public
Health, October 16, 2007
Reducing the number of students per classroom in U.S. primary schools may be more cost-effective than most public health and medical interventions, according to a study by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and the Virginia Commonwealth University. The study indicates that class-size reductions would generate more quality-adjusted life-year gains per dollar invested than the majority of medical interventions. The findings will be published in the November issue of the American Journal of Public Health.
The researchers estimated the health and economic effects of reducing class sizes from 22–25 students to 13–17 students in kindergarten through grade 3 nationwide, based on an intervention tested in Project STAR (Student Teacher Achievement Ratio), a large multi-school randomized trial that began in 1985. Project STAR is considered the highest quality long-term experiment to date in the field of education.
The study shows that a student graduating from high school after attending smaller-sized classes gains an average of 1.7 quality-adjusted life-years and generates a net $168,431 in lifetime revenue. “Higher earnings and better job quality enhance access to health insurance coverage, reduce exposure to hazardous work conditions, and provide individuals and families with the necessary resources to move out of unfavorable neighborhoods and to purchase goods and services,” says Peter A. Muennig, MD, MPH, assistant professor of Health Policy and Management at the Mailman School. “Regardless of class size, the net effect of graduating from high school is roughly equivalent to taking 20 years of bad health off of your life."
When targeted to low-income students, the estimated savings would increase to $196,000 per additional graduate. “This is because low-income students seem to benefit more from the additional attention afforded by small classes,” noted Dr. Muennig. “Because we focused on a relatively expensive intervention and examined outcomes over a range of values, our results should provide a conservative framework for evaluating this and other interventions as long-term data on educational interventions become more plentiful,” he commented.
The performance of students in the U.S. has been declining relative to the performance of students in other countries. With health costs soaring and student performance falling, the United States is in jeopardy of losing its economic dominance.
The findings not only raise issues of whether investments in social determinants of health can be more cost-effective than investments in conventional medical care, “but more intriguing still, also bring up the idea that each dollar invested in education could also potentially produce other long-term returns,” observes Dr. Muennig. He notes that further analysis will refine models and produce more-precise estimates, but “these findings do point to the importance of looking more broadly at the options available for improving health outcomes—including those outside the boundaries of clinical medicine.”
Bad
Testing Drives Out Good Learning
Article by Anthony Cody, Teacher Magazine,
October 10, 2007
In economics there exists something known as Gresham's Law. This axiom states, "Bad money drives good money out of circulation." In today's economic parlance, Gresham's Law is often described (as Wikipedia notes) this way: "Money overvalued by the State will drive money undervalued by the State out of circulation."
If we substitute "education" for "money," we can apply this adaptation of Gresham's Law to the situation American public schools now find themselves in. Our government, through No Child Left Behind, has made standardized test scores the "coin of the realm"—the legal tender by which teachers and schools are judged and evaluated. In a recent exchange on the blog "Teaching in the 408," veteran teacher Nancy Flanagan offered this perspective: "NCLB has put the bright lights on some pretty awful schools...but stops short of pushing 21st Century learning skills (synthesis, analysis, creativity, collaboration) in favor of the multiple-guess and fact regurgitation. NCLB has settled for rote presentation and narrowed curriculum, a disservice to kids who deserve more and better of everything—resources, teaching, attention, depth, etc."
Blog author TMAO replied: "There's nothing here that says ONLY teach basic skills. The law says AT LEAST teach those skills. If we can't handle the AT LEAST, of what value is the MORE?"
Does this logic hold up? I believe Gresham's Law sheds light on the question. Standardized tests measure skills in a specific way. If one is under the gun—facing the loss of funding, or even employment—one is likely to shift teaching to emphasize the form of learning that most efficiently yields the greatest gains on these test scores. This explains the burgeoning industry in test-preparation materials, and a curriculum that looks and behaves more and more like the tests.
The curriculum that results in deeper learning, as described by Nancy Flanagan, requires a greater investment of time and resources, and does not produce a corresponding return in terms of test score results. Good instruction is being driven out by bad, because the bad is more highly valued.
Push
to Revamp High Schools Off Track, Scholars Say
Overemphasis seen on ratcheting
up standards
at expense of broader view of academic "rigor"
Article by Erik Robelen, Education Week,
October 10, 2007
In a new paper arguing that the ongoing national push to dramatically improve American high schools has gotten off course, two University of California education professors take aim at what they see as an overemphasis on states’ adoption of higher standards for graduation and more-rigorous tests.
“The push to enhance rigor and standards
behind the high school diploma is seriously flawed,” write W. Norton Grubb, an
education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and Jeannie
Oakes, an education professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, in
the paper. “Any gains come at the expense of other goals for high school
reform, including equity, curricular relevance, and student interest.”
An
archaic education system
Article by David Smokler, Boston Globe,
October 8, 2007
"....The archaic practice of grouping children by age stigmatizes those who need more time to become proficient in one or more of their skills. In fact, the fear of this stigma led to one of the greatest disasters in modern education: social promotion. Throughout the late-1980s and '90s, educators were reluctant to hold students back a grade, afraid of the damage that might be done to the child's self-esteem. Ultimately, however, those children who were promoted before they were ready were done a grave disservice: What happened to their self-esteem when they found themselves in high school but without the knowledge or skills to succeed?
"Today, a high school diploma means little more than a student has managed to make it through 12 years of 180 school days...."
Report:
Schools aren't preparing kids for college
Better alignment is needed between high
school and college standards, panelists say
Article by Meris Stansbury, eSchool News, Sept
13, 2007
AEE held the event to discuss an issue brief
it published on the same day. Sponsored by the MetLife Foundation, the report
claims that a fundamental disconnect exists between the way high school teachers
prepare their students for the future and how students truly achieve success and
meet the demands of college.
Researchers
question school in high-tech age
Article by Matthew Bigg, Toronto Globe and
Mail, August 29, 2007
As students across Canada head back to classrooms in this high-tech Information Age, there's a question in the front row that demands to be heard:
Why, in the Information Age, are students heading back to classrooms?
Researchers say
students weaned on collaborative learning with high-tech devices are suffering
in classrooms ruled by defenders of lecture-based orthodoxy wielding overhead
projectors and reciting from dog-eared history textbooks...
Report:
Segregation in U.S. Schools is increasing
Article by Dean Bennett, Washington
Post/Reuters, August 29, 2007
Public schools in the United States are becoming more racially segregated and the trend is likely to accelerate because of a Supreme Court decision in June, according to report published Wednesday.
The rise in segregation threatens the quality of education received by non-white students, who now make up 43 percent of the total U.S. student body, said the report by the Civil Rights Project of the University of California in Los Angeles.
Back to School: Cramming Doesn't Work in the Long Term
News release from the Association for Psychological Science, Science
Daily, August 29, 2007
When you look back on your school days, doesn't it seem like you studied all the time? However, most of us seem to have retained almost nothing from our early immersion in math, history, and foreign language.
Were we studying the wrong way during all those wee hours? Well, as it turns out we may have been. Psychologists have been assessing how well various study strategies produce long-term learning, and it appears that some strategies really do work much better than others.
A
longer day, but less time for play
New kindergarten is more rigorous
Article by Ruma Kumar and John-John Williams
IV, Baltimore Sun, August 26, 2007
In a corner of her room at
Manor View Elementary on Fort Meade, kindergarten teacher Laura Hobbs neatly
arranged a little kitchen set, dolls, a small bed and play-food. She likes
watching her students pretend, but she worries they'll be strapped for play time
given the long list of academic requirements for the school year that begins
this week.
She has only nine months to get her 5- and 6-year-olds to identify the
sequential property of numbers using the calendar, learn the alphabet, recognize
letter sounds, learn how to sort by color and number, and learn to share and
play nice with one another.
The long list of expectations accompanies a transition this year by Manor View
and other Maryland schools to a more academically rigorous, full-day
kindergarten program, as required by state law. Under the terms of a landmark
education reform bill enacted in 2002, every public school system must provide
full-day instruction for kindergartners beginning this year.
Do Kids Need a Summer
Vacation?
Why our schoolchildren get to take three
months off
Article by Juliet Lapidos, slate.com, July 11, 2007
Most American school kids are about three weeks in to their three-month summer vacation. Yet working adults (the Explainer included) spend the better part of June, July, and August toiling away as usual. Why do kids enjoy such generous summer breaks?
Fiscal limitations, century-old
developmental theories, and outdated medical concerns. The now-standard 180-day
academic calendar with a long summer holiday didn't come about until the early
20th century. Previously, urban schools operated year-round with
short breaks between quarters. In 1842, Detroit's academic year lasted
approximately 260 days, New York's 245, and Chicago's 240. But since education wasn't
mandatory in most states until the 1870s, attendance was low. Despite the
official schedule, many kids ended up spending the same amount of time
in school back then as they do now. Brooklyn school officials, for example,
reported in 1850 that more than half their students showed up just six months a
year.
Schools Pinched In Hiring
Teacher Shortage Looms As Law Raises Bar
and boomer Women Retire
Article by Michael Alison Chandler, Washington
Post, June 24, 2007
As hundreds of thousands of baby boomers retire and the No Child Left Behind law raises standards for new teachers, school systems across the country are facing a growing scarcity of qualified recruits.
A labor force that for generations cushioned teacher shortages and kept salaries relatively low is disappearing. Three-quarters of the nation's more than 3 million public school teachers are women, a figure that has changed little over four decades. But in that time, women have become more educated, with more career choices than ever. So far, schools are not faring well on the open market.
Admittedly Unequal
Many colleges are rejecting women at rates
drastically higher than those for men
Article by Alex Kingsbury, U.S. News & World
Report, posted online June 17, 2007
The University of Richmond, like many small liberal arts colleges, has its roots in single-sex education. The campus, which sits on a picturesque 350 acres of woodland a few miles outside the Virginia state capital, was once two schools: Westhampton and Richmond colleges, situated on opposite sides of a small lake. The campuses merged around the turn of the 20th century, creating the coed institution that exists today. Despite-and partly because of-its history, the delicate balance between men and women at Richmond has always been a tricky thing to manage.
These days, the student body is
49 percent male and 51 percent female-a ratio that the college insists is
determined by the availability of on-campus housing. Maintaining that
equilibrium, however, has in the past few years meant rejecting many more female
applicants than male ones. In practical terms, in the past decade, female
applicants have faced an admissions rate that is an average 13 percentage points
lower than that of their male peers just for the sake of keeping that girl-boy
balance.
Has 'zero tolerance' in
schools gone too far?
MSNBC/Associated Press, June 15, 2007
Fifth-graders in California who adorned their mortarboards with tiny toy plastic soldiers this week to support troops in Iraq were forced to cut off their miniature weapons. A Utah boy was suspended for giving his cousin a cold pill prescribed to both students. In Rhode Island, a kindergartner was suspended for bringing a plastic knife to school so he could cut cookies.
It's all part of "zero tolerance" rules, which typically mandate severe punishments for weapons and drug offenses regardless of the circumstances.
Lawmakers in several
states say the strict policies in schools have resulted in many punishments that
lack common sense, and are seeking to loosen the restrictions.
The nation, not schools,
takes lousy care of our children
Commentary by Julia Steiny, Providence (RI)
Journal, June 3, 2007
From the beginning of the educational “accountability” movement in the mid-1990s, the demand that schools “close the achievement gap” has set educators’ teeth on edge. The “gap” refers to the wide discrepancy between the test scores of middle-class white children and those who are low-income and non-white.
Educators know first hand that less-privileged students — an ever-growing number, seemingly — enter school at a significant disadvantage compared to their more privileged peers. That gap opened up long before the school bell tolled. Even in schools where the low-income children have made strong gains, the gap persists. Schools have little impact on poverty or the lack of good health care, decent jobs for parents, affordable housing and other social factors that contribute to a child’s readiness to learn.
Rural Education 2.0
Why are urban students flocking to rural
online schools?
Article by Samuel Western, High Country
News, April
30, 2007
The man in the Sodbuster Bar walks with a slight limp, the result of old injury. “I was operating a seismograph rig when it went off a hillside outside Meteetsee, Wyo.,” he said. “It fell 382 feet with me inside. I wasn’t supposed to make it, but I did. I eventually got a settlement. Made a lot of lawyers rich in the process, though.”
Springfield is the seat of Baca County. Tucked away in the southeast corner of Colorado, the county is much more closely aligned, both in politics and soul, with Oklahoma or the Texas panhandle than with Denver. It’s flat, windy “tomorrow country,” as in, “OK, things are tough, but they’ll get better tomorrow.” It’s the kind of place where used farm equipment is a prized lawn ornament.
In 2004, Baca County ranked as one of the 50 poorest counties in the nation, both in adjusted gross income and in wages. It’s lost 10 percent of its population in the last decade, and its population is about to drop below 4,000. But like the man in the bar, the county is a survivor.
In fact, one of its school districts is doing more than surviving. Vilas RE-5 has the highest growth rate of any of Colorado’s 178 school districts. Its enrollment is up 405 percent since 2002. It had 3,800 students during the 2006-2007 school year. Most of these students, however, do not reside in Baca County, nor do they sit at desks in the Vilas school district. They live all over Colorado, but mostly around Denver, and many of them are low-performing, “at-risk” students. Thanks to Vilas, they attend high school online.
Skills Gap on State, Federal
Tests Grows, Study Finds
Article by Lynn Olson, Education Week, April 11, 2007
Far greater shares of students are proficient on state reading and mathematics tests than on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and those gaps have grown to unprecedented levels since the No Child Left Behind Act became law in 2002, concludes a study released today.
The study by Policy Analysis for California Education, a nonprofit research group based at the University of California, Berkeley, was released here during the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. The researchers compiled state and federal testing results for the period 1992 to 2006 from 12 states: Arkansas, California, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington.
In all but two states—Arkansas and Massachusetts—the disparity between the share of students proficient on state reading tests and on NAEP, a congressionally mandated program that tests a representative sample of students in every state, grew or remained the same from 2002 to 2006. A similar widening occurred between state and federal gauges of math performance in eight of 12 states.
Those findings call into question whether
the state-reported gains are real or illusory, according to the researchers.
Differences slither between
schoolteachers, professors on what students should know
Article by Mary Beth Marklein, USA Today, April 9, 2007
"States tend to have too many standards attempting to tackle too many content topics," the report says. The report examines science, math, reading and English.
Aligning Postsecondary
Expectations and High School Practice: The Gap Defined
Policy Implications of the ACT National Curriculum Survey Results 2005-2006
High school teachers believe
state standards are preparing student well for college-level work; however,
roughly 65 percent of postsecondary instructors responded that their state's
standards prepared students poorly or very poorly for college-level work in
English/writing, reading, and science. This finding strongly suggests that a gap
still exists between what colleges believe is important for college readiness
and what state standards are requiring teachers to teach.
The teacher gap: prepare now
Editorial, Boston Globe, March 30, 2007
IN FIVE years, there's going to
be a teacher shortage, Tom Carroll said Monday at a Simmons College conference.
Two groups will collide: The wave of retiring baby-boom teachers will crash into
the wave of teachers who exit the profession after five years or less, leaving a
lot of empty desks at the front of the class. Every state faces this crisis,
explains Carroll, the president of the National Commission on Teaching and
America's Future.
Study gives teachers barely
passing grade in classroom
Article by Greg Toppo, USA Today, March 29, 2007
The findings, published
today in the weekly magazine Science, take teachers to task for spending
too much time on basic reading and math skills and not enough on
problem-solving, reasoning, science and social studies. They also suggest that
U.S. education focuses too much on teacher qualifications and not enough on
teachers being engaging and supportive.
The Learning Compact
Redefined: A Call to Action
The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, March, 2007
Participatory democracy hinges on a social compact between adults and children that we shall together prepare them for a brighter future. For too long we have maintained a status quo in education that has at best prepared children for our past and at worst marginalized those families least able to access a better life for their children through means other than education.
We have been committed to time
structures, coursework, instructional methods, and assessments that do not
reveal to our children the marvel that they are and, instead, often leave them
questioning their worth and the purpose of education designed more than a
century ago. It is time to put the students at the center of the education
system and align resources to their multiple needs to ensure a balanced
education for all.
The New Anti-Intellectualism
in America
Commentary by Nel Noddings, Education Week, March 20, 2007
It seems odd to accuse the schools of anti-intellectualism when they are engaged in a relentless drive for higher test scores, and students are required to take more difficult academic courses. Passing rates on some state and local tests show small increases, but there has been little if any improvement on well-established national tests. The small gains we’ve seen may be the result of concentrated instruction on narrowly defined objectives. But we are not promoting intellectual habits of mind. Indeed, we may be reducing intellectual life to mental labor. What are the signs that this is happening?
Does the current approach to school reform favor the regurgitation of random facts over the development of critical and creative thinking?
Join the discussion at this website: http://enews.edweek.org/GoNow/a15864a163034a377703213a37Bilingual classes 'raise
results'
Online news story, BBC, March 15, 2007
Even second and third generation immigrant
children with English as their stronger language could benefit.
One Size Fits Whom?
The core curriculum stymies reform
Commentary by Ronald A. Work, Teacher
Magazine, March 1, 2007
Curriculum is the engine of our public education system. To a large degree it shapes the allocation of financial resources and time, the preparation and assignment of teachers, and the formulation of academic standards and standardized tests. Despite its importance, curriculum doesn’t get much attention from parents, politicians, or the media, except for calls for more rigor and a national curriculum (God forbid). Nearly everybody just accepts curriculum as it’s always been—without questioning whether it is appropriate for a very diverse student body and a high-tech, rapidly changing world.
The standards movement and the increasing emphasis on accountability
(especially since the enactment of No Child Left Behind) tend to make the core
curriculum even more impervious to criticism or change. And that is unfortunate
because the key to significant improvement in student learning might well be a
serious examination of—and national debate about—the traditional core
curriculum
"Study says students are
learning less"
Article by Mitchell Landsberg, Los Angeles Times, February 22, 2007
"U.S. high school students
are taking tougher classes, receiving better grades and, apparently, learning
less than their counterparts of 15 years ago.
"Those were the discouraging implications of two reports issued Thursday by
the federal Department of Education, assessing the performance of students in
both public and private schools. Together, the reports raised sobering questions
about the past two decades of educational reform, including whether the movement
to raise school standards has amounted to much more than window dressing."
"Colorado schools
closing the gender gap,"
Television report by Nelson Garcia, KUSA TV, channel 9, Denver, February 28,
2007,
featuring Certified Trainer Kelley King, the principal of Douglass
Elementary School in Boulder.
Benchmarking: What It Is, How
It Works,
and Why Educators Desperately Need It
Commentary by C. Jackson Grayson Jr.,
Education Week, January 31, 2007
"Arthur C. Clarke, the great science fiction writer, once observed that cave dwellers froze to death on beds of coal - lying on the very resource that could have saved their lives. But they had no way to find the coal, mine it, or use it. Today, several millennia later, the same phenomenon is happening again - this time, in education.
"America's K-12 education
system is asleep on beds of best practices. They come from thousands of workable
solutions that exist right now - down the hall, across the district, across the
nation. Like coal to the cavemen, however, these best practices are hidden,
untapped and unmined..."
We need to integrate schools
into the community
Article by Andre Picard, Toronto Globe and Mail, January 23, 2007
"François Émond is an award-winning Montreal architect and, when it comes to schools, a big proponent of all things natural.
When he designs schools, he likes to ensure that all rooms are flooded with light, that fresh air circulates, that natural materials are used to minimize the release of volatile organic compounds (chemicals that seep out of products like plastic), that corridors are wide and bright, that there are common spaces like atriums. But he says school boards resist spending money on anything but the bare basics.
"Schools should be showing the way, not
setting a bad example," Mr. Émond says..."
Children's Chances for
Success Vary Dramatically by State, Report Warns
Released online by Education Week/Editorial Projects in Education Research
Center
January 3, 2007
"A child born in Virginia is
significantly more likely to experience success throughout life than the average
child born in the United States, while a child born in New Mexico is likely to
face an accumulating series of hurdles both educationally and economically,
according to an analysis published in Education Week..."
How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century
Article by Claudia Wallis and Sonja Steptoe, Time,
December 16, 2006
"American schools aren't exactly frozen in time, but considering the pace of change in other areas of life, our public schools tend to feel like throwbacks. Kids spend much of the day as their great-grandparents once did: sitting in rows, listening to teachers lecture, scribbling notes by hand, reading from textbooks that are out of date by the time they are printed. A yawning chasm (with an emphasis on yawning) separates the world inside the schoolhouse from the world outside...
"This week the
conversation will burst onto the front page, when the New Commission on the
Skills of the American Workforce, a high-powered, bipartisan assembly of
Education Secretaries, business leaders and a former Governor releases a
blueprint for rethinking American education from pre-K to 12 and beyond to
better prepare students to thrive in the global economy."
U.S. Schools Overhaul Sought, Using Private
Control
Article by Paul Baskin,
Bloomberg, December 14, 2006
U.S. public schools should be run by private contractors who would graduate most students by 10th grade, concluded an expert commission sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The plan also calls for state funding to replace local property taxes, free pre-kindergarten and higher teacher pay on a merit-based system.
On December 14, 2006, the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce unveiled its recommendations calling for the biggest changes in the American education system in a century. Without these changes, the Commission said, the American standard of living will be in serious jeopardy.
The Commission published a previous report in June, 1990, called "America's Choice: high skills or low wages."
___________________
Building a New Student in Michigan
How one state is re-engineering its schools for the new century
Article by Sonja Steptoe, Time, posted December
12, 2006
Throughout most of the 20th century, the stream of cars rolling off Michigan assembly lines created jobs with high wages and schools with low expectations. When even a kid who dropped out of school early could look forward to a cozy middle-class living, mastering chemistry, geometry or geography didn't seem so important. But now, at the start of the 21st century, both the state's leading industry and its school system are at a crossroads.
While the once innovative industry is struggling to find a new direction, the state's schools have moved into the fast lane of educational reform...
Last year a bright 15-year-old, who
comes from a home without books but goes to a highly rated grammar school, came
to stay with us for a week over Christmas. At first he said little. It was clear
that he wasn't accustomed to laying tables for dinner or making conversation
with adults. Then, as he listened to other people's noisy discussions, he began
to ask tentative questions. What is a government minister? What is the EU? Who's
Mozart? Did Japan fight in the second world war? What does Palestine mean, and
what does it have to do with Israel? His curiosity and his intelligence were
obvious. His inarticulacy and lack of a general or social education, despite his
apparently desirable schooling, were heartbreaking...
The Handwriting Is on the
Wall
Researchers See a downside as Keyboards
Replace Pens in Schools
Article by Margaret Webb Pressler,
Washington Post, October 11, 2006
"The computer keyboard helped kill shorthand, and now it's threatening to finish off longhand.
"When handwritten essays were introduced on the SAT exams for the class of 2006, just 15 percent of the almost 1.5 million students wrote their answers in cursive. The rest? They printed. Block letters.
"And those college hopefuls are just the first edge of a wave of U.S. students who no longer get much handwriting instruction in the primary grades, frequently 10 minutes a day or less. As a result, more and more students struggle to read and write cursive.
"Many educators shrug. Stacked up against teaching technology, foreign languages and the material on standardized tests, penmanship instruction seems a relic...."
"Where's the Content?"
Article by Will Fitzhugh, Educational Leadership,
October, 2006
"Short on facts. Long on touchy-feely. If this characterizes the expository writing that high school students are turning in, what's to happen to them in college?
"Lighting A Fire:
Motivating Boys To Succeed"
Commentary by Kathy Stevens, Duke
Gifted Letter, September 2006, http:www.dukegiftedletter.com
"You’ve got a bright child on your hands! As a preschooler he loved books, drawing, and creating with blocks. He was excited by the things around him and was a bundle of energy, wanting to explore, handle, and figure out his world.
"When he started school he was enthusiastic and looked forward to the wonderful adventures you told him were in store. In elementary school you started getting notes from his teacher indicating that he was “having some problems.” The list included comments like: doesn’t stay on task, fails to turn in homework, doesn’t complete projects on time, can’t seem to stop fidgeting and sit still. In middle school your bright, gifted son is getting by with mediocre grades and an attitude that you find disheartening. He just doesn’t seem motivated to succeed in school the way you and his teachers know he could.
"What happened when he entered the
classroom?"
"The New First Grade: Too Much Too Soon?"
Article by Peg Tyre, Newsweek, Sept.
11, 2006
"...In the last decade, the earliest years of schooling have become less like a trip to "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" and more like SAT prep. Thirty years ago first grade was for learning how to read. Now, reading lessons start in kindergarten and kids who don't crack the code by the middle of the first grade get extra help. Instead of story time, finger painting, tracing letters and snack, first graders are spending hours doing math work sheets and sounding out words in reading groups. In some places, recess, music, art and even social studies are being replaced by writing exercises and spelling quizzes. Kids as young as 6 are tested, and tested again—some every 10 days or so—to ensure they're making sufficient progress. After school, there's homework, and for some, educational videos, more workbooks and tutoring, to help give them an edge.
"Not every
school, or every district, embraces this new work ethic, and in those that do,
many kids are thriving. But some children are getting their first taste of
failure before they learn to tie their shoes..."
"The Truth about Homework: Needless assignments persist
because of widespread misconceptions about learning"
Commentary by Alfie Kohn,
Education Week, September 6, 2006
There’s something perversely fascinating about educational policies that are clearly at odds with the available data. Huge schools are still being built even though we know that students tend to fare better in smaller places that lend themselves to the creation of democratic, caring communities. Many children who are failed by the academic status quo are forced to repeat a grade even though research shows that this is just about the worst course of action for them. Homework continues to be assigned—in ever greater quantities—despite the absence of evidence that it’s necessary or even helpful in most cases.
Please
note: Alfie Kohn is the author
of "The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad
Thing,"
Da Capo Press,
2006.
"With Boys in Mind / Teaching to the Minds of Boys"
Article by Kelley King and
Michael Gurian, Educational Leadership, September, 2006
Is something wrong with the way we're teaching boys? One elementary school thought so and decided to implement boy-friendly strategies that produced remarkable results.
"Why Thinking 'Outside the Box" Is Not So Easy"
(And Why Present Reform Efforts Will Fail)
Commentary by Marion Brady,
Education Week, August 30, 2006
"Of all the education-related unexamined assumptions, none is more deeply embedded than the belief that the main business of schooling is to teach the “core curriculum”—math, science, social studies, and language arts. Supporting that belief is another assumption: that these four fields of study are the only, or at least the optimum, organizers of general knowledge.
"That last assumption is so powerful it shapes education worldwide. At all levels, from middle through graduate school, the four areas of study are the main institutional organizers. So taken for granted is it that they are the fundamental building blocks of education, that reform movements don’t question their centrality. Separate sets of “standards” reinforce them. “Measures of accountability” are keyed to them. Even those who know that knowledge is seamless, who know that the walls between fields of study are artificial and arbitrary, tend to assume that the four are the ultimate organizers of knowledge....
School, finally, isn’t about disciplines and subjects, but about what they were originally meant to do—help the young make more sense of life, more sense of experience, more sense of an unknowable future. And in that sense-making effort, math, science, social studies, and language arts simply aren’t up to the challenge. They’ve given us a curriculum so deeply flawed it’s an affront to the young and a recipe for societal disaster."
For discussion of this
issue, please visit this Education Week webpage: http://www.edweek.org/tb/2006/08/29/939.html
"Ranks of male teachers, principals shrinking"
Article by Pat Kossan, the
Arizona Republic, August 21, 2006
Men are disappearing from
elementary schools.
Two trends are converging to lower their representation in K-8 classrooms: More
women are stepping up to become principals, and fewer men are becoming teachers.
In Arizona, almost 60 percent of grade school principals and nearly 90 percent
of teachers are women. Six years ago, the majority of principals were men. Some
schools have no men, meaning kids may not have a male teacher or principal until
middle or high school. It's the same picture nationally.
Just what is going on in modern constructivist schools that could account for the plummeting academic performance of boys? Let's consider which of these changes seem to be a factor...
"Helping Boys Learn"Over the past several decades, boys' behavior and performance in school has continued to decline. Researchers like Michael Gurian say these are indications that schools are not structured to accommodate how boys' brains work and how they learn. Included: Strategies for making classes more "boy friendly."
"Can Boys Really Not Sit Still In School?"
Text of ABC NEWS interview with Kathy Stevens, by Adrienne Lewin
"The Trouble with Boys"
Peg Tyre's article in Newsweek,
posted online January 22, 2006
Jan. 30, 2006 issue - Spend a few
minutes on the phone with Danny Frankhuizen and you come away thinking,
"What a nice boy." He's thoughtful, articulate, bright. He
has a good relationship with his mom, goes to church every Sunday, loves the
rock band Phish and spends hours each day practicing his guitar. But once he's
inside his large public Salt Lake City high school, everything seems to go
wrong. He's 16, but he can't stay organized. He finishes his homework and then
can't find it in his backpack. He loses focus in class, and his teachers, with
40 kids to wrangle, aren't much help. "If I miss a concept, they tell me,
'Figure it out yourself'," says Danny. Last year Danny's grades dropped
from B's to D's and F's. The sophomore, who once dreamed of Stanford, is pulling
his grades up but worries that "I won't even get accepted at community
college."
"Worlds Collide"
Ronald
Wolk, Teacher magazine, January 1, 2006
In
preparation for a recent meeting, I had to read half a dozen documents. Among
them was a copy of Lauren Resnick’s brilliant presidential address to the
American Educational Research Association in 1987. Titled “Learning In School
and Out,” it focuses on what I view as perhaps the central issue in education:
the gap between the real world and the world of school.
Resnick, now a distinguished researcher and education reformer who heads the Learning
Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh, offers a
clear premise in her opening sentence. “Popular wisdom,” she writes,
“holds that common sense outweighs school learning for getting along in the
world—that there exists a practical intelligence, different from school
intelligence, that matters more in real life.”
"College gender gap widens: 57% are
women"
Mary Beth Marklein, article in USA Today, posted online October 19, 2005
In May, the Minnesota Office of
Higher Education posted the inevitable culmination of a trend: Last year for the
first time, women earned more than half the degrees granted statewide in every
category, be it associate, bachelor, master, doctoral or professional.
"Boy Brains, Girl Brains: Are separate classrooms the best way to
teach kids?"
Peg Tyre, article in Newsweek,
September, 19, 2005
Three years ago, Jeff Gray, the principal at Foust Elementary School in Owensboro, Ky., realized that his school needed help—and fast. Test scores at Foust were the worst in the county and the students, particularly the boys, were falling far behind. So Gray took a controversial course for educators on brain development, then revamped the first- and second-grade curriculum. The biggest change: he divided the classes by gender. Because males have less serotonin in their brains, which Gray was taught may cause them to fidget more, desks were removed from the boys' classrooms and they got short exercise periods throughout the day. Because females have more oxytocin, a hormone linked to bonding, girls were given a carpeted area where they sit and discuss their feelings. Because boys have higher levels of testosterone and are theoretically more competitive, they were given timed, multiple-choice tests. The girls were given multiple-choice tests, too, but got more time to complete them. Gray says the gender-based curriculum gave the school "the edge we needed." Tests scores are up. Discipline problems are down. This year the fifth and sixth grades at Foust are adopting the new curriculum, too.
Audio Reports:
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Superintendent
Works to End Segregation in Boulder Valley School District |
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Report from ACT
Aligning Postsecondary
Expectations and High School Practice: The Gap Defined
High school teachers believe state standards are preparing student well for college-level work; however, roughly 65 percent of postsecondary instructors responded that their state's standards prepared students poorly or very poorly for college-level work in English/writing, reading, and science. This finding strongly suggests that a gap still exists between what colleges believe is important for college readiness and what state standards are requiring teachers to teach.
Report from the Boulder Valley School District
A Community Collaborates to Close Gender Achievement Gap
Report from the Boys
Project
FIVE POWERFUL STRATEGIES FOR CONNECTING BOYS TO SCHOOLS
Report from the Education Policy Research
Unit
‘RESTORING VALUE’ TO THE HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA: THE RHETORIC AND PRACTICE OF HIGHER STANDARDS
Report from the Gates
Foundation
Why do a third of American high school students leave school without a diploma? What might help keep them in school, engaged and learning?
A survey released in March 2006 put these and related questions to a group that isn’t usually asked for opinions on American education—high school dropouts. Nearly 500 former students who had attended schools in 25 locations were polled. Researchers found that although some dropouts had faced academic problems, the overwhelming majority possessed the potential to graduate. Further, the students had strong and thoughtful opinions on what might have kept them in school.
Reports from the National Center for Educational Statistics
This report presents the national results from the 1992, 1994, 1998, 2002 and 2005 reading assessments and from the 2005 mathematics assessment.
Dropout Rates in the United States: 2004
Homeschooling in the United States: 2003
The Condition of Education:
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2006 U.S. Student and Adult Performance on International Assessments of Educational Achievement |
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2005 Mobility in the Teacher Workforce |
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2004 Paying for College: Changes Between 1990 and 2000 for Full-Time Dependent Undergraduates |
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2003 Reading—Young Children's Achievement and Classroom Experiences |
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2002 Nontraditional Undergraduates |
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2002 Private Schools: A Brief Portrait |
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2001 Students Whose Parents Did Not Go to College: Postsecondary Access, Persistence, and Attainment |
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2000 Entering Kindergarten: A Portrait of American Children When They Begin School |
Reports from the Program for International Student Assessment
Learning for Tomorrow's World – First Results
from PISA 2003 presents initial results from the PISA 2003 assessment. The
report goes well beyond an examination of the relative standing of countries in mathematics, science and reading. It also looks at a wider range
of educational outcomes that include students’ motivation to learn, their
beliefs about themselves and their learning strategies.
School factors related to Quality and Equity
Report from Psychological
Science in the Public Interest
The Science of Sex Differences in Science and Mathematics