Archive for July 08, 2007 - July 14, 2007

The U.S. Education Department plans to trim $2.6 million from Nevada’s share of funds for English-language learners, baffling state educators who say the 30 percent reduction from the past school year will jeopardize services and programs for students. Read more of this article from the Las Vegas Sun.

The list of great literature in English lessons is being expanded as part of a reform of the national curriculum in England. Curriculum chief Ken Boston is today (July 12) launching the biggest shake-up of the secondary school curriculum in years. A new slimmed-down national curriculum for 11- to 16-year-olds will be adopted that puts more emphasis on teaching topics. This will enable students to research subjects in much greater depth and make learning more relevant to big issues of the day, such as global warming, Boston says. There will also still be a list of Western authors that pupils ages 14 to 16 should study, in addition to those from non-English cultures. "For should, read must," says Boston. Read the rest of the article and see what authors are on the list at The Independent online.

Teachers in Kenya no longer will be required to travel to Nairobi over job-related matters. The Teachers Service Commission has unveiled a new mobile phone short text message (SMS) service, through which its employees countrywide can obtain services from its Nairobi headquarters. An estimated 7,000 teachers visit the offices every month on job-related issues, according to TSC chief executive Gabriel Lengoiboni. The service is seen as a breakthrough in efforts to bring about efficient communication with the largest employer of public servants. Read more at allAfrica.com.

Teens who plan to prep for college-admissions tests this summer can find a plethora of ways to make it fun and flexible. Want to study in the shower? Lose yourself in a comic book? Take a quiz on your iPod? Or how about rocking out to some songs that stretch the lyrics just a tad in order to be educational? Read about these test prep options in this article from The Christian Science Monitor.

Angie Lebron clicks rapidly through the brightly illustrated passage on her computer screen to learn about an archaeologist’s study of the mummified remains of the Chachapoya people, who lived in South America more than five centuries ago. When a difficult term or phrase trips her up, she simply points her mouse to highlight it and bring up a definition or detailed description. Earlier in the school year, Ms. Lebron would have been frustrated by the complicated language and historical content in the reading assignment. But with the help of a reading-intervention program that includes computer-based lessons that adapt to her reading skills and specific instructional needs, Ms. Lebron is now on grade level and learning to enjoy reading in school and at home. Read more about the many ways that computer software is helping students learn in this article from Education Week.

John Hancock wouldn’t recognize the handwriting taught in many schools today. And his loopy slanted script might as well be a foreign language to 21st century students. Time and technology have largely done away with traditional penmanship, leaving schools with a challenge that mirrors today’s fast pace: how to teach a cursive style that’s faster to write than older, ornate methods and easily readable. Read more of this article from the Vail Daily.

The role of pants in the spread of western culture has been wrongly sidelined, according to medieval historians. Rags from discarded pants and knickers led to a 13th century breakthrough in the making of cheap paper, undercutting expensive parchment. Cheap paper was available when William Caxton set up England's first printing press in 1476, and his work has long been credited with the dramatic spread of learning. But Marco Mostert of Utrecht University, speaking at the International Medieval Conference in Leeds, said: "Paper deserves a share of the credit. Its development through the increase of rags undoubtedly helped to increase literacy." Read the article at Guardian Unlimited.

Extra funding should be spent directly on pupils who slip behind expected levels of achievement at the age of 11 to help them close the gap between them and higher achieving children, a group of British education advocates said July 10. New Vision Group suggested some of the cash should come from surpluses built up by schools with more advantaged pupils. More financial incentives to schools in the form of grants to help the lowest-performing pupils should only go to "inclusive schools." These would be determined by, for example, low exclusion rates, progress of vulnerable groups and pupils with special needs. Read more at The Guardian Unlimited.

Fifteen teen mothers who dropped out of secondary schools in Nigeria recently got the push they needed to put their lives back on track. Aiboste Secondary School, Auchi (ASSA), a community school, decided to take them back. School official Alhaja Monsurat Abdul-Salam said the gesture is necessary because of the escalating number of teenage mothers dropping out of school. “This trend, if not curbed, portends a high rate of illiteracy for this community,” she said. Their school fees and textbooks will be paid for with scholarship funds. Read the article at allAfrica.com.

The Omaha school district is poised to become the only district in the state—and one of only 10 public districts nationwide—to offer a dual-language immersion program for students from kindergarten through graduation. Achievement results presented to the Omaha school board recently indicate that elementary students who are learning in both Spanish and English are scoring better in reading and math than their schoolmates who are taught only in English. Read more of this article from the Omaha World-Herald.

An international education authority has warned Australia against introducing national testing in schools because it has lowered literacy and numeracy standards in the United States. Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at Stanford University in California, addressed English teachers and researchers in Canberra on July 10. She said the US external accountability and assessment system, introduced in 2001, had diluted the school curriculum. Read the article at The Sydney Morning Herald website.

Of all the magical powers wielded by Harry Potter, perhaps none has cast a stronger spell than his supposed ability to transform the reading habits of young people. In what has become near mythology about the wildly popular series by J. K. Rowling, many parents, teachers, librarians and booksellers have credited it with inspiring a generation of kids to read for pleasure in a world dominated by instant messaging and music downloads. But in keeping with the intricately plotted novels themselves, the truth about Harry Potter and reading is not quite so straightforward a success story. Read more of this article from The New York Times.

Here’s the plan: Put young children who struggle with English in a classroom with English-speaking students and teach in two languages. Soon, both groups of children will become bilingual and bi-literate with the youngsters helping each other develop two languages, say supporters of the dual language immersion program. But others are balking at the experiment that Texas lawmakers approved this spring, contending it’s turning classrooms into laboratories. Read more of this article from the Houston Chronicle.

A remarkable experiment in eradicating pupil illiteracy in West Dunbartonshire, a local authority in Scotland, has proved so successful that it is being held up as a model for education authorities across the world. In 1997, Tommy MacKay, the educational psychologist who pioneered the program, persuaded the West Dunbartonshire council to commit itself to eradicating pupil illiteracy in its schools within a decade. This year, it is on track to reach its target, becoming what is thought to be the first local authority in the world to do so. Read about its success using synthetic phonics at Guardian Unlimited.

Welcome to the Simplified Spelling Society. It’s been campaigning for a century to make the spelling of the English language easier and recently picketed a spelling bee in the US to make the point. Masha Bell, a member of the society and author of Understanding English Spelling, believes that reform of the spelling of the English language could help children learn to read and make life easier for some adults too. Vivian Cook, a linguist and expert in second language learning and author of Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary, believes changing spellings would be unnecessary, expensive and could harm children’s ability to read. A glossary is available at BBC NEWS, and the two debate the issue.

So here we are: at the end of the “Harry Potter” decade. The books have been printed and are under lock and key. (Presumably.) J. K. Rowling has made her choices. Harry is either going to live or die. Severus Snape is either evil or good—or maybe a little bit of both. Ginny will stick with Harry, and Ron will hook up with Hermione. Or not. Eager readers still have to wait a fortnight or so for answers to these questions. Which is why the Op-Ed page of The New York Times asked four writers and one artist to fill the void and draft “Harry Potter” endings of their own. Read more of this article to see how Meg Cabot, Larry Doyle, Polly Horvath, and Damon Lindelof would end the series.

Pastoralists across Africa want their children to have access to education that suits their nomadic lifestyles, representatives of pastoral communities said in Isiolo, Kenya. “The issue of the education curriculum is important to understanding pastoralism; imagine taking a lot of time to teach a child in Mandera [northern Kenya] how to plant beans when that child could be taught how to tan leather, given that it is the available resource,” Ali Wario, Kenya’s assistant minister for special programs in the office of the president, said July 9. Wario, who opened the three-day workshop attended by at least 70 participants, said “We must have mobile schools in pastoralist areas if children are to gain from the education system.” Read more at IRIN.

  Several school districts across the country are moving to an increasingly popular way of analyzing test scores, called a “growth model” because it tracks the progress of students as they move from grade to grade rather than comparing, say, this year’s fourth graders with last year’s, the traditional approach. Concerned that the traditional way amounted to an apples-to-oranges comparison, schools in more than two dozen states have turned to growth models. Now a movement is mounting to amend the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which is up for reauthorization this year, to allow such alternative assessments of student progress. Read more of this article from The New York Times.

Despite a 5-year-old federal requirement that they create English-language proficiency standards for children who are new to the language, most states—including some with the largest numbers of English-language learners—have yet to give local school districts assistance in how to translate those standards into a curriculum. The lack of detailed guidance and workshops on how to create a curriculum for English-language learners means that districts often are on their own in figuring out how to use the new standards in the classroom. Read more of this article from Education Week.

A curriculum under which children are not taught to read and write until they are 7 years old is being reviewed amid debate over whether it should be offered in public schools in Australia. Steiner education has flourished in the private sector across Australia and is being offered at government primary and secondary schools. But the move into at least 10 public schools in Victoria, South Australia, and Queensland has divided parents. Critics say Steiner does not belong in public schools because it is too religious and does not pay enough attention to reading and writing in the early years, while supporters argue that it provides a more holistic approach to learning. Read the article in The Australian.

An advertising campaign encouraging people to upgrade their skills through education and training is being launched by the government in the United Kingdom. TV, print and poster advertisements will aim to persuade people of their natural ability to succeed. The "Our future. It's in our hands" campaign will run over three years. The campaign comes after a report that warned that the UK must become a world leader in skills by 2020 if it wants to sustain its position in the global economy. This means dramatically increasing the number of adults who improve their skills and gain qualifications at all levels—from functional literacy and numeracy to higher education levels. Read the article at BBC NEWS.

The Ministry of Education in Uganda has been criticized for not including local literature books on its syllabus. According to the National Literacy Awards Committee chairman, Joseph Mugasa, the syllabus is dominated by foreign authors. “Currently, we have only three local authors on the literature syllabus,” Mugasa said at the opening of the Book Forum in Kampala last week. Samuel Andema, chairman of the International Reading Association, observed that Ugandans have a poor reading culture. “The poor reading culture has made us live in ignorance by choice—since we have denied ourselves the opportunity to grow intellectually,” he said. Read the article at allAfrica.com.

The child growing up in a small town in Michigan thought he would never be able to talk or read out loud. His battle with stuttering often got the best of him and the laughter from other kids left him feeling embarrassed and hurt. The little boy overcame the impediment and grew up to become actor James Earl Jones, one of the most recognizable voices in the world. Read more of Jones’ story in this article from The Buffalo News.

Most Canadians, but especially those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, experience “significant” literacy loss as adults, a Statistics Canada report shows. The decline in skills begins at age 25, bottoms out around 40 and then tapers off around 55 years old. For example, adults aged 40 scored an average of 288 on a standardized literacy test in 1994, but in a second survey nine years later, that had dropped to 275—a loss of reading ability equal to half a year of schooling. Read more of this article from The Daily News of Halifax.

 About 82 percent of Georgia’s public schools met federal testing goals this year, according to figures the state released Friday. Roughly 79 percent met the standard last year. The state Department of Education released its annual report Friday on whether Georgia schools met the testing goals required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The law requires all public schools to test students each year in math, reading and language arts in grades 3 through 8. Read more about these results in this article from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.