Archive for July 15, 2007 - July 21, 2007

Iraqi refugees in Syria were urged by Craig Johnston, deputy high commissioner of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), to send more of their children to Syrian schools. Speaking to Iraqis July 19 at the UNHCR refugee center in Damascus, Johnston told about 200 gathered Iraqis, “It’s important for the future of Iraq and the future of your families that your children get a good education.” The remarks came days after the UNHCR launched a “Back to School” campaign aimed at getting more Iraqi children in Syria into local schools. At present, only 35,000 out of an estimated 250,000 school-aged Iraqi children are enrolled in Syrian schools despite the government's offer of free education. The UN Children's Agency (UNICEF) estimates that around half of all Iraqi refugees are children. Read the report at IRIN.

A recent survey suggests British parents’ general knowledge is not much greater than the average 11-year-old’s. Simon Cowell is said to be more familiar generally than the Queen or Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Barely half of parents told representatives of Dorling Kindersley, the publishing company conducting the survey, that they thought they were smarter than their children. In some subjects in a quiz taken by more than 1,500 parents and children aged eight to 12, the youngsters did actually know more. Take the quiz at the BBC NEWS website.

The UNESCO IRA Literacy Prize for 2007 goes to the Community Education Administration Centre, Longsheng Ethnic Minority Autonomous County, People’s Republic of China. The Centre was established in a remote, rural, and mountainous area in the northeast of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and serves a large ethnic population that has a high illiteracy rate, especially among women. For more than 10 years, the Centre has conducted, in addition to a literacy program for women, a program for the eradication of poverty through education, and a comprehensive system for rural education. The award, sponsored annually by the International Reading Association, carries a monetary prize of US$20,000, and will be presented by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization in September as part of the celebration of International Literacy Day

The National Braille Press estimates that today only 12 percent of 55,000 legally blind children in the United States can read braille. Although the number does not account for those cognitively unable to read, the literacy rate is down significantly from 50 percent in the 1960s. It seems the time, effort, and money it takes to teach children braille is sometimes passed over in favor of less expensive and less time-consuming audio and computer aids. To many within the blind community, this trend holds serious ramifications. Read more of this article from The Christian Science Monitor.

 A new study of Chicago students suggests that the federal No Child Left Behind Act may indeed be leaving behind students at the far ends of the academic ability spectrum—the least able students and those who are gifted. The study by University of Chicago economists Derek A. Neal and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach lends some empirical support to the common perception that schools are focusing on students in the middle—the so-called “bubble kids”—in order to boost scores on the state exams used to determine whether schools are meeting their proficiency targets. Read more of this article from Education Week.

Did Harry Potter really change the world? It seems an absurd question to ask about a series of children’s books. But when that series sells 325 million copies worldwide, with tens of millions to be added this weekend when the final installment of J.K. Rowling’s wizardly fantasy goes on sale, it gets a little less so. Plenty of claims have been made. Among them: Harry got kids to read, especially boys, and he revitalized the sleepy universe of children’s publishing. Talk to informed observers of that universe, however, and you'll find that nearly every claim made for Harry is open to interpretation, if not dispute. Read more of this article from The Washington Post.

Education experts have welcomed the Tanzanian government’s pledge to hire more teachers in the 2007-2008 financial year to improve the quality of education in the country. “Many will agree that the most important thing in education is the interaction between motivated, competent teachers and their students,” according to Suleiman Sumra, a retired professor of education and researcher with Hakielimu, a nongovernmental agency dealing with educational issues. The government allocated 18% of this year’s budget to education and announced plans to hire more teachers in June. Read the article at IRIN News.

Angel LaBoy is not your average school administrator. The educator raps to Dr. Seuss’ ABCs and reggaetones about reading. Unabashedly, LaBoy flaps his arm like a chicken. The 46-year-old assistant principal wants students to keep reading throughout their summer break. Read more about LaBoy’s unorthodox techniques in this article from the Herald News of northern New Jersey.

A religious education teacher at Deptford Green school in London recently asked his class of 14- and 15-year-olds whether they would go to war for Great Britain. The question has captivated the students ever since. Amber Donohoe says: “It was a conflict for some people.” Ben Efrat, who has dual British-Israeli nationality, was sure of his answer. “I'd give my life for Israel and for Britain,” he says. “This country has looked after me.” Education Guardian published the early results of the first study on teachers’ and pupils’ views about whether patriotism should be encouraged, discouraged, or passively tolerated in British schools on July 17. The findings show most teachers are confused about what line, if any, the government expects them to take. Read the article at Guardian Unlimited.

Going to school is a daily grind for Umm Kareem’s children. Not only do they have to hit the books but they also have to hit the road—across the King Fahd Causeway all the way to Bahrain. With a limited range of options in Saudi Arabia, many Saudi parents are looking for schools with an emphasis on English in a strong curriculum, and a progressive attitude and environment. Vancouver Offshore Groups (VOSG), a Canadian educational service provider and consulting company registered in British Columbia, is proposing to integrate a tailor-made curriculum into Saudi schools. Read more at Arab News online.

  Samoset Elementary Principal Scott Boyes does not consider his school a failure. More Samoset students are meeting state reading and math goals than five years ago. In some areas, the percentage of students doing well has increased threefold. Still, the Bradenton school has missed the targets of No Child Left Behind five years in a row, one of two dozen Florida schools that the federal government wants to make drastic changes. Read more about what these drastic changes might be in this article from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

James Edward Flood, noted educator, literacy researcher and advocate, and former International Reading Association board member, died Sunday, July 15, 2007, after a three-year battle with myelodysplasia syndrome.

Flood chaired and co-chaired many committees of the International Reading Association, the National Council of Teachers of English, the National Council of Researchers in Education, and the National Reading Conference. His numerous educational awards include recognition as the outstanding teacher educator in the Department of Teacher Education at San Diego State University (SDSU), the distinguished research lecturer in the Graduate Division of Research at SDSU, and a member of the California and international reading halls of fame. Flood also was president of the National Reading Conference, and served six years as a co-editor of California’s literacy journal, The California Reader.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to the Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School, 357 Clermont Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11238, or to Health Sciences High and Middle College (HSHMC), 8888 Balboa Ave., #150, San Diego, CA 92123. HSHMC will create the James Flood Reading Room for students. All donations in his name will be used to purchase books. His family may be contacted c/o The Flood Family, 6545 Norman Lane, San Diego, CA 92113.

It’s been a truism for decades that students’ learning slips during the summer, and that low-income children fall farther behind than their classmates, but no one had connected the longitudinal data dots to show just what the cumulative consequences of the summer slide might be. Until now. A recent study by sociology professor Karl L. Alexander and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore concludes that two-thirds of the reading achievement gap between 9th graders of low and high socioeconomic standing in Baltimore public schools can be traced to what they learned—or failed to learn—over their childhood summers. Read more of this article from Education Week.

Newsweek columnist Robert J. Samuelson says he has always liked the comma, but finds that its use is shrinking. He writes that “the comma’s sad fate is, I think, a metaphor for something larger: how we deal with the frantic, can’t-wait-a-minute nature of modern life.” Read his column on how the comma’s fading popularity is also social commentary.

When Barbara Morgan was a wide-eyed 34-year-old schoolteacher, she watched someone who’d beaten her out for the job race into space. Seconds later, the space shuttle was in pieces. Morgan returned to the classroom and shelved her dreams. But not all the way. Now, nearly 22 years later, at 55, she’s set to strap into Endeavour with six colleagues on Aug. 7 and become, after two decades of grief and frustration, the first teacher in space. Read more about Morgan, a member of the International Reading Association since 1986, at PalmBeachPost.com.

Trying to build popularity, many public libraries across the country have been looking more like big chain bookstores, offering comfortable easy chairs, coffee bars and displays of the latest best sellers. But the new library in a growing Phoenix suburb has gone a step further. It is one of the first in the nation to have abandoned the Dewey Decimal System of classifying books, in favor of an approach similar to that at Barnes & Noble, say, where books are shelved in “neighborhoods” based on subject matter. Read more of this article from The New York Times.

Utah’s first dual-immersion charter school will open this fall, where kindergarten through sixth-grade students will begin to master Spanish and English from day one. Students will normally spend every other day in a different language, whereas teachers typically stick to either Spanish or English, depending on their backgrounds. Read more of this article from The Salt Lake Tribune.

The new “child-centered ”curriculum for secondary schools in England could give teachers more freedom, but only if exam pressures are tackled, according to Alexandra Frean, education editor at The London Times. No matter how boldly schools reorganize their timetables and tailor teaching to individual requirements, there is no sign that they will be freed from pressures to push up exam scores. The new insistence on making education relevant to young people by focusing on themes may not be relevant tomorrow. Some believe the government will do little to remedy the really serious problem in the state education system: the shortage of good teachers in specialist subjects. Read it in the Timesonline.com.

Pathways to Education, a stay-in-school initiative, has been stepping in to fill the cracks in Regent Park in Toronto, Ontario, since 2001, with startling success—the high-school dropout rate went from one in two down to one in 10. Now Pathways’ founders are rolling out their program to five other Ontario communities, with ambitions to see it take root across the country. Since Pathways began, the high-school dropout rate in Regent Park has plunged from 56% to just 10%, well below the averages for Toronto (26%) and Ontario (29%). Meanwhile, postsecondary enrolment has quadrupled, from 20% to 80%. Read about it here.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia has reiterated that the government supports teaching Liberian languages in schools throughout the country. The most appropriate start-off point, the president said, would be at the primary school level. Johnson said it was important that children grew up not only speaking their vernacular but possessing the capacity to read and write the language. “It raises the nation's vernacular to a higher level and adds more meaning to the promotion of our culture and tradition through the learning process,” a news release from the president’s office was quoted as saying. Read more here.

A former Normandy School District grounds crew supervisor claims in a lawsuit that the district violated the Americans With Disabilities Act when it fired him for being illiterate. Read more of this article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Reading and writing instruction must be included in all academic areas if literacy is to improve to levels that will ensure the nation’s middle and high school students are prepared for success in college, work, and citizenship, according to a new report from the Alliance for Excellent Education. Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas: Getting to the Core of Middle and High School Improvement argues that the acceptable standard for all students must exceed simply reading at grade level. Only advanced reading skills will truly prepare students to meet the challenges of education beyond high school, the needs of the workplace, and the demands of the 21st century.

Forget piddling around a mere few days for an iPhone. Two sisters are in the midst of an 11-day vigil for this summer’s hottest, “must have” low-tech phenomenon—the latest Harry Potter novel. Read more about their wait in this article from Forbes.