Archive for September 23, 2007 - September 29, 2007

The number of schools in England deemed to be failing at the end of last term rose by almost a fifth compared with 2006, the official schools inspection agency Ofsted reported today, September 28, 2007. The 18% rise can be partly explained by a sharp increase in the number of inspections, but ministers also said it reflected an “uncompromising approach” toward underperforming schools. the end of the summer term this year, 246 schools were in special measures—the most serious category of concern for Ofsted, up from 208 at the same time last year. Read about the concerns at Guardian Unlimited.

As the United Nations (UN) General Assembly begins meeting in New York, little is being heard about the Millennium Development Goals. The eight internationally declared goals, on reducing poverty and improving life chances in developing countries, were set in 2000 for achievement by 2015. But the UN says that halfway to the deadline, sub–Saharan Africa is unlikely to meet any of the poverty–busting goals—nor the benchmarks on education, health, and women's empowerment. But why? One reason is that the promises by Western countries to double foreign aid to Africa over the next decade are not being met. Read more at the BBC NEWS website.

Book covers aimed at girls are discouraging boys from reading stories they might otherwise enjoy, according to an article by Alexandra Frean appearing on the Times Online website. "Publishers are getting the covers wrong," said Wendy Cooling of Bookstart, a charitable program that encourages children in the United Kingdom to read. "Some stories are perfectly attractive to boys, but they are needlessly put off."

For further information, read the full article.

Flash floods sweeping across northern and eastern Uganda have damaged hundreds of schools, leaving at least 100,000 children out of class, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said September 26. The floods have also destroyed sanitation facilities, preventing 289 affected schools from reopening, two weeks after other Ugandan schools resumed classes. Heavy, persistent rainfall since July has caused dangerous levels of flooding and water–logging across areas that were slowly recovering from years of civil strife that pitted the Ugandan forces against the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Read about the situation at IRIN News.

Nyko Perez was running out of Cheerios. Sitting at a low, lima–bean–shaped table, the round–faced 3–year–old was gluing the cereal bits to a big “C” made of orange construction paper. “Quieres más? Do you need more?” instructor Camen Bisso asked him in Spanish and English. “OK, what do you say? Como se dice ‘por favor?’ ” “Please!” Nyko responded. At the new First Steps Primeros Pasos early learning center in Georgetown, Delaware, lessons are repeated in English and Spanish, and two of the three instructors are native Spanish speakers. “We deal with integration here,” said Executive Director Lynne Maloy. “We’re teaching our Spanish speakers English and our English speakers get to learn Spanish. We want everyone to have an equal chance to succeed, because education is the name of the game.” Read about the First Steps program at delawareonline.com.

A former senior Labor policy adviser has attacked the vision for school education unveiled by Australian state and territory governments as “dangerous drivel” and a “retrograde step that will dumb down school curriculum across Australia.” Ken Wiltshire, professor of public policy at the University of Queensland, told The Australian that the Future of Schooling report showed Labor education policy was still driven by the teachers’ unions. According to the report released this week, “the judgment of teachers is paramount,” with external state exams and national tests supplementing the teachers’ assessment. “External assessment should be what drives the whole national school curriculum. School-based assessment is subsidiary,” he said. Read about the controversy.

Canadian ministers of education celebrated the 40th anniversary of their intergovernmental organization this week in Victoria, British Columbia. To mark the occasion, the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC), announced an innovative forum on literacy to be held in spring 2008. The event will be designed to increase awareness among Canadians of the importance of literacy as a lifelong issue, and to encourage collaboration and sharing of information on literacy across Canada. The forum will be hosted simultaneously in a number of locations across the country and will take advantage of technology to create a virtual meeting space, where participants will be able to listen to and interact with keynote speakers in real time. Read more about the planned national conversation.

  As a candidate, George W. Bush once asked, “Is our children learning?” Now he has an answer. “Childrens do learn,” he said Wednesday. The setting was, yes, an education event where the president was taking credit for rising test scores and promoting congressional renewal of his signature education law, No Child Left Behind. Education specialists, though, are divided on whether the federal law has succeeded in raising achievement for all students or in narrowing the historic achievement gaps between demographic groups. Read more of this article from The Washington Post.

  This fall, about 170 Northern Virginia children left elementary schools that fell short of academic goals for schools with better math and reading test scores. Most of their classmates stayed put. The students who transferred exercised an option under the federal No Child Left Behind law: Children in schools that struggle year after year can move to better-performing schools. But Northern Virginia’s experience mirrors the regional and national picture five years after the law took effect. Only about 1.2 percent of 5.4 million eligible children nationwide are taking advantage of the federal offer. Read more of this article from The Washington Post.

  Margaret Spellings, US secretary of education, is stepping up efforts to garner support among US business leaders for the No Child Left Behind Act, a series of education reforms that she said is “urgent and essential” to the future of America’s ability to remain competitive. “[The business community] absolutely gets it,” she said, in an interview with the Financial Times. “They’re almost frightened; they understand that we’re either going to improve human capital in the United States or companies are going to go elsewhere. They have a fiduciary responsibility to make their companies work in any event.” Read more of this article from the Financial Times.

  Richard L. Allington, coeditor of No Quick Fix, The RTI Edition, is the second contributor to be featured in IRA’s new series of podcasts, IRA Author Insights. In this podcast, the former IRA president discusses research-supported early reading intervention models and issues related to a successful approach to RTI.

With her tiny earphones and slim digital player, Jakarta office worker Mira Indriarti looks like any other young music lover—except she’s not listening to the latest tunes, but to a recording of the Koran. Digital Koran is increasingly popular in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, where such gadgets sell especially well during the month of Ramadan, when reading the scripture is an essential part of the observance. Indriarti said she bought the gadget because she wanted to study the Koran to be a better Muslim. "It's uncomfortable if I read a Koran book on the bus and people around me may look at me in amazement." The device, the size of an iPod digital player, carries the entire text of the Koran, in Arabic with an Indonesian translation, and its audio recitation. Read more at c/net news.com.

  When President Bush and Congress crafted the No Child Left Behind Act, they agreed on one specific goal for academic achievement: All students would be proficient in reading and mathematics by the end of the 2013–14 school year. Once considered sacrosanct, that goal appears to be open for negotiation as House and Senate leaders consider plans to reauthorize the law. Read more of this article from Education Week.

The exam system in England is to be put in the hands of an independent watchdog to counter criticism that General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exams and A–levels (exams taken in the optional final two years of secondary education) are getting easier. The body will be split from the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, Education Secretary Ed Balls has announced. He said he wanted to end the “old and sterile debate” about exam standards being “dumbed down.” Balls also unveiled plans to boost literacy and numeracy. “I want to end young people being told that the GCSE or A-level results they are proud of aren’t worth what they used to be.” Read about the proposed changes at BBC NEWS.

  Following the release of the National Assessment of Educational Progress reading and math results yesterday, which showed that reading test scores improved two points for fourth grade students, and only one point for eighth grade students, IRA President Linda Gambrell pointed out the need to continue to stress adolescent reading instruction.

“The inability of eighth grade students to demonstrate continuing growth is significant because it reflects a second type of achievement gap—one that narrows students’ options just as they are beginning to make adult life choices about careers and further education.” Gambrell suggested that the mainly primary school model of reading instruction may be dated. “As students age, they confront more complex material in and out of school that requires an increasing level of reading accomplishment. Why not provide middle and high school students with an instructional focus that allows them to master content in science, social studies, and other areas while improving their critical reading skills? As for students who are still grade levels behind in reading, provide special assistance so they can close their skills gap. The older they are, the more urgent the challenge.” Read more of Gambrell’s comments.

Fatima (not her real name) lives with her mother and a younger brother in Pul-e Charkhi prison, in the eastern outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan. The 12–year–old was first brought to the prison four years ago, after a court sentenced her mother to 11 years for murdering her husband. “There are six women and seven children living with us in a single cell,” complained Fatima. Unlike other children in Kabul, both Fatima and her brother are deprived of an education, because there is no school in Pul-e Charkhi prison, Afghanistan’s biggest jail. “I dream of being able to go to school just like other girls,” she said. Fatima’s education prospects are grim. In the absence of a male guardian outside the prison, both children are likely to stay with their mother until she is released in 2014. Read more at IRIN News.

The nation’s fourth- and eighth-graders continue to improve steadily in mathematics, and fourth-grade reading achievement is also on the rise, according to test scores released this morning. But progress in narrowing racial and ethnic performance gaps remains slow and in some cases has stalled. This year’s scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed non-Hispanic white students well ahead of black and Hispanic students in reading and math. In addition, eighth-grade reading scores remained about the same as they were in 1998, confirming the belief of many educators that middle schools need improvement. Read more of this article from The Washington Post.

One Laptop Per Child, an ambitious project to bring computing to the developing world’s children, has considerable momentum. Years of work by engineers and scientists have paid off in a pioneering low-cost machine that is light, rugged and surprisingly versatile. The early reviews have been glowing, and mass production is set to start next month. Orders, however, are slow. That might change with the introduction of a new marketing program, called “Give 1 Get 1,” in which Americans and Canadians can buy two laptops for $399. One of the machines will be given to a child in a developing nation, and the other one will be shipped to the purchaser by Christmas. Read more about the details of this plan in this article from The New York Times.

A program to improve Aboriginal literacy, school attendance, and achievement in Australia has been a dismal failure and may even have made things worse. An evaluation of the Partners for Success program, introduced in Queensland in 2003, found the gap between indigenous and non–indigenous achievement had widened in six of the nine benchmarks. The report also concludes that turning the situation around would involve tackling the causes of poverty and associated disadvantages—such as poor nutrition and fatigue, loss of hope, and an absence of aspiration for a better life. Read the article in The Australian.

  Slate, the online magazine, has published an opinion piece by Robert Gordon calling for the reauthorization of NCLB. Gordon writes, “Congress should fix the unintended consequences of NCLB. But lawmakers should not undo the central consequence the law intended and the critics dislike: the demand that schools do better by the kids they fail.”

Fifty years after federal troops escorted Terrence Roberts and eight fellow black students into an all–white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, he says the struggles over race and segregation still are unresolved. “This country has demonstrated over time that it is not prepared to operate as an integrated society,” said Roberts, who is a faculty member in the psychology program at Antioch University. He and the other students known as the Little Rock Nine will help the city observe Central High School’s 50th anniversary this week with a series of events culminating with a ceremony featuring former President Bill Clinton. Read about what happened in 1957 in Little Rock in this article.

The Newspaper Association of America Foundation has started a major initiative to engage young newspaper readers. The Foundation has launched a YouTube contest designed to encourage teens to tell how they use newspapers in their lives—for anything from acing their current events test to making weekend plans. Entries will be accepted until Dec. 17. The Foundation will feature links to the most creative videos on its website, and the person who submits the best entry will receive a brand new iPhone and a trip for two to attend NAA’s Annual Convention in Washington, D.C. Read more about the contest on the Foundation’s website.

Some three million primary and secondary school students in West Africa will begin school up to a month later this year, while others hold their first days of classes in warehouses, because of unprecedented flooding in the region. After torrential rains, in many areas classrooms are still filled with displaced families and roads and bridges are washed out, prompting the governments of Togo and Mali to postpone the start of school. Officials also are concerned that the flooding could have a longer–term impact on children’s education. “Families have lost everything and their economic vulnerability could justify not putting their children in school,” said Minister of Social Affairs and Promotion of Women Memounatou Ibrahima. Read the article at IRIN News.

  Senator Edward M. Kennedy is hoping to get a bill reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act through Congress before the end of this year. But if that’s going to happen, he has some big stumbling blocks to overcome. The chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee must navigate a complicated political landscape, characterized by the contentious reception to a draft bill put forth by House education leaders recently and a desire by some key members of his committee to hold firm on keeping the law’s central accountability tenets. Also, Sen. Kennedy, D-Mass., must contend with having three Democratic presidential candidates on the panel: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. Read more about the challenges involved in the NCLB renewal debate in this article from Education Week.

  The days of President Bush’s signature education initiative, No Child Left Behind, might be numbered—not the program, but the name. Lawmakers working on legislation to reform the program say they are considering a new moniker. One reason, said Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), a key sponsor of the original bill that transformed K–12 education in the country by ushering in an era of high-stakes standardized testing, is that “No Child” is inextricably linked to Bush. And Bush, he said, has become unpopular. Furthermore, he said, people simply don’t like the name. Read more of this article from The Washington Post.

 Each month, the ReadWriteThink.org Calendar offers quick classroom activities, lesson plans, Web links, and texts pertaining to various reading–related and general interest events. Here is a sampling of the links for October:

October 1: Celebrate Banned Book Week.
October 5: The 2007 Children’s Choices booklist is published.
October 8: Author, painter, quilter, storyteller Faith Ringgold was born in 1930.
October 12: Christopher Columbus Day
October 15: Teen Read Week begins.
October 25: Artist Pablo Picasso was born in 1881.
October 31: Boo! It's Halloween!

There also are links relating to other noted authors and events, and more. For further information, visit the website. The ReadWriteThink.org is a nonprofit website maintained by the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English with support from the Verizon Foundation, and in association with the Thinkfinity consortium. The site provides free lesson plans, interactive student materials, Web resources, and standards for K-12 classroom teachers of reading and the English language arts. Visit the main site.

About 16,000 words have succumbed to pressures of the Internet age and lost their hyphens in a new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Bumble-bee is now bumblebee, ice-cream is ice cream and pot-belly is pot belly. And if you’ve got a problem, don’t be such a crybaby (formerly cry-baby). Read more of this article from MSNBC.com

  Margaret Spellings, U.S. secretary of education, is responsible for enforcing the controversial No Child Left Behind Act, which sets up an accountability system for schools. Before being appointed secretary, she served as a domestic policy adviser to President Bush and helped create No Child Left Behind. In this interview with The Indianapolis Star, Spellings answers questions about changes she would like to see to NCLB, and does not back down when asked if it is realistic to expect every child in the nation to pass state tests by the year 2014.