Archive for September 30, 2007 - October 06, 2007

The September 2007 issue of Educational Leadership, the journal of the Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) revolves around the theme "Teachers as Leaders." More than a dozen articles such as "Overcoming the Obstacles to Leadership," "The Many Faces of Leadership," "What Do Teachers Bring to Leadership?", and "Ten Roles for Teacher Leaders" address a variety of aspects relating to leadership.

Copies of the journal are available from ASCD. For ordering details, visit the following page on the ASCD website.

October 5 marks World Teachers' Day, and Education International invites all to celebrate the importance of teachers throughout the world. In observance of this special day for teachers, EI and others make the following demands on behalf of teachers: a decent working environment, living wages, equal pay and equal rights for women, initial and ongoing professional development, involvement in policy-making, and collective bargaining to defend and enhance teachers' rights.

To mark World Teachers' Day, EI and several United Nations agencies have released a joint comunique. To access this communique, visit the following page on the UNESCO website.

Despite predictions to the contrary, libraries continue to survive--and even thrive--in the computer age. One library service, however, that may be doomed by changing times and changing circumstances is the bookmobile.

An article by Anna Badkhen appearing on Boston.com outlines the struggles of Linda Caravaggio to keep a bookmobile running in the town of Beverly. Hers is one of only four bookmobiles that continue to operate in the state of Massachusetts. Across the United States, an estimated 900 bookmobiles remain in service, many in rural or low-income areas.

For further information, read the full article.

Who says libraries don't have a place in today's digital society? According to a recent article by Kimberly S. Johnson posted on the Denver Post.com website, libraries are attracting record numbers of visitors. She cites figures from the American Library Association showing that increasing numbers of visitors are checking out increasing numbers of items over recent years in the United States. According to ALA, nearly 1.3 billion library patrons checked out more than 2 billion items in fiscal year 2005, up from 1.15 billion visitors and 1.7 billion items in fiscal year 2000.

Johnson's article also gives many examples from the Denver area showing how libraries are adjusting their programs to meet the needs of today's patrons. For further information, read the full article.

Schools should set aside at least 30 minutes a day for silent reading, and all 11-year-olds’ reading ability should be tested when they start secondary school, a leading education figure will say today. In a speech at the National Conference on Accelerated Learning, the chairman of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, Sir Cyril Taylor, will say there is still a “serious problem” with literacy levels in schools in spite of “much good work.” Read more of this article at Guardian Unlimited.

As the new school year progresses, a growing number of schools across the United States are trying new approaches to move students from feeling like anonymous drones with an ambiguous destiny to focused learners. In some schools students are in broad topical clusters, while in others, such as Sarasota High School in Florida, students must think about what specific job they aim to achieve, and choose a relevant major. Even as more states and individual schools adopt this “major” approach, critics say high school should be a place for gaining general knowledge and communication skills. Students aren’t ready to narrow their career options yet, they say. Read more of this article from The Christian Science Monitor.

To celebrate the publication in October of One Million Men and Me by Kelly Starling Lyons, a book commemorating the 12th anniversary of the Million Man March, publisher Just Us Books is sponsoring "My Most Memorable Moment with My Father," a nationwide writing contest for elementary school youth across the United States. The contest is open to first- through fifth-grade students. For details, visit the following page on the Just Us Books website.

  A new study of state achievement tests offers evidence that the No Child Left Behind law’s core mission—to push all students to score well in reading and math—is undermined by wide variations in how states define a passing score. Read more of this article from The Washington Post.

  The math tests students take under the No Child Left Behind law are harder than the reading exams, a study finds. The findings, in a study released by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington-based education think tank, come a little more than a week after the federal government reported students have been making much more progress in math than in reading in recent years. Read more of this article from MSNBC.com

Working in quake–affected northern Pakistan, Nasrat Kazmi knows all too well the difficulties of teaching children in a tent. “It’s too hot in summer and too cold in winter,” the 35–year–old primary school teacher said outside the Sherwan primary school, perched on a knoll overlooking the majestic mountains of Pakistani-administered Kashmir. “It’s just not suitable for education purposes.” Two years after a 7.6 magnitude quake leveled her school in a disaster that killed more than 75,000 and rendered more than three million homeless, that is a reality she, along with her students, has no choice but to bear. Read about their plight at IRIN News.

  Only a few months after Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi convened a “national summit on America’s children,” Congress has at least three different proposals on early-childhood education to consider. Since that May event, several lawmakers have been crafting legislation that would build upon the steady growth of prekindergarten programs that has already occurred in the states. In what pre-K supporters are calling a “trickle-up” effect, three federal plans have been offered that call for tying preschool education to the No Child Left Behind Act, which primarily focuses on K–12 schools. Read more of this article from Education Week.

  In this New York Times opinion piece, Diane Ravitch, a professor of education at New York University and the assistant secretary of education for research from 1991 to 1993, says that the main goal of NCLB—that all children in the United States will be proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014—is simply unattainable. She argues that the federal government “should supply unbiased information about student academic performance to states and local districts. It should then be the responsibility of states and local districts to improve performance.”

Every year, Roberta Valentine, an elementary school teacher in New York City, encounters a few students who cannot concentrate for more than a few moments. As a girl from her class once said, “Sometimes if I have to sit still for one more minute, I just can’t stand it.” A few years ago, Ms. Valentine read a book by Mel Levine, an expert on learning disabilities, about schoolchildren who have trouble focusing, and came across his term “mind trips” to describe such moments of distraction. She felt that it offered a clue about how to proceed. Read how she incorporated Levine’s ideas, writing assignments, and PowerPoint into her classroom to help her students focus in this article from The New York Times.

Schools across Iraq reopened this week, drawing a trickle of pupils, after the Education Ministry decided not to wait until the end of Ramadan October 7 to resume classes. A tour of schools in inner Baghdad neighborhoods revealed a low turnout. Many parents said they would wait a few days to assess the security situation before packing their children off to classes. Parents and children who turned up expressed hope that the new year would be better than the last one, which was beset by sectarian killings in Baghdad, with teachers also among the targets. Read more at The Daily Star.

Primary school curriculums have too many subjects and schools are too underfunded to meet standard requirements for English, math, and science, a national study of principals has found. The study underpins Australia’s first primary school charter endorsed by principals who want the educational focus put back on literacy, numeracy, and science. The federal government funded research for the Australian Principals Association that found national standards were beyond the reach of many schools, particularly those in disadvantaged areas. The association released a draft report in August, recommending that subjects including manners, nutrition, drug education, and financial literacy be dropped from primary school curriculums. Read more.

The number of parents home schooling their children has increased by at least 800% within five years in some parts of Britain, as growing evidence emerges that some schools have encouraged it as a way of improving ratings for truancy and educational performance. The highest increase in Britain has been recorded in Lancashire, where 567 children are now home schooled compared with 61 five years ago. Education Otherwise, an organization which offers advice to parents wanting to educate their children at home, claims the numbers may be because some children never start school in the first place and are not on local authority records. Read the article in The Independent online.

Teacher education programs have for years drawn criticism from policymakers and even some prominent voices in the field. Now, Congress is poised to slash spending on the main federal program aiding colleges of teacher education, despite efforts by some lawmakers to refocus the program to bolster partnerships between such colleges and school districts. Under a fiscal 2008 spending bill the House of Representatives approved in July, support for the Teacher Quality Enhancement Grants program would fall by one-third, from $60 million in just-ended fiscal 2007 to $40 million. The Senate Appropriations Committee, which in June passed its spending bill that includes the U.S. Department of Education, would cut funding for the program to just $28.5 million—a drop of more than 50 percent. Read more of this article from Education Week.

Music training, with its pervasive effects on the nervous system’s ability to process sight and sound, may be more important for enhancing verbal communication skills than learning phonics, according to a new Northwestern University study. Musicians use all of their senses to practice and perform a musical piece. They watch other musicians, read lips, and feel, hear and perform music, thus, engaging multi-sensory skills. As it turns out, the brain’s alteration from the multi-sensory process of music training enhances the same communication skills needed for speaking and reading, the study concludes. Read more about this research in this article from the scientistlive.com website.

Jenna Bush, the president’s daughter, agreed to sit for her first-ever extended newspaper interview to talk about Ana’s Story: A Journey of Hope, her new book for young adults. The book is a nonfiction account of the struggles and triumphs of a Latin American teenager born HIV–positive. Bush, who has been a teaching assistant and has taught third grade, says she’s hoping to “start a dialogue” with young Americans about HIV/AIDS and other hurdles—poverty, abuse, lack of education—that confront millions of children worldwide. Read about Jenna Bush at washingtonpost.com.

The story seemed like a surefire hit for children. A pair of penguins take care of an egg that isn’t theirs and then raise the baby penguin, after it hatches, as their own. How heartwarming. And who doesn’t love penguins? Plenty of parents, it turns out, when both penguin parents are male. That plot twist earned And Tango Makes Three the distinction of being the most challenged book of 2006, according to the Chicago–based American Library Association, which compiles an annual list of titles that have been targeted by efforts to remove them from public and school libraries. The book and others will be the center of attention at readings and other literary events nationwide as part of Banned Books Week, organized by the library association and other groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union. Read more at The Chicago Tribune.

  The superintendents of the Washington area’s two largest school systems say national standards are needed to measure achievement among public school students, a sharp contrast to other educators who are asking that the federal government have less involvement in the schools, not more. The support for national tests from the superintendents in Fairfax and Montgomery counties, as well as the superintendent and School Board of Arlington County, is one of the most surprising messages being sent to Congress by area educators hoping to influence efforts to revise the five-year-old No Child Left Behind law. Read more of this article from The Washington Post.

Beyond its cluster of office towers, Tulsa is a city built close to the ground, a broad clash of neighborhoods you can tell apart by how the grass grows, bright and trim as a putting green in the richer sections, pale and shaggy in the poorer spots. Tulsa native S.E. Hinton, a cult figure for 40 years since the publication of The Outsiders, knows the difference between the wild and the well-kept lawn. Her million-selling book not only helped establish the young adult novel but remains a classic story of gangs at knife’s edge. Once a teen sensation who wrote her most famous book while still in high school, Hinton is now 59, a dry-witted, sad-eyed woman wearing jeans and sneakers for a recent interview. As a child, she dreamed of writing a book she wanted to read, a novel that told the truth about how kids think. Forty years later, a lot of young people still think she succeeded. Read more of this article from The Associated Press.