Archive for December 02, 2007 - December 08, 2007

Spooked by the effects of globalization on their low-skilled citizens, rich countries have been pouring money and political energy into education. In the United States, it has been proclaimed that no child will be left behind. Whether this program, launched by George Bush in 2002, has raised standards will be a big issue in the 2008 presidential election. Next year Britain will introduce ambitious new qualifications, combining academic and vocational study. For the industrial countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), average spending on primary and secondary schooling rose by almost two-fifths in real terms between 1995 and 2004. Oddly, this has had little measurable effect. Read more in The Economist.

Ethiopia Reads, founded by International Reading Association members, is featured in the October issue of Good Housekeeping. The eight-page feature story, “Hope Volume I,” was written by Melissa Fay Greene, with photos by J Carrier. This spring, Greene spent a few weeks in Addis Ababa and Awassa, getting to know Yohannes Gebregeorgis, Ethiopia Reads’ co-founder and executive director. IRA member Jane Kurtz is the president of the board of directors of Ethiopia Reads. Greene also spent time with children at Shola Children’s Library and the Awassa Reading Center, and saw first-hand the power of books in the lives of children. Ethiopian children—like children everywhere—love books and stories, as well as the sanctuary of a library. You can download a copy of the article here in PDF format.

Dropout prevention will be the focus when students representing all 247 high schools in Mississippi gather for the first-ever Destination Graduation: Teen Summit on January 15, 2008, in Jackson. The summit is part of the Mississippi Department of Education’s (MDE) dropout prevention plan to cut the state’s high school dropout rate in half by 2011-2012. The Education Commission of the States and State Farm(R) are joining MDE to host more than 1,000 participants at the teen summit and facilitate the development of teen-led strategies to address the dropout problem.

MDE will hold a similar summit February 28, 2008, to engage business and community leaders, faith-based organizations and parents in a process to identify and implement localized dropout prevention strategies. On average, 36 students drop out of school every day in Mississippi, nearly a third of all high school students each year. Read more about the summit and Mississippi’s initiative.

Midway to the Millennium Development Goals set in 2000, several West African countries have made vast efforts to achieve universal education and gender parity in primary schools by 2015. But education officials and teachers’ unions say the push for increased access to education has come at a cost. While enrollment numbers have improved, retention and graduation rates remain a serious problem and, in some cases, have even decreased.

Officials in many West African countries say tens of thousands of unqualified teachers have a lot to do with it. In Senegal, teachers’ training has been reduced from four years to six months, and in some cases, does not even exist. “Teachers are put directly into the classroom” and trained during the holidays, said Alpha Oumar Diallo, secretary-general of the Union of Professors of Senegal (SYPROS). In Guinea “we recruit peanut vendors and woodworkers as teachers,” said Louis M’Bemba Soumah, secretary-general of the Union of Teachers and Researchers in Guinea (SLECG). “It has completely screwed up the education system.”

Maryland’s attempts to turn around its worst schools in the past several years have largely failed, according to a report by a Washington-based nonprofit education research group. Of the 76 schools labeled failing for at least five years, only 12, or 16% have improved significantly since 2004, the Center on Education Policy found. “Even in an advanced state like Maryland, that has tried to deal with these problems for a decade ... we just don't know what to do,” said Jack Jennings, president of CEP.

The most commonly tried solution—bringing in a turnaround specialist—usually doesn’t work, the report said. And a newer option, replacing the teaching staff, has caused disruption but hasn’t gotten results. Maryland is to be commended, Jennings said, for learning from what doesn’t work. The lesson for other states around the nation, he said, is “that we ought to be humble ... that it is a long, hard slog to bring about change, and it is something we just have to keep working at.” Read the article in The Baltimore Sun.

To improve girls’ education, West African governments must adopt national policies addressing all aspects of violence against schoolgirls—who face rape by teachers, verbal abuse by male students and forced early marriage by parents—a grouping of policymakers, teachers’ unions and civil society organisations has said. “For all girls to go to school, the question of violence against girls must be solved,” said Victorine Djitrinou, international education, advocacy and campaign coordinator for ActionAid International, which organized a conference in Saly, Senegal, on violence against girls in school December 1–3.

West Africa is home to most of the countries with the worst educational gender disparities in the world. Across the region, there are more than eight million girls out of primary school—a figure 1.6 million higher than that for boys, according to the 2008 Global Monitoring Report of the Education for All movement. Read the article in IRIN News.

 Congressional leaders have finally acknowledged what most observers have known for months: The No Child Left Behind Act, the signature domestic legislation of the Bush administration, will not be reauthorized in the foreseeable future. And it should not be, at least not until the law’s blatant loopholes are addressed. The truth that no one in power seems willing to admit is that the federal law encourages statistical manipulations that make reports of academic progress suspect and, in some cases, virtually meaningless. Read what John Merrow, a Peabody Award-winning television journalist for PBS’ “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” has to say in Education Week.

In the first fallout from the Bloomberg administration’s controversial new school report cards, the city named six schools yesterday that will be shut down after earning D’s and F’s. Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein said yesterday (December 4, 2007) that he planned to close 14 to 20 schools at the end of this school year. But that number would fall far short of the more than 50 schools that earned F’s, and of the approximately 100 that received D’s on the report cards. Officials said the report cards were only one factor in deciding what schools to close, saying they examined schools’ history of performance when making the decisions. Read the article in The New York Times.

The world of special education has lost one of its leading lights. Sally Smith, founder of the Lab School in Washington, DC, died this past weekend. She was 78. Smith started her school in 1967, a time when children with learning disabilities had nowhere to go. Smith created a school that influenced educators around the country. But her career in education started with one of her own children. Read about her innovative work in special education at NPR.org.

  At a time when many educators are trying to break free of No Child Left Behind, bemoaning high-stakes testing and arbitrary standards, school librarians are supporting language to write themselves into the landmark federal law as it faces renewal. Recognition in the “highly qualified” category required of classroom teachers, the librarians say, would help provide funds for their training and recruiting. The revisions sought by the American Library Association would also ensure that by 2010 a certified librarian, or media specialist, would work in every school—including the 40 percent nationwide currently without one. Read the article at Medill Reports Washington.

Amazon’s new Kindle e-book device—touted to make reading easier—may be setting the digital world aflame, with initial supplies quickly selling out after its unveiling last week despite its US$399 price tag. Company officials say they’re not sure if those who order now may get it in time for the yuletide holidays. But experts say it may take many months, if not years, for Kindle and other e-books, such as Sony’s similar Reader device, to make their way into the digital mix among libraries and public schools.

In the past decade, new technology has dramatically changed the information and entertainment offerings on local shelves and in classrooms. “It's going to be a long time for the schools to convert, because of the cost of these machines,” says Rita Kaikow, a library media specialist at Oceanside High School and president of the Long Island Media Association, a 200-member school group overseeing technology mostly in Nassau County. “you have a large school, how do you buy and safeguard this equipment?” Read the article at Newsday.com.

For the seventh consecutive year, schools, libraries, and nonprofits across the country will receive thousands of books donated by Verizon employees as part of the Verizon Foundation’s annual Season’s Readings campaign. This year, employees at more than 300 locations will participate in the annual giving campaign with the goal of collecting 200,000 books. The month-long campaign will end December 14. Participating Verizon employees will have the opportunity to donate books to a school or nonprofit in their local area, or purchase books that will be sent to a nonprofit, which will use the books as part of the organization’s literacy programs. This year, the Verizon Foundation has partnered with the National Center for Family Literacy to assist employees in selecting books that are both entertaining and educational for children. For more information, visit the Verizon Foundation website.

 Standardized testing for English language learners has improved since the inception of the No Child Left Behind Act, according to report released last month by the University of California Davis School of Education. The 196-page report, edited by education professor Jamal Abedi, found that the new standardized tests better assess academic English rather than exclusively social English, fit individual states’ English language proficiency academic standards and encompass kindergarten through 12th grade, among other improvements. Abedi said the revised tests also measure English proficiency in reading, writing, speaking and listening, as opposed to only reading and writing. Read the article in The California Aggie online or access the report.

The latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) survey of the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds, conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), shows that some countries have seen significant improvements in student performance since 2000, according to an OECD news release. Korea further increased its strong reading performance between 2000 and 2006 by 31 score points, the equivalent of almost a school year, mainly by raising the proportion of top-performers. Poland increased its reading performance by 29 score points over the same period. Mexico and Greece saw significant improvements in mathematics performance between 2003 and 2006.

However, across the OECD area as a whole learning outcomes have generally remained flat, while expenditure on education in OECD countries rose by an average of 39% between 1995 and 2004. The survey also revealed widespread pessimism among secondary school students about environmental challenges and limited enthusiasm for scientific careers.

Based on tests carried out among 400,000 students in 57 countries in 2006, the latest PISA survey focuses particularly on students’ abilities in comprehending and tackling scientific problems. It also provides an update on performance in reading and mathematics compared with surveys in 2000 and 2003. For further information, visit the OECD website.

King & King, a children's book in which a prince finds true love with another prince, has drawn complaints from parents who checked it out from the Lower Macungie Library in Pennsylvania, according to an article by Kevin Amerman in The Morning Call. The library's board of directors denied a request to have the book taken out of circulation.

The Lower Macungie Library strives to provide a wide spectrum of materials, said Kathee Rhode, the library's director. "We certainly want parents to make that decision for their children--not one parent making that decision for all children."

King & King by Linda de Haan and Stern Nijland, originally published in The Netherlands, has sparked controversy in Massachusetts and Oklahoma as well. For further information, read the full story.

The United States is providing $1 million over the next two years to improve children’s literacy in Dominica at the primary school level. The program offers training to primary teachers with a view to making them better reading instructors. They will be trained through the Caribbean Centres of Excellence in Teacher Training (C-CETT), which have been set up in seven other Caribbean countries by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Teachers who have already gone through the program will also get follow-up support. Five reading specialists will be assigned to the program from the curriculum staff of the ministry of education. Read more at caribbean360.com.

As a result of No Child Left Behind, teachers have been placed under increasing scrutiny, and now principals are facing that same situation. In an effort to ensure that the effectiveness of all school leaders is assessed in a fair and consistent manner, the board of directors of the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) has approved a set of guidelines for policymakers to consider. These guidelines are based on multiple, objective measures that consider the context in which a principal operates his or her school.

You can access the "Highly Effective Principals--Position Statement" on the NASSP website.

She is one of the world’s most famous country singers, with a fortune estimated at £110 million. Rotherham is the gritty South Yorkshire town where once the great steel and coal industries of England flourished. Yet, somehow, Dolly Parton and Rotherham have come together to embark on a laudable project to teach children to read. Parton, 61, has chosen the town as the first place this side of the Atlantic to promote her scheme to improve children’s literacy. She will launch her United Kingdom Imagination Library at the Magna science and education centre on a former steelworks’ site in Rotherham on Wednesday, December 5, 2007. Read about the new library in The Telegraph.

Educators across Florida are taking a hard look at how much of a role the FCAT should play in children’s education as public confidence in the state-mandated test erodes. State Senator Don Gaetz, R-Fort Walton Beach, said he plans to sponsor legislation next year that would allow schools to be graded on graduation rates and students’ performance on other exams besides the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. Those tests would include the college entrance exams, the SAT and ACT. If a school performs poorly on the FCAT, it doesn’t receive state bonus money, about $100 per student, given to schools that maintain an A or improve by a letter grade. Read the article in The News-Press.