Archive for February 03, 2008 - February 09, 2008

 The International Reading Association has endorsed the declaration by the National Alliance of Black School Educators (NABSE) that "Education is a Civil Right." The declaration insists that the United States establish a zero tolerance policy on illiteracy, dropping out, and failure.

"Research clearly reveals the extensive and growing inequities between white and black students in academic achievement, dropout rates, grade retention, suspensions, and special education placement," says NABSE. "Disparities continue into and throughout adulthood in the criminal justice system, unemployment, wage earnings, and life expectancy. NABSE contends that these inequities can be reduced and finally eliminated through quality education."

For further information, visit the NABSE website.

Robert B. Cooter Jr., an education expert who specializes in improving literacy, especially among economically disadvantaged urban schoolchildren, and who is co-editor of IRA’s The Reading Teacher, has been appointed to a new endowed chair at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky.

Cooter, who will begin working at the university this summer, has been appointed to the Ursuline Endowed Chair of Teacher Education at Bellarmine’s school of education. He currently is a distinguished professor at the University of Memphis.

“I am delighted that Bellarmine University has attracted a person of Dr. Cooter’s prominence,” Bellarmine President Joseph J. McGowan said. Read more in The Courier-Journal online.

The Institute of Education Sciences has released the first report from MDRC’s Enhanced Reading Opportunities study, which is testing two supplemental literacy courses that aim to improve the reading comprehension skills and school performance of struggling ninth-graders. On average, the programs produced a positive, statistically significant impact on reading comprehension among students. To link to the full report, “The Enhanced Reading Opportunities Study Early Impact and Implementation Findings,” visit the publications area of MRDC Inc. MDRC, founded as the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, has been known as MDRC since 2003.

The National Council of Teachers of English has announced this year's winner of the Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children. The 2008 award is given to M.L.K.: Journey of a King by Tonya Bolden (Abrams).

In addition, the following Honor books were named: Black and White Airmen: Their True History by John Fleischman (Houghton Mifflin); Helen Keller: Her Life in Pictures by George Sullivan (Scholastic); Muckrakers by Ann Bausum (National Geographic); Spiders by Nic Bishop (Scholastic); and Venom by Marilyn Singer (Darby Creek).

For additional information, visit the NCTE website.

President Bush’s proposed budget calling for the elimination of Reading Is Fundamental’s (RIF) Inexpensive Book Distribution program would be devastating to the 4.6 million children and their families who receive free books and reading encouragement from RIF programs at nearly 20,000 locations throughout the United States, according to Carol H. Rasco, president and chief executive officer of RIF.

“Unless Congress reinstates $25.5 million in funding for this program, RIF would not be able to distribute 16 million books annually to the nation’s youngest and most at-risk children. RIF programs in schools, childcare centers, migrant programs, military bases, and other locations serve children from low-income families, children with disabilities, foster and homeless children, and children without access to libraries,” Rasco said in news release today (February 7, 2008).

The Inexpensive Book Distribution program is authorized under the Elementary & Secondary Education Act (SEC.5451 Inexpensive Book Distribution Program for Reading Motivation) and is not funded through earmarks. It has been funded by Congress and six Administrations without interruption since 1975.”

R U cycle? Book! Fancy an adds down the sub? There's a gr8 new carnage.

It may look like gobbledegook, but the most streetwise of teenagers would have no trouble translating and responding to it in kind. A new language is being developed by cell phone-addicted kids based on the predictive text of their treasured handsets.

Key words are replaced by the first alternative that comes up on a mobile phone using predictive text. Those expressing excitement with the old-fashioned text phrase “woohoo!,” now use the far more hip “zonino!” instead. The replacement words—technically paragrams, but commonly known as textonyms, adaptonyms or cellodromes—are becoming part of regular teen banter. Read about the trend at Yahoo News online.

It happened 20 years ago, but Rachel Douki remembers the humiliating feeling, the tears that stung her eyes. That day she went to buy herself a skirt and blouse at the Ata store in downtown Jerusalem. Proudly, she pulled out her new checkbook, the first one she ever had, and gave it to the cashier. “Write whatever is needed, I'll sign,” she said. But the cashier refused. “You have to write, not me,”she said. Ashamed, Douki left the items at the register and ran from the store.

Now, at age 66, Douki has learned to read. She and her sister, Hanna Reuveni, have been attending a basic education class at the community offices in Jerusalem’s Baka neighborhood. Around 40 women aged 55 to 75 take part in morning or evening classes. Read how they are learning to read at Haaertz.com.

According to a longitudinal study conducted by a team of Arizona State University students, the dropout process can begin as early as kindergarten, and one of the early signs is missing many days of school. The study, which will appear in the Journal of Education Research, was reported on by Kelly Grysho in The Arizona Republic. For further information, read Grysho's article.

As a school librarian, I wind up reading all sorts of damning reports on students’ lack of reading skills. The latest dire news came from the National Endowment for the Arts’ recent “To Read or Not to Read” study, which warned that “less than one-third of 13-year-olds are daily readers, a 14% decline from 20 years earlier.” High school students are faring even worse: Among 17-year-olds, the percentage of “nonreaders” has doubled over a 20-year period, from 9% in 1984 to 19% in 2004. This multitasking generation, we’re led to believe, can’t focus on any item for longer than nine minutes.

But despite the ominous reports, it’s business as usual for students today, at least the ones I’m talking to. So what gives?

Educators or parents might start by framing the questions differently. Who isn’t having trouble concentrating these days? Who doesn’t find it nearly impossible to stick with a 450-page novel? I suspect that the tipping point in information overload has tipped. Students’ aversion to reading does not necessarily signal a weakness, much less a dislike of reading. For them, and now maybe for me, moving on to something else is an adaptive tactic for negotiating the jungle that is our information-besotted culture of verbiage. Read more of this opinion piece in The Christian Science Monitor online.

Democrats and some Republicans in Congress are objecting to a new program President Bush proposed in his State of the Union address as another attempt to secure federal funding for private school vouchers. The program, dubbed “Pell Grants for Kids,” would provide grants on a competitive basis to states, school districts, cities, and nonprofit organizations to create scholarship programs for low-income students in schools that have missed their achievement targets under the No Child Left Behind Act, and in high schools in which graduation rates are lower than 60%.

“We have seen how Pell Grants help low-income students realize their full potential,” Mr. Bush said, referring to the popular federal aid program for higher education. “Now let’s apply that same spirit to help liberate poor children trapped in failing public schools.”

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, D-MA, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, dismissed the president’s proposal last week. “Yet again, American families heard empty rhetoric about improving our schools. But the president didn’t commit the resources to expand educational opportunity,” Kennedy said in a statement. Read about the proposed voucher program in Education Week online.

Vermont public school students in grades three to eight improved slightly in reading, dipped slightly in math and continued to struggle with writing, according to standardized test results published February 5, 2008, by the Vermont Education Department.

Worrisome achievement gaps persisted between poor students and those with more money, boys and girls, and special education students compared with those without disabilities. Vermont Education Commissioner Richard Cate said the performance gaps and large numbers of students below standard mean it’s time for bold changes in the way Vermont educates students.

“I just don’t think that we can make significant change to the outcomes for kids without making significant change to how they are educated,” Cate said. Read about the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP) test results and what it means in the Burlington Free Press online.

E-Scholastic, the online division of Scholastic, has launched Teacher Book Wizard (TM). The new, free website enables teachers, librarians, and parents to search a database of more than 50,000 books from a variety of publishers to find just the right match for every child, according to reading level, interest, subject, and genre. Teachers and librarians can also download free lesson plans related to specific books and purchase many titles at teacher-discounted prices through Scholastic.com's Teacher Store.

To learn more, visit the Teacher Book Wizard (TM) website.

There are more than 7,000 languages spoken in the world, but we lose one every two weeks thanks to colonization, globalization, and indifference, according to Kirk Honeycutt of the Hollywood Reporter. A new movie titled Linguists, which showed at the Sundance film festival last month, tracks the efforts of David Harrison and Gregory Anderson as they trek deep into sometimes dangerous territories to record nearly dead languages.

For further information, visit the film's website.

Just because you play rugby, shave your face and have a deep voice doesn’t mean you'll get a job at a Taranaki primary school in New Zealand. Primary school principals contacted in Taranaki February 5, 2008, were in broad agreement a shortage of male teaching staff would not mean men got an easy run into primary teaching jobs.

The comments were in response to research which found many primary school principals wanted “real men” as role models in the primary sector and not “wussy, ineffectual or homosexual” males. The findings, to be published in the Gender and Education journal, were gleaned from the results of a survey first sent to 250 primary school principals in 2005 and come amid repeated calls to raise the number of male teachers in primary schools. Read the article in The Taranaki Daily News online.

"Google Book Search: The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly," an article by Dian Schaffhauser appearing in Campus Technology, offers an indepth look at Google's book digitization project and its implications for readers and researchers everywhere. For further information, read the full article.

A small-town Spanish mayor concerned about a high dropout rate in local schools has devised a way to keep kids studying—pay them.

Agustin Jimenez, Socialist mayor of the central agricultural town of Noblejas, is recommending the town’s children be given a euro—the equivalent of $1.50—for every hour they spend reading in the local library.

The sweetener is part of a series of measures to be voted on by the Noblejas council in March. Others include funds for apartments in university towns for students from Noblejas, teachers to give private lessons to struggling students, and expert advice to parents on the virtues of keeping their children at school. Read the story on The Associated Press website.

As kindergarten demands have increased over the last decade, more and more parents of children turning 5 in the spring and summer are faced with the question: to send or not to send.

Rachel Taylor and her husband, Brent, were faced with the question times three because all their boys had summer birthdays. They decided, especially because developmental research shows boys mature at a slower rate, it was best to wait one more year before starting kindergarten.

“I think it gave them a little extra time to mature before kindergarten,” Taylor said. “There's just so much they need to know, it just gives them that extra year to prepare.” Read about the decision many parents face in The Chillicothe Gazette online.

A World Bank report says the quality of education in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has not kept up with pressing economic challenges and urged reforms in the sector.

“The relationship between education and economic growth in the MENA has remained weak, and the divide between education and unemployment has not been bridged,” according to the February 4, 2008 report, released in Amman. Read more in IC Publications online.

The United States spends more than nearly every other nation on schools, but out of 29 developed countries in a 2003 assessment, we ranked 24th in math and in problem-solving, 18th in science, and 15th in reading. Half of all black and Latino students in the U.S. don’t graduate on time (or ever) from high school. As of 2005, about 70 percent of eighth-graders were not proficient in reading. By the end of eighth grade, what passes for a math curriculum in America is two years behind that of other countries.

Dismal fact after dismal fact; by now, they are hardly news. But in the 25 years since the landmark report A Nation at Risk sounded the alarm about our educational mediocrity, America’s response has been scattershot and ineffective, orchestrated mainly by some 15,000 school districts acting alone, with help more recently from the states. It’s as if after Pearl Harbor, FDR had suggested we prepare for war through the uncoordinated efforts of thousands of small factories; they’d know what kinds of planes and tanks were needed, right?

When you look at what local control of education has wrought, the conclusion is inescapable: we must carry Mann’s insights to their logical end and nationalize our schools, to some degree. Read this “modest proposal to fix the schools” in The Atlantic online.

A two-week graduate reading study program offered by Towson University, "ESOL in Costa Rica," includes a one-year student membership in the International Reading Association and attendance at IRA's World Congress on Reading, which will be held in Costa Rica from July 28-31. The program, which offers three graduate credits, will introduce students to the theory of second language literacy and provide information on how to work with English language learners.

For further information, visit the following page on the Towson University website.