Archive for February 17, 2008 - February 23, 2008

If you've ever wanted to ask Beverly Cleary a question about her books, the memorable characters she has created, or her life as a writer, here's your chance. In celebration of National D.E.A.R. Day (Drop Everything and Read), Reading Rockets is collecting questions for Cleary from readers. Teachers, librarians, parents, and readers of all ages can submit their questions.

The best and most unusual questions will be selected for Cleary to answer. Come back to Reading Rockets on April 12th to hear what she has to say in a new exclusive audio interview. You have until February 29 to submit your question. If your question is selected to be answered, HarperCollins Children's Books will send you a set of Beverly Cleary titles

To learn more, visit the Reading Rockets D.E.A.R. webpage.

Preliminary findings of research conducted by professor Ruth Small and graduate students in the Center for Digital Literacy (CDL) at Syracuse University's School of Information Studies (iSchool) show a statistically significant increase in the ELA test scores—almost a 10 point difference—among fourth-grade students whose schools had certified librarians over students in schools without certified librarians.

“We believe these findings are important to consider, not only because of the higher ELA test scores. These certified librarians are having a larger impact on students’ overall learning as well,” says Small, who directs the school library media program at the iSchool. “Although we’re still analyzing the data, our preliminary results show that certified librarians are also more likely to provide students with materials that present more diverse points of view and that better support the curriculum than non-certified librarians.”

For further information, read the news report from Syracuse University's School of Information Studies.

It’s dangerous and it drives teachers to despair. But now the problem of pupils rocking on the rear legs of their chair has been solved by a former teacher in the United Kingdom who has developed an untippable one. Tom Wates has taken orders from 18 schools since launching his product three weeks ago. “I’ve had orders from Glasgow to Belfast, Cornwall to London,” he said. “It seems that it’s a problem that touches everyone.”

Wates said he was “driven mad” by his students rocking back and forth, and often falling off their chairs. “It was something I was saying as much as I was asking children to be quiet. I couldn’t do anything about them talking, but I figured that I could stop this.” Of the 7,000 pupils admitted to hospital a year as a result of chair-related accidents, 70% resulted from rocking back dangerously, according to government statistics. Read about the new chair and see a picture in The Times online.

Usually, nothing gets the attention of Oregon policymakers quite so fast as getting a big, fat “F” on a national report card. So, it was par for the course when Republican lawmakers in Salem pounced recently on a national survey done by the research center affiliated with Education Week, the well-respected weekly newspaper, that assigned a “F” to Oregon over teacher licensing, preparation, training and evaluation.

To address that, a bill is being pushed to set aside $400,000 in public money to create an oversight commission, to track and promote the best professional development opportunities for teachers. But the effort has encountered some pushback, including questions about whether the survey made implicit value judgments, favoring state-imposed mandates on how money should be spent over Oregon’s time-honored tradition of local control for each of its 198 school districts. Read more at OregonLive.com

The Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards (Cybils) are designed to honor children's books based both on popularity and literary merit, providing "a middle course between the lofty Newbery Medal and the populist Quill Awards," say the organizers. On February 14, the following Cybils winners for 2007 were named:

Fantasy and Science Fiction: The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex, published by Hyperion (elementary/middle grade) and Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale, published by Bloomsbury (young adult)
Fiction Picture Books: The Chicken-Chasing Queen of Lamar County by Janice N. Harrington, illustrated by Shelley Jackson, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Graphic Novels: Artemis Fowl: The Graphic Novel by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin, illustrated by Giovanni Rigano and Paolo Lamanna, published by Hyperion (elementary/middle grade) and The Professor's Daughter by Joann Sfar, illustrated by Emmanuel Guibert, published by First Second (young adult)
Middle Grade Novels: A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban, published by Harcourt Children's Books
Nonfiction Middle Grade/Young Adult Books: Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood by Ibtisam Barakat, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Nonfiction Picture Books: Lightship by Brian Floca, published by Atheneum/Richard Jackson Books
Poetry: This Is Just to Say: Poems of Apology and Forgiveness by Joyce Sidman, illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski, published by Houghton Mifflin
Young Adult Novels: Boy Toy by Barry Lyga, published by Houghton Mifflin

For further information and a list of short list titles in each category, visit the Cybils website.

Ten years ago, Ben Macintyre of the London Times predicted that the e-book would change the way people read forever. Ten years later, he's changed his mind. "The death of the traditional book has been predicted, wrongly, from the very start of the digital revolution," he writes. Indeed, he now believes that the e-book and the traditional book may end up not being rivals, "but symbiotic species, sharing the same territory in amicable coexistence."

For further details, read the full article.

What will happen to reading and writing in our time?

Could the doomsayers be right? Computers, they maintain, are destroying literacy. The signs—students’ declining reading scores, the drop in leisure reading to just minutes a week, the fact that half the adult population reads no books in a year—are all pointing to the day when a literate American culture becomes a distant memory. By contract, optimists foresee the Internet ushering in a new, vibrant participatory culture of words. Will they carry the day?

Maybe neither. Let me suggest a third possibility: Literacy—or an ensemble of literacies—will continue to thrive, but in forms and formats we can’t yet envision. Read this commentary by cognitive psychologist Howard Gardner in The Washington Post online.

Adult illiteracy is a headache for much of the developed world, as anyone strolling into a conference hosted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris last week would have quickly picked up. It was the first time countries had gathered to discuss and trade “good practice” in this field, said Tom Schuller, head of the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (Ceri) at the OECD. There is extensive agreement about the economic and social damage adult illiteracy causes, and about the link between crime and illiteracy. Concern about immigrants’ basic skills has been revived since the European Union’s enlargement led to more migration. Read more in Education Guardian online.

An unusual new graduate program backed by Dallas businessman Randy Best is signing up Texas teachers in droves as they seek to earn a fast, inexpensive master’s degree. School districts reward teachers who earn master’s degrees by paying them more and considering them for administrative promotions.

Lamar University’s new program sets itself apart in convenience and cost: Students take one five-week course at a time and finish a dozen required courses in 18 months, shorter than many traditional master’s programs designed for working teachers. They take all their courses on a computer—watching videos of lectures and doing assignments—and pay just $4,950, less than half the price of most education master’s degrees in Texas. Read about the new program in The Dallas Morning News online.

Makkah Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal officially inaugurated the Middle East’s first electronic school on Saturday, Feb. 16. It is named after businessman Abdul Rahman Faqeeh. The governor lauded Faqeeh for establishing the state-of-the-art educational complex that comprises primary, intermediate and secondary schools with advanced facilities.

“I hope graduates of these schools will play a leading role in the Kingdom’s development and work for enhancing Saudi Arabia’s reputation,” the prince said.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Faqeeh said the main objective behind establishing the school was to develop and modernize the Kingdom’s education system and produce a new generation of Saudi students armed with knowledge, information and technology—the three essential factors for progress in the modern world. Read more about the electronic school in Arab News online.

Washington, DC, Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee plans to establish an experimental program that would offer customized lessons for disabled, regular, and gifted students in the same classroom, a key component of her strategy to reduce exorbitant special education costs. Rhee’s proposal would launch a “differentiated learning” laboratory at West Elementary School in Northwest Washington, then replicate it citywide. Under the proposal, the system would hire a private special-education school to run the program.

Since 2006, the D.C. public schools have been under a federal court order to eliminate a backlog of more than 1,000 decisions from hearing officers regarding placement of students in special education programs. The order stemmed from a consent decree that settled a class-action suit filed by parents protesting the system’s long delay in providing services for the students. Read more about Rhee’s proposal in The Washngton Post online.

 A study by Rice University and the University of Texas at Austin shows that the public school accountability system in Texas, the model for the national No Child Left Behind Act, directly contributes to lower graduation rates, according to an article in the Austin Business Journal. For further information, read the full article.