Archive for February 24, 2008 - March 01, 2008

The British government should increase primary school budgets to match those in secondary schools to pay for specialist teachers to tackle illiteracy, experts say. The multibillion pound investment in education since 1997 has been undermined by a failure to teach pupils the basics by the time they are 11, according to the biggest review of primary education in 40 years.

The Cambridge University-led Primary Review today (February 29, 2008) publishes a series of papers which report that higher test results have been at the expense of the quality of primary education, with a 20% funding gap between primary and secondary schools. Teacher-pupil relationships have been eroded by a focus on whole-class teaching and preparation for “high stakes” national tests, it claims. Read more about the reports in The Guardian online.

The first year of Texas’ $100 million experiment in school reform—involving an estimated 52,000 teachers in the largest merit pay plan in the nation—produced mixed results and didn’t motivate most teachers to change their classroom techniques.

An independent study funded by the state showed that the Texas Educator Excellence Grant program drew a favorable response from teachers in the 1,148 schools where bonuses were awarded, but the study also said massive turnover of schools in the plan each year will make it difficult to achieve success over the long haul. Read about the problems and possibilities in The Dallas Morning News online.

About 650,000 or half of all children in Darfur do not receive an education, despite efforts by various organizations to provide schooling in camps and towns across the western Sudanese region, an international NGO said. “Education is the foundation for economically viable and more peaceful societies. But the international community has been loath to fund schooling in conflict situations,” Charles MacCormack, president of Save the Children US, said in a statement on 27 February. “This is shortsighted.”

In West Darfur State alone, 200,000 children come of school age every year—of whom 22,440 are being assisted by Save the Children to attend classes. “We cannot afford to wait to begin education programs until violence ceases and families can return home,” MacCormack said. “What about the children whose time for school is now? Are they to be left by the wayside of history?” Read more at IRIN News online.

In an age when books, articles, and data are moving online at an ever-increasing rate, are libraries and librarians still relevant? Indeed they are, according to a recent article by Carolyn Feibel in the Houston Chronicle. As Houston librarian Saima Kadir points out, librarians have become teachers of digital literacy; they show beginners how to hold a mouse and sign up for e-mail, and they show more advanced users how to blog or navigate databases. Furthermore, the library provides free access to dozens of electronic resources. The Houston Public Library even offers a 24-hour online chat service.

Often, public libraries are re-creating themselves as community centers, offering computer and English classes, cafes, film festivals, and author readings, says former ALA president Leslie Burger, who directs the Princeton Public Library in New Jersey. "We refer to our library as the community's living room," she says.

For further information, read the full article.

"Tune In @ Your Library" is the focus theme of the second annual Teen Tech Week, which will be celebrated at thousands of public and school libraries across the United States from March 2-8. The purpose of the initiative, which is administered by the Young Adult Library Services Association of the American Library Association, is to ensure that teens are competent and ethical users of technologies, especially those that are offered through libraries.

For further information, including resources and activity ideas, visit the Teen Tech Week website.

Throughout the presidential campaign, the leading Democrats have been speaking from a similar script on education—until this month, when U.S. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois suggested he could be persuaded to support private school vouchers.

“If there was any argument for vouchers, it was ‘Let’s see if the experiment works,’ ” Sen. Obama told the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Feb. 13. “And if it does, whatever my preconception, you do what’s best for kids.”

U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York rejected any private-school-choice proposals in her interview with the same editors the next day. Although Obama’s campaign has since downplayed his voucher comments, the exchange suggests that the two have subtle but important differences in their approaches to federal education policy, whether the topic is expanding school choice, rewriting the No Child Left Behind Act, or experimenting with new forms of teacher pay. Read the article in Education Week online.

 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 March.

March 1: Begins National Women's History Month.
March 3: Read Across America Day celebrates Dr. Seuss.
March 4: Teen Tech Week begins.
March 6: Author Gabriel García Márquez was born.
March 22: Randolph Caldecott was born in 1846.

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.

 California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Februrary 27, 2008, recommended severe or moderate sanctions for nearly half the 97 California school districts that have persistently failed to make progress under the No Child Left Behind Act. Those districts, responsible for educating nearly one-third of California’s public school students, face sanctions for the first time under the federal law because they have failed to meet achievement goals for four years.

Schwarzenegger has vowed to make California the first state in the nation to embrace the penalty aspect of the law. By intervening, the state can receive up to $45 million in federal money to help turn the districts around, the governor’s office said. Read more in The San Diego Union-Tribune online.

If Google and a librarian had an informational smackdown, who would win? Many people champion Google, with its impressive number of results.

But research librarians say their powers have been unfairly dismissed in the online age. Not only can they outsmart Google’s dead ends and weaknesses, librarians say, but they can help people surf faster and smarter by showing them hidden databases and tricks.

In an age of clickable gratification, when books, articles and data are moving online, some people wonder whether librarians are relevant, said Leslie Burger, the immediate past-president of the American Library Association. But Burger said they are more necessary than ever. Read more about librarians’ evolving roles in The Houston Chronicle online.

A corporate co-founder of the Quills people’s choice book awards that were started three years ago and aimed to combine “populist sensibility” with “Hollywood-style glitz,” announced February 25, 2008, that it will suspend support. Reed Business Information gave no reason for the decision and a company statement did not make it clear whether the awards had been placed on hiatus or ended permanently. A spokeswoman for Reed, which operates such publications as Variety and Publishers Weekly, declined to give further details. Money raised for the Quills Literacy Foundation will be distributed to two nonprofit organizations—First Book and Literacy Partners. Read the article on The Canadian Press website.

From posts about the value of using manga in the classroom to discussions of the flaws in No Child Left Behind, the Open Education.net website is dedicated to tracking the changes occurring in education today. Site editor Thomas J. Hanson, who has more than 30 years of experience in education, says that the site will expose readers to both an objective and subjective look at the many issues facing the profession today. For further information, visit Open Education.net.

 The General Assembly of Virginia is flirting with abandoning a landmark federal law that governs schools in the United States. The decision could make the state the first to set a deadline—summer 2009—for planning a pullout from the No Child Left Behind Act, which ties billions of dollars to federally mandated testing standards in public schools.

State politicians have balked at some of those standards in the past few years. Governor Timothy M. Kaine has signed bills asking the U.S. Department of Education to waive parts of the federal law. Most of those exemptions were granted, but the notable ones that have not been approved frustrate educators and annoy legislators.

This year, some politicians want to up the ante. Read about the proposal in The Virginian Pilot.

Online courses have changed the way people attend college. Now, an experimental online persuasive writing course has targeted talented fifth- and sixth-graders in a rural area of New York State. The course allows students to work independently, and it provides a convenient and affordable way to provide enrichment to talented students, according to an article by Omar Aquije in the Glens Falls Post-Star.

"This is really a great opportunity for that child who needs enrichment, who needs something beyond traditional," says Kristina Schroeder, who is teaching the online course. For further information, read the full article.

 The No Child Left Behind law has led many elementary schools to spend more time on reading and math and less on social studies, science, art and recess, a report released last week finds. The Center on Education Policy’s survey of 349 school systems across the country bolsters anecdotal evidence that the 2002 federal law’s goal of having every child proficient in reading and math by 2014 has forced schools to focus on those subjects, sometimes squeezing out other lessons.

Curriculum narrowing, as the phenomenon is known, has become a key issue in the debate over revamping the law. Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has said he plans to introduce a bill this spring to reauthorize the law with changes. Read the article in The Washington Post online.

A new study says most of the country’s 50 largest school systems, including Maryland’s Prince George’s County, have restrictive labor agreements, tying the hands of superintendents who want to pay more to top teachers and transfer them between schools according to need.

Area school systems generally fared well in the survey. But Prince George’s County, which the study said bars school leaders from retaining a skilled young teacher over one with greater seniority in the event of layoffs and requires the system to give internal job applicants priority for vacant positions, was ranked 47th and rated “highly restrictive.”

The study produced by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a District-based think tank that studies educational policy, added fuel to an ongoing debate over whether there is a need for more management-friendly contracts that allow superintendents to reward skill over seniority as school systems seek to meet the goals of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Read the article in The Washington Post online.

Just over an hour into a discussion about whether Vermont should change the way the Education Department is overseen, the testimony turned heated last week. “I think that the state Board of Education is totally and completely out of touch with what’s going on in education today,” contended Sen. Harold Giard, D-Addison.

“I do not think that we are sitting in some sort of a circumstance under the mushroom and not paying any attention to anybody else,” state Board of Education Chairman Tom James of Essex said in defense. The Senate Education Committee is debating legislation that would do away with the 10-member Board of Education and put the department under the control of a Cabinet-level secretary appointed by the governor.

The education commissioner is one of very few state department heads who does not work directly for the governor. Education Commissioner Richard Cate was appointed by the state board, whose members are appointed by the governor, and Cate answers to the board. Read about the debate in The Burlington Free Press online.

With four or five pupils to a desk, the average class size at Moto primary school, in the western town of Molo, Kenya, has jumped from 40 in the last term of 2007 to 80 this year since post-election violence hit the country.

“Look at the children, some are even sitting on stones in the lower classes; we have tried to sit at least three to a desk in the upper classes because the pupils are bigger but this has been difficult; we continue to receive more pupils every day,” Beatrice Nyabuti, the deputy head teacher at Moto primary school, told IRIN.

By contrast, several schools in Kuresoi, a largely rural area which forms one of four divisions that make up Molo District, are silent. No pupils have reported to school this year because of displacement and continuing insecurity. Read about how the civil disorder has affected children’s education in Kenya at IRIN News.

The Eurasia/South Asia Teaching Excellence and Achievement Program (TEA), a bilateral exchange program that provides professional development for secondary school teachers from the United States, Eurasia, and South Asia, is seeking applicants for a two-week international exchange program. In spring 2009, 15 U.S. teachers will visit Eurasian and South Asian countries for two weeks to work with international secondary school teachers.

Prior to the U.S. teachers’ visit, 60 international teachers will travel to the United States in fall 2008 to take part in six-week professional development programs at U.S. colleges or universities. The selected U.S. teachers will participate in the TEA U.S. Conference together with the international teachers in early November, 2008, and travel for a two-week visit to one of the TEA eligible countries to be hosted by one or two TEA international teachers and their schools. For more information or to apply, visit the International Research & Exchanges Boardwebsite.

The 2008 U.S. National Book Festival, organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress, will be held on Saturday, September 27, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The festival will feature more than 70 award-winning authors, poets, and illustrators in the following pavilions: History & Biography, Children, Teens & Children, Fiction & Fantasy, Mysteries & Thrillers, Home & Family, and Poetry.

"We are pleased to present the Library's book festival for the eighth year," said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. "Last year, more than 120,000 people joined us on the Mall to celebrate books and reading. No matter your age, no matter your interests--you'll find books and authors to fascinate you."

For further information, visit the festival's website.

Beginning February 25, ABC's World News With Charles Gibson begins a special series titled "Living in the Shadows: Illiteracy in America." For further information visit either the text link or the video link.