Archive for March 16, 2008 - March 22, 2008

Clara Moyo, 50, has 11 children and three grandchildren. She went back to school a few years ago, and is now in grade 10 at the same secondary school as her first-born son who is in grade 12 in Lusaka, Zambia. “I had big problems—I couldn’t speak English [Zambia’s official language]. Education is power, education is very important. Without education you can’t be recognized in the community, without education it is as if you are dead,” Moyo told IRIN.

Zambia’s illiterate adults will continue to be excluded from the benefits of a growing economy unless government steps in, civil society groups have warned. “In all places where people were illiterate, poverty was rife. Illiteracy certainly excludes people from the process of production, and denies them the opportunity to participate in social programs that are meant to improve their livelihoods,” said Margaret Machila, lead researcher of a study, The Extent of Adult Literacy in Zambia, funded by South Africa’s Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa and released this week. Read more in IRIN News online.

The Liberian government has been advised to strive to provide free education or a minimum cost education as a means of reducing poverty in the country. A Liberian national, Gester E. Murray advised that this will help promote national security, peace, and development.

Murray, Assistant Minister of Land and Mine and Energy, made the disclosure Tuesday at the Monrovia City Hall. Speaking on the theme, “Statement on Educational Enlightenment,” Murray said education provides a road map to survive in a competing world of depleting resources.

He noted that the higher a country's illiteracy rate, the more its power base is emasculated, and the more vulnerable it becomes to the predator-prey relationship. If Liberia is to survive in the current global system of increasing competitiveness and rapid development, he advised that pragmatic and robust actions must be taken to increase the country’s literacy mainly through expanded educational funding. Read more on Murray’s speech at allAfrica.com.

There is neither time nor a reason to slow down a plan to update the English language arts and reading curriculum for public schools in Texas, State Board of Education Chairman Don McLeroy said Wednesday, March 19, 2008, after a Texas lawmaker pleaded for input from Hispanic experts. Hispanic children now make up a large plurality of the 4.7 million students attending Texas public schools.

“There is no way that ignoring such a sizable chunk of this population from consideration of education policy will do anything but harm the opportunity of a generation,” Representative Abel Herrero, D-Robstown, told McLeroy and a four-member board subcommittee.

Herrero represented the House Mexican American Legislative Caucus, which has asked McLeroy to include experts in Latino culture before adopting a final document. He and other advocates did not have specific examples of how a lack of such experts may have resulted in omissions in the newly released document. Read the article in The Houston Chronicle online.

It has never been easier to read up on a favorite topic, whether it’s an obscure philosophy, a tiny insect or an overexposed pop star. Just don’t count on being able to thumb through the printed pages of an encyclopedia to do it.

A series of announcements from publishers across the globe in the last few weeks suggests that the long migration to the Internet has picked up pace, and that ahead of other books, magazines and even newspapers, the classic multivolume encyclopedia is well on its way to becoming the first casualty in the end of print. Read more about the end of the print encyclopedia in The New York Times online.

The British Columbia Teachers’ Federation in Canada is planning job action to get rid of standardized tests in reading, writing, and math that are used every year by the Fraser Institute to rank schools. In a secret vote Monday, March 17, 2008, delegates to the union’s annual meeting approved a plan for a boycott next year of the tests known as the Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA). The tests are delivered early each year in Grades 4 and 7.

Teachers want the government to stop testing every child and return to the random sampling that was in effect prior to 2000. That would bring an end to the Education Ministry’s practice of releasing school-by-school results and kill the rankings by the Fraser Institute, an independent nonpartisan research and educational organization based in Canada. Read the article in The Times Colonist online.

Every Monday at 4:00 p.m., fans of Stephen King, Louis L'Amour, James Baldwin, and Malcolm X gather at 2100 Lakeside Men's Shelter in Cleveland to discuss books. At a time when polls indicate that book reading is declining, the homeless men in this shelter are reading two books a month, according to an article by Jacqueline Marino appearing on ABC News online.

Donna Kelly, an outreach nurse with Care Alliance, a health care provider for the homeless, began the club last fall after noticing how many homeless men brought books to the health clinic she helped run at the shelter. The books for the book club are supplied by the Cleveland Public Library.

Kelly tries to bring health literacy into every meeting without disrupting the excitement generated by the book discussions. Sometimes the book club has even inspired its members to change their lives, as when, after a field trip to hear an author's talk, one man acknowledged his alcohol problem and said he was ready to see a counselor.

For further information, read the full story.

 Flanked by state Republican leaders in St. Paul, Minnesota, the nation’s top education official said increased flexibility for a select group of states under the No Child Left Behind law would help struggling students. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said up to 10 states will be able to dispense different sanctions to schools based on the degree to which they miss annual progress goals. She said the new method would give those states and their schools more power to target money to students having the most trouble keeping up. The announcement Tuesday, March 18, 2008, was the latest attempt to quell complaints about the law, which is up for renewal in Congress. So far, lawmakers trying to advance it haven’t gained much traction. Read the article by The Associated Press online.

 Patricia A. Edwards, distinguished professor of teacher education at Michigan State University, has been elected as the incoming vice president of the International Reading Association. She will assume this position at the end of the IRA Annual Convention in May. She will serve as vice president of the Association in 2008-2009, as president-elect in 2009-2010, and as president in 2010-2011.

Three new members of the IRA Board of Directors also were elected: Janice F. Almasi, Carol Lee Robertson Endowed Professor of Literacy Education, University of Kentucky; Marsha Moore Lewis, second grade National Board Certified Teacher, Kenansville Elementary School, Kenansville, North Carolina; and Alfred Tatum, associate professor and reading clinic director, University of Illinois at Chicago. They will serve three-year terms that begin at the end of the IRA Annual Convention in May.

The new president of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) in the United Kingdom will warn of an impending Orwellian education system at the first day of the union’s annual conference in Torquay today (March 18, 2008). Targets, testing, league tables, inspections, and increasing use of camera surveillance in classrooms could lead to “Big Brother watching over schools in the next five years,” Julia Neal will tell delegates.

“Teachers will talk about surveillance cameras in classrooms, over-zealous observation of their teaching,” Neal will say. “We will hear about teachers delivering a prescriptive curriculum and teaching to the tests in order to secure a good place in the league tables for their schools.

“It’s time for a rethink by the government on what constitutes real success for pupils before the push for better results, increased monitoring, and more measurements means young people can only function in a society which has been so spoon-fed that it cannot think for itself and cannot challenge and grow in the future.” Read more in The Guardian online.

A clearer—and more ominous—picture emerged Monday of California school districts’ struggles to balance their budgets in preparation for a potential $4.8 billion state funding shortfall.

Districts around the state met two deadlines Monday (March 17, 2008): They were required to notify employees of possible layoffs and they had to report their financial data to county offices of education.

The California Department of Education estimated that nearly 20,000 employees received early termination notices, with at least one district— Placentia Yorba-Linda Unified—offering a $1,000 bonus to employees who retire or resign by April 1. At least 14 Los Angeles-area school districts reported that they might not be able to avoid running a deficit over the next two years. Read about the dire budget situation in The Los Angeles Times online.

 The Bush administration is trying to address one of the most common complaints about the No Child Left Behind education law: It treats schools the same, regardless of whether they fail to meet annual benchmarks by a little or a lot.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings plans to announce today (March 18, 2008) that she wants states to submit proposals for assigning different consequences to schools based on the degree to which they miss annual progress goals. Read more of this Associated Press article online.

Delaware public schools—which, fairly or not, have an undistinguished reputation—are making gains. But, as a growing number of educators, parents, students, business leaders, and elected officials attest, greater potential exists. They imagine a globally recognized education system that helps attract new businesses and retain talented employees, provides universal preschool opportunities, and includes classrooms where innovative teachers have freedom to experiment.

Vision 2015’s dream is of a place where minority and low-income children achieve at the same rate as their classmates, where principals receive funding for English language learners (ELLs), and where learning is valued above testing. Campuses would be safe, children disciplined and parents welcomed.

Finding the money to pay for the changes is part of the hurdle. Vision 2015’s reforms have been estimated to cost more than $100 million over several years. Read about the dream and the reality in The News Journal online.

Following its successful PISA programme for testing the educational attainments of 15-year old high-school-students, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is launching a challenging new project to assess the knowledge and skills of adults.

The OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) will assess the level and distribution of adult skills across countries, focusing on the cognitive and workplace skills needed for successful participation in today’s work environment. PIAAC will also gather data on participants’ educational backgrounds and professional attainments, as well as their ability to use information and communications technology (ICT) and their general levels of literacy and numeracy.

Following development work over the next two years and a field trial planned for 2010, the first tests will take place in 2011. The project will build on the success of OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which recently completed its third round of high-school student evaluations. PIAAC will help governments to go further in evaluating and designing education and training policies by providing comparative information on skills among their adult populations.

For further about OECD's international assessment programs, visit the News and Events section of the OECD website.

 As Missouri students prepare to take the state’s standardized test later this month and into next, some of their educators hope this will be the year that will move them off the state school improvement list. However, the odds are stacked against them.

Scott, New Madrid, and Mississippi counties have school districts—and individual buildings—that have failed to meet the state’s annual progress goals in math and reading on Missouri Assessment Program test for two or more years in a row. The federal No Child Left Behind law requires all children to be proficient in math and reading by 2014.

Missouri children take the most difficult state reading and math tests in the nation, according to research conducted by Time Magazine. The magazine’s findings, which were published in May 2007, were determined by comparing each state’s test to standardized tests given nationally. Should all states have similar standards? Read more in The Standard Democrat online.

 As Montgomery County, Maryland, 9th-grader Stephen Sabia reads “Romeo and Juliet” and studies the Holocaust and World War II for honors history and English, his mother credits an important ally in her years-long drive to secure the best education possible for her son with Down syndrome: the federal No Child Left Behind law.

The six-year-old law’s requirement to raise student achievement across the board has forced schools to pay attention as never before to special-needs children who too often had been written off as incapable of handling the same lessons as peers in mainstream classrooms. Students with disabilities have made some strides in math and reading on state and national tests in recent years, although experts debate whether the law is responsible. Read more in The Washington Post online.

Victoria Miresso cannot button a shirt, match a sock or tell one school bus from another. Yet at Roberto Clemente Middle School in Germantown, Maryland, she is expected to function much like any other sixth-grader, coping with class changes, algebra quizzes, and lunchroom bullies.

Victoria’s parents say she is a victim of inclusion: a trend, in Montgomery County and across the nation, toward shutting down traditional special education classes and placing special-needs students in regular classrooms at neighborhood schools.

Montgomery school officials say Victoria is no victim. She is, however, one of the first generation of students who cannot attend secondary learning centers, a network of self-contained classrooms open to special education students at eight middle and high schools in the county since the 1970s. Montgomery school leaders decided in 2006 to phase out the centers, part of an ongoing shift of special-ed students and teachers out of separate classrooms and into the general school population. Read more in The Washington Post online.