The 01/19/13 Joy Jar

18 Jan

Moi is trying to learn how operate her new smart phone. Moi must be the last person in America to get a smart phone, all the twelve year olds have them. Moi’s old phone was considered dumb by smart phone standards, but the phone was way smarter than moi. It is at times like this that a little glass of wine makes the moment so much more mellow.. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is a really good glass of wine.

 

“Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.”
John Keats

 

“Wine is one of the most civilized things in the world and one of the most natural things of the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection, and it offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than, possibly, any other purely sensory thing.”
Ernest Hemingway

 

“I love everything that is old; old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines.”
Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield

 

“Life’s too short to drink cheap wine…”
Cliff Hakim

 

“To take wine into our mouths is to savor a droplet of the river of human history”
Clifton Fadiman

 

“Wine is the most healthful and most hygienic of beverages.”
Louis Pasteur

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The 01/18/13 Joy Jar

17 Jan

Moi is fairly old school. She will buy her first smart phone tomorrow so she can tweet constantly at the ALA Midwinter Meeting which is the weekend of the 25th. There is nothing like having a nice piece of paper and writing on it with your pen. Although, moi uses a computer, she feels more secure with a jar of pens on her desk. She even has that favorite leopard pen and pens in different colors. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is the pen.

 

To hold a pen is to be at war.
Voltaire

 

You want to be a writer, don’t know how or when? Find a quiet place, use a humble pen.
Paul Simon

 

Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword.
Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

Writers are people who put pen to paper every day.
Richard Russo

A writer uses a pen instead of a scalpel or blow torch.
Michael Ondaatje

 

The pen is the tongue of the mind.
Horace

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The 01/17/13 Joy Jar

16 Jan

Walking through downtown Seattle this evening, moi noticed how bright all the lights were. Crossing through Westlake Park, moi noticed the trees were still wrapped in the strings of white lights that had shown brightly through the Christmas season. They were still sparkling now. As this reflection is written, the computer and the illumination in the form of a lamp are all powered by electricity. Today’s deposit in the ‘Joy Jar’ is electricity which powers so many things moi takes for granted.

We believe that electricity exists, because the electric company keeps sending us bills for it, but we cannot figure out how it travels inside wires.
Dave Barry

Imagination has brought mankind through the dark ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity.
L. Frank Baum

I believe talent is like electricity. We don’t understand electricity. We use it. You can plug into it and light up a lamp, keep a heart pump going, light a cathedral, or you can electrocute a person with it. Electricity will do all that. It makes no judgment. I think talent is like that. I believe every person is born with talent.
Maya Angelou

Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

When you look at the inner workings of electrical things, you see wires. Until the current passes through them, there will be no light. That wire is you and me. The current is God. We have the power to let the current pass through us, use us, to produce the light of the world, Jesus, in us. Or we can refuse to be used and allow darkness to spread.

Mother Teresa

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University of Iowa study: Variation in words may help early learners read better

16 Jan

Moi discussed the importance of reading in Reading is a key component of learning:

The goal of parents, teachers, students, and society should be that all children succeed in obtaining a good basic education. In order to achieve this goal, children must come to school ready to learn. See, Illiteracy in America https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/07/illiteracy-in-america/

The University of Michigan Health Center explains why reading is important in the article, Reading, Literacy and Your Child:

What is literacy?

Literacymeans being able to read and write.

Why is reading important?

A child’s reading skills are important to their success in school and work. In addition, reading can be a fun and imaginative activity for children, which opens doors to all kinds of new worlds for them.  Reading and writing are important ways we use language to communicate.

How do reading and language skills develop?

For an answer to this question, check out the following link:

Research has identified five early reading skills that are all essential.  They are [1]:

  • Phonemic awareness—Being able to hear, identify, and play with individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words.

  • Phonics—Being able to connect the letters of written language with the sounds of spoken language.

  • Vocabulary—The words kids need to know to communicate effectively.

  • Reading comprehension—Being able to understand and get meaning from what has been read.

  • Fluency (oral reading)—Being able to read text accurately and quickly.

How can we make reading part of our family’s lifestyle?
Parents play a critical role in helping their children develop not only the ability to read, but also an enjoyment of reading.

  • Turn off the tube.  Start by limiting your family’s television viewing time. 

  • Teach by example.  If you have books, newspapers and magazines around your house, and your child sees you reading, then your child will learn that you value reading.  You can’t over-estimate the value of modeling. 

  • Read together.  Reading with your child is a great activity.  It not only teaches your child that reading is important to you, but it also offers a chance to talk about the book, and often other issues will come up.  Books can really open the lines of communication between parent and child. 

  • Hit the library.  Try finding library books about current issues or interests in your family’s or child’s life, and then reading them together.  For example, read a book about going to the dentist prior to your child’s next dental exam, or get some books about seashore life after a trip to the coast.  If your child is obsessed with dragons, ask your librarian to recommend a good dragon novel for your child.

There are many ways to include reading in your child’s life, starting in babyhood, and continuing through the teen years.  Focus on literacy activities that your child enjoys, so that reading is a treat, not a chore. http://www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/reading.htm

Reading skills are particularly important in academic success because of “Common Core Standards Initiative.” The “Common Core State Standards Initiative” is a state-led effort coordinated by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards/english-language-arts-standards

https://drwilda.com/2012/01/18/reading-is-a-key-component-of-learning/

Dian Schaffhauser reports in The Journal article, Word Variety Helps Early Learners:

Exposure to word variation for early readers may boost their abilities, according to a new study by researchers from the University of Iowa to be published in the January issue of Developmental Psychology. To test out the hypothesis, the researchers used Access Code, an online application from Foundations in Learning that applies the “Varied Practice Model” in helping students with word recognition. With varied practice, tasks are changed so that the student is continually exposed to new things to learn. Access Code attempts to help “struggling” readers improve fluency and comprehension of the material.

Although Access Code is intended for students in grade two and above, in this study, U Iowa doctoral student Keith Apfelbaum and Associate Professors Bob McMurray and Eliot Hazeltine of the Department of Psychology worked with 224 first-grade students in the West Des Moines Community Schools system. Some students learned words organized by traditional phonics instruction, which uses similar word sets to help illustrate the rules, the idea being to simplify the school work for learners. A second group of students used curriculum in Access Code, which pulls together sets of words with variation, appearing to make the lesson more difficult.

After a few days of phonics instruction through Access Code, including spelling and matching letters, all of the students were tested to see if they could read words they’d never seen before, read made-up words, and apply their new skills to work they hadn’t done before. http://thejournal.com/articles/2013/01/15/word-variety-helps-early-learners.aspx?admgarea=News1

Here is the press release from the University of Iowa Magazine:

Rethinking reading

UI study breaks new ground in reading development research

By: 

Kelli Andresen | 2012.11.01 | 10:29 AM

A recent University of Iowa study indicates that variation in words may help early readers learn better.

Many educators have long believed that when words differ on only one sound, early readers can learn the rules of phonics by focusing on what is different between the words. This is thought to be a critical gateway to reading words and sentences.

But scientists at the University of Iowa are turning that thinking on its head. A recent study published in Developmental Psychology shows certain kinds of variation in words may help early readers learn better. When children see the same phonics regularities, embedded in words with more variation, they may learn these crucial early reading skills better. What might appear to make learning a more difficult task—learning about letter-sound relationships from words with more variation—actually leads to better learning.

Doctoral student Keith Apfelbaum and associate professors Bob McMurray and Eliot Hazeltine of the Department of Psychology in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) studied 224 first-grade students in the West Des Moines, Iowa school system over a period of three months. The group used a version of an online supplementary curriculum called Access Code.

Access Code was developed by Foundations in Learning, a company founded by Carolyn Brown and Jerry Zimmermann. Brown and Zimmermann earned their doctorates from and are now adjunct faculty in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, also in CLAS. Based on the Varied Practice Model, which helps children master early reading skills like phonics, the research team used Access Code to conduct the study directly in the classroom.

During the study, one group of students learned using lists of words with a small, less variable set of consonants, such as maid, mad, paid, and pad. This is close to traditional phonics instruction, which uses similar words to help illustrate the rules and, presumably, simplify the problem for learners. A second group of students learned using a list of words that was more variable, such as bait, sad, hair, and gap, but which embodied the same rules.

After three or four days of training on phonics skills, partaking in activities such as spelling and matching letters, the students from both groups were tested to see if they could read words that they had never seen before, read novel non-words, and apply their newly-learned skills to tasks they hadn’t done before.

“We were interested in not just whether they could do exactly what we were teaching, but whether they could learn something more robust that would enable them to apply what they had learned to new tasks and new words,” McMurray says. “Critically, we wanted to know if variability or similarity would impact this ability to learn and generalize.”

Results surprised even the research team.

“We were expecting a very subtle effect, maybe similar words would help students learn the words they were trained on but maybe not generalize as well, or maybe similar words would help them learn the more difficult rules but variability might work for the easier ones, but in no case was similarity helpful,” McMurray says. “This suggests a powerful principle of learning. While we’ve known about this in a variety of laboratory tasks for a while, this study shows for the first time that this principle also applies to early reading skills.”

Overall, variation led to much better learning. Students experiencing more variation in words showed better learning when tested on the words and tasks they encountered in training. More importantly, it helped them generalize these new skills to new words, and to new tasks.

“Variability was good for the low-performing students, it was good for the high-performing students. It was good for the boys, it was good for the girls. It was good for the words, it was good for the non-words,” Apfelbaum says. “Among the students who struggled the most, the kids who weren’t exposed to variation didn’t show any learning at all, while the kids who were exposed to variation did.”

Robert Davis, an educator for 36 years and principal of Hillside Elementary, which was one of the schools that participated in the study, says he is eager to work with his teachers on ways to apply varied practice to the classroom.

“If we really look at what happened with the research, there is a multitude of applications that could go forward with this,” Davis says. “We could certainly look at varied practice as a method for learning new vocabulary, as a new method for learning basic math facts, maybe even something involved with music. As educators, we need to figure out how to take that model and apply it to the umbrella of learning for a variety of things that kids struggle with.”

Brown, whose research has focused on child development, language acquisition, and reading for more than three decades, says she looks forward to continued collaboration with the UI research team.

“We hope this collaboration is only the beginning to bringing the science of learning to the art of teaching children to read,” Brown says. “We have missed many children because reading pedagogy has been driven by systems of belief in how reading should be taught rather than by how children learn. The importance of variation in this process will be a surprise to many educators and a help to many children.”

Contacts

Kelli Andresen, University Communication and Marketing, 319-384-0070

Bob McMurray, Psychology, 319-335-2408

John Sims, Foundations in Learning, 214-497-3231

The program used by the researchers comes from Foundations in Learning.

Foundations for Learning describes the Access Code program:

Access Code: Varied Practice Model

Access Code, driven by the Varied Practice Model, is a web-based, supplementary curriculum for struggling readers in Grades 2 and above to acquire/strengthen, apply, and generalize phonics rules for improved fluency and comprehension.

Who can it help?

As many as 15-20% of elementary and middle school students struggle with reading because of poor word recognition skills. These students:

  • Have difficulty breaking words into syllables
  • Cannot apply/generalize phonics rules to connected text
  • Struggle with comprehension
  • Have a particular challenge with vowels
  • Have not responded to other intervention programs and need remediation year after year

What are the benefits?

  • Varied Practice has been shown to increase a learner’s ability to apply/generalize skills and Access Code is the only program that uses this approach.

  • Access Code helps ensure that students understand how vowels and syllables work in words.

  • Truly individualized instruction for each student.

  • Does not require that a teacher discard other approaches and programs. Rather, Access Code can help ensure that students get maximum benefit from those other programs. http://www.foundations-learning.com/accesscode.html

This study shows that there are many things to be learned about how to effectively teach reading skills to those who are struggling.

Related:

The importance of the skill of handwriting in the school curriculum                                                                       https://drwilda.com/2012/01/24/the-importance-of-the-skill-of-handwriting-in-the-school-curriculum/

The slow reading movement                                                https://drwilda.com/2012/01/31/the-slow-reading-movement/

Why libraries in K-12 schools are important                     https://drwilda.com/2012/12/26/why-libraries-in-k-12-schools-are-important/

Where information leads to Hope. ©                 Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©                            http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda Reviews ©                                                  http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda ©                                                                                      https://drwilda.com/

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The 01/16/13 Joy Jar

15 Jan

There is a different energy in cities than in rural areas. Cities can be noisy, crowded, dirty, and in-your-face. Cities are diverse because people come for opportunity, acceptance or to escape. There is an energy that escapes for the steam arising from the goulash. Today’s deposit in the ‘Joy Jar’ is gratitude for the energy of city living.

A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.
Aristotle

This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.
Plato

You can learn all about the human condition from covering the crime beat in a big city – you don’t need to go to Beirut for that – but a foreign correspondent begins to understand poverty from a different perspective.
P. J. O’Rourke

If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; if you would know, and not be known, live in a city.
Charles Caleb Colton

A city is a place where there is no need to wait for next week to get the answer to a question, to taste the food of any country, to find new voices to listen to and familiar ones to listen to again.
Margaret Mead

“When you look at a city, it’s like reading the hopes, aspirations and pride of everyone who built it.”                                                                                         Hugh Newell Jacobsen

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Research paper: Interpreting international test scores in light of social class differences

15 Jan

Moi wrote about international student rankings in Important Harvard report about U.S. student achievement ranking:

More and more, individuals with gravitas are opining about the American education system for reasons ranging from national security to economic competitiveness. In Condoleezza Rice and Joel Klein report about American Education, moi wrote:

The Council on Foreign Relations has issued the report, U.S. Education Reform and National Security. The chairs for the report are Joel I. Klein, News Corporation and Condoleezza Rice, Stanford University. Moi opined about the state of education in U.S. education failure: Running out of excuses https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/u-s-education-failure-running-out-of-excuses/ Education tends to be populated by idealists and dreamers who are true believers and who think of what is possible. Otherwise, why would one look at children in second grade and think one of those children could win the Nobel Prize or be president? Maybe, that is why education as a discipline is so prone to fads and the constant quest for the “Holy Grail” or the next, next magic bullet. There is no one answer, there is what works for a particular population of kids. https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/condoleezza-rice-and-joel-klein-report-about-american-education/

Joy Resmovits reports at Huffington Post that the meaning of international test comparisons do not provide an accurate picture.

In International Test Scores Often Misinterpreted To Detriment Of U.S. Students, Argues New EPI Study, Resmovits reports:

Lawmakers should be more careful when using international test scores to drive education policy, argues a pair of researchers in a new paper for the left-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute — because the results aren’t always what they appear to be.

According to a new paper released Wednesday, the average scores on international tests — the numbers over which advocates and politicians do much public hand-wringing — don’t tell the whole story of America’s academic performance, and inferences based on those averages can be misleading, Stanford education professor Martin Carnoy and researcher Richard Rothstein argue. They found that contrary to popular belief, international testing information shows that America’s low-income students have been improving over time…

Rothstein found that the U.S. is more unequal in social background, so he wondered whether differences between the average U.S. scores and those of its competitors were driven by that inequality. Rothstein said he was not surprised by his findings, given that the achievement gap between rich and poor U.S. students has always been large. “Higher social class students have higher average scores than lower social class students,” he said. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/15/international-test-scores_n_2479994.html?utm_hp_ref=education

Here is a portion of the executive summary:

What do international tests really show about U.S. student performance?

By Martin Carnoy, Stanford Graduate School of Education and EPI
and Richard Rothstein, EPI

 View PDF

Download PDF

This report, however, shows that such inferences are too glib. Comparative student performance on international tests should be interpreted with much greater care than policymakers typically give it. This care is essential for three reasons:

  • First, because academic performance differences are produced by home and community as well as school influences, there is an achievement gap between the relative average performance of students from higher and lower social classes in every industrialized nation. Thus, for a valid assessment of how well American schools perform, policymakers should compare the performance of U.S. students with that of students in other countries who have been and are being shaped by approximately similar home and community environments….

We have shown that U.S. student performance, in real terms and relative to other countries, improves considerably when we estimate average U.S. scores after adjusting for U.S. social class composition and for a lack of care in sampling disadvantaged students in particular. With these adjustments, U.S. scores would rank higher among OECD countries than commonly reported in reading—fourth best instead of 14th—and in mathematics—10th best instead of 25th.

  • Second, to be useful for policy purposes, information about student performance should include how this performance is changing over time. It is not evident what lessons policymakers should draw from a country whose student performance is higher than that in the United States, if that country’s student performance has been declining while U.S student performance has been improving…. performance of all students in such countries obscures the performance of disadvantaged students.

This caution especially pertains to conventional attention to comparisons of the United States and higher-scoring Finland. Although Finland’s average scores, and scores for the most-disadvantaged children, remain substantially higher than comparable scores in the United States, scores in the United States for disadvantaged children have been rising over time, while Finland’s scores for comparable children have been declining. American policymakers should seek to understand these trends before assuming that U.S. education practice should imitate practice in Finland.

As well, U.S. trends for disadvantaged children’s PISA achievement are much more favorable than U.S. trends for advantaged children. In both reading and math, disadvantaged children’s scores have been improving while advantaged student’s scores have been stagnant. U.S. policy discussion assumes that most of problems of the U.S. education system are concentrated in schools serving disadvantaged children. Trends in PISA scores suggest that the opposite may be the case.

  • Third, different international and domestic tests sometimes seem to show similar trends, but sometimes seem quite inconsistent. These inconsistencies call into question conclusions drawn from any single assessment, and policymakers should attempt to understand the complex causes of these inconsistencies….

In our comparisons of U.S. student performance on the PISA test with student performance in six other countries—three similar post-industrial economies (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom) and three countries whose students are “top scoring” (Canada, Finland, and Korea)—we conclude that, in reading:

  • Higher social class (Group 5) U.S. students now perform as well as comparable social class students in all six comparison countries.
  • Disadvantaged students perform better (in some cases, substantially better) than disadvantaged students in the three similar post-industrial countries, but substantially less well than disadvantaged students in the three top-scoring countries.
  • The reading achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students in the United States is smaller than the gap in the three similar post-industrial countries, but larger than the gap in the top-scoring countries….

These comparisons suggest that much of the discussion in the United States that points to international test comparisons to contend that U.S. schools are “failing” should be more nuanced. Although claims about relative U.S. school failure often focus on disadvantaged students’ performance, international data show that U.S. disadvantaged student performance has improved over the past decade in both mathematics and reading compared to similar social class students in all our comparison countries except Germany. TIMSS and NAEP data also show improvement for all social class groups in mathematics during the last decade. Should we consider these improvements a failure, particularly when the scores of disadvantaged students in all comparison countries but Germany have declined in this same period? http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-testing/

The increased rate of poverty has profound implications if this society believes that ALL children have the right to a good basic education. Moi blogs about education issues so the reader could be perplexed sometimes because moi often writes about other things like nutrition, families, and personal responsibility issues. Why? The reader might ask? Because children will have the most success in school if they are ready to learn. Ready to learn includes proper nutrition for a healthy body and the optimum situation for children is a healthy family. Many of societies’ problems would be lessened if the goal was a healthy child in a healthy family. There is a lot of economic stress in the country now because of unemployment and underemployment. Children feel the stress of their parents and they worry about how stable their family and living situation is.

Teachers and schools have been made TOTALLY responsible for the education outcome of the children, many of whom come to school not ready to learn and who reside in families that for a variety of reasons cannot support their education. All children are capable of learning, but a one-size-fits-all approach does not serve all children well. Different populations of children will require different strategies and some children will require remedial help, early intervention, and family support to achieve their education goals.

Related:

Report from Center for American Progress report: Kids say school is too easy                                                                           https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/07/10/report-from-center-for-american-progress-report-kids-say-school-is-too-easy/

Complete College America report: The failure of remediation https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/complete-college-america-report-the-failure-of-remediation/

Book: Inequality in America affects education outcome https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/book-inequality-in-america-affects-education-outcome/

What exactly are the education practices of top-performing nations?                                       http://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/what-exactly-are-the-education-practices-of-top-performing-nations/

Where information leads to Hope. ©                 Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©                             http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda Reviews ©                                               http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda ©                                                                                    https://drwilda.com/

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Dropout prevention: More schools offering daycare for students

14 Jan

Moi wrote about pregnancy and education in Title IX also mandates access to education for pregnant students:                                                                In Talking to your teen about risky behaviors, moi said: There are no perfect people, no one has a perfect life and everyone makes mistakes. Unfortunately, children do not come with instruction manuals, which give specific instructions about how to relate to that particular child. Further, for many situations there is no one and only way to resolve a problem. What people can do is learn from their mistakes and the mistakes of others. Sharon Jayson writes in the USA Today article, More children born to unmarried parents:

A growing number of firstborns in the USA have unmarried parents, reflecting dramatic increases since 2002 in births to cohabiting women, according to government figures out today.

The percentage of first births to women living with a male partner jumped from 12% in 2002 to 22% in 2006-10 — an 83% increase. The percentage of cohabiting new fathers rose from 18% to 25%. The analysis, by the National Center for Health Statistics, is based on data collected from 2006 to 2010….

The percentage of first births to cohabiting women tripled from 9% in 1985 to 27% for births from 2003 to 2010….http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/wellness/story/2012-04-10/CDC-marriage-cohabitation-children/54186600/1#.T4Z8NWHELEQ.email

This is a demographic disaster for children as devastating as the hurricane “Katrina.”

One way to promote healthier lifestyles for children is to keep their parents in school so that they can complete their education. One overlooked aspect of Title IX is the mandate that pregnant teens have access to education. https://drwilda.com/2012/06/19/title-ix-also-mandates-access-to-education-for-pregnant-students/

Ovetta Wiggins reports in the Washington Post article, High schools offer day-care services for teen parents to prevent dropouts:

For the kids who have kids, such day-care centers offer a chance to stay in school and earn a diploma while getting help with the daily responsibilities of parenthood.

Although the number of teen pregnancies has dropped across the country, proponents of the day-care programs say they hope to prevent teens from leaving school to care for babies, with the added bonus of offering their young kids early childhood development. Critics say the centers promote unprotected sex by teens.

“A lot of people think we are enabling pregnancy,” said Maxine Thompson-Burroughs, who operates the Early Head Start program at Northwestern. “We are not a babysitting service. The mission of the program is to help them graduate from high school.”

The Northwestern program, which is paired with a required teen parenting class, is one of two in Prince George’s and similar to others in about a half-dozen high schools across the Washington region and in high schools in cities such as Detroit; Worcester, Mass.; and Portland, Ore. The District has child-care centers at Ballou and Dunbar high schools, Columbia Heights Educational Campus and Luke Charles Moore Academy….

The teen birthrate reached a historic low at 34.3 births per 1,000 females aged 15 to 19 in 2010, a 9 percent decline from 2009, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Still, school systems across the country continue to try to figure out ways to address the issue.

Nearly one-third of teen girls who have dropped out of high school cite pregnancy or parenthood as a reason, and only 40 percent of teen mothers graduate from high school, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/high-schools-offer-day-care-services-for-teen-parents-to-prevent-dropouts/2013/01/10/091d28de-408b-11e2-ae43-cf491b837f7b_story.html

Moi wrote about the importance of childcare on college campuses in A baby changes everything: Helping parents finish school:

For a good discussion of why child care is important to students, see the journal article, Contemporary Childcare Issues Facing Colleges and Universities by Marybeth Kyle, William J. Campion, William R. Ogden; College Student Journal, Vol. 33, 1999.

In order for low-income people, particularly single mothers to have a shot at escaping poverty, they must get an education, trade, or vocation. For many, affordable child care is the key determinant of whether they can advance. Alexandra Cawthorne in the 2008 report for the Center for American Progress, The Straight Facts on Women in Poverty describes the issues facing women in poverty. The National Coalition for Campus Children’s Centers has statistics about Children on Campus

College must not only be affordable for many student populations, it must be accessible as well. https://drwilda.com/2011/12/26/a-baby-changes-everything-helping-parents-finish-school/

Students, no matter what grade level, often need help with childcare to finish school. See, Studies: Lack of support and early parenthood cause kids to dropout https://drwilda.com/2012/11/19/studies-lack-of-support-and-early-parenthood-cause-kids-to-dropout/

Where information leads to Hope. ©                 Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©                          http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

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The 01/15/13 Joy Jar

14 Jan

The temperature last several days in Seattle has hovered near freezing. It is cold and clear with the emphasis on cold. Now is the time that many who live in colder climes dream of sandy beaches, palm trees, and tropical drinks made with exotic fruits. Some people live in places where it is always sunny and warm. Still, a cold clear day which makes one long for Spring and Summer puts a punctuation mark on on the seasons. There is a difference and a rhythm to the seasons and the cold focuses one on that rhythm. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is a cold clear day.

“So when you’re cold
From the inside out
And don’t know what to do,
Remember love and friendship,
And warmth will come to you.”
Stephen Cosgrove, Gnome from Nome


There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you…. In spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself.  Ruth Stout


The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer.  I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood.  John Burroughs


O, wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
Percy Bysshe Shelley


Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat. Author Unknown

“Withstanding the cold develops vigor for the relaxing days of spring and summer. Besides, in this matter as in many others, it is evident that nature abhors a quitter.”
Arthur C. Crandall, New England Joke Lore: The Tonic of Yankee Humor

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Big increase expected in the number of homeschoolers

13 Jan

Moi wrote about homeschoolers in Homeschooling is becoming more mainstream:

Parents and others often think of school choice in terms of public school or private school. There is another option and that is homeschooling.Homeschooling is one option in the school choice menu. There are fewer children being homeschooled than there are in private schools. There are fewer children in private education, which includes homeschools than in public education. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the vast majority of students attend public schools. Complete statistics can be found at Fast Education Facts

The question, which will be discussed at the end of this comment, is: What is so scary about school choice? After all, the vast majority of children are enrolled in public school and school choice is not going to change that. https://drwilda.com/2012/05/22/homeschooling-is-becoming-more-mainstream/

Julia Lawrence reported in the Education News article, Number of Homeschoolers Growing Nationwide:

As the dissatisfaction with the U.S. education system among parents grows, so does the appeal of homeschooling. Since 1999, the number of children who are being homeschooled has increased by 75%. Although currently only 4% of all school children nationwide are educated at home, the number of primary school kids whose parents choose to forgo traditional education is growing seven times faster than the number of kids enrolling in K-12 every year.

Any concerns expressed about the quality of education offered to the kids by their parents can surely be put to rest by the consistently high placement of homeschooled kids on standardized assessment exams. Data shows that those who are independently educated typically score between 65th and 89th percentile on such exams, while those attending traditional schools average on the 50th percentile. Furthermore, the achievement gaps, long plaguing school systems around the country, aren’t present in homeschooling environment. There’s no difference in achievement between sexes, income levels or race/ethnicity….

College recruiters from the best schools in the United States aren’t slow to recognize homeschoolers’ achievements. Those from non-traditional education environments matriculate in colleges and attain a four-year degree at much higher rates than their counterparts from public and even private schools. Homeschoolers are actively recruited by schools like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Stanford University and Duke.

Nor do homeschoolers miss out on the so-called socialization opportunities, something considered a vital part of a traditional school environment and lacking in those who don’t attend regular schools. On the contrary, those educated at home by their parents tend to be more socially engaged than their peers, and according to the National Home Education Research Institute survey, demonstrate “healthy social, psychological, and emotional development, and success into adulthood.” http://www.educationnews.org/parenting/number-of-homeschoolers-growing-nationwide/ [Emphasis Added]

Note: “there’s no difference in achievement between sexes, income levels or race/ethnicity….”

Moi theorizes that the parental involvement may account for the difference.

School Choice is Good for the Education Process

Homeschooling is not a conspiracy, it is simply a choice. There is a difference between “education” and “schooling.” “Schooling” is defined as:

·         the act of teaching at school

·         school: the process of being formally educated at a school; “what will you do when you finish school?”

·         the training of an animal (especially the training of a horse for dressage)
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

“Education” is a much broader concept. It is the process of continually being curious. Eric Hoffer aptly distinguishes the difference between “schooling” and “education.”

The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.

Many of our children are “unschooled” and a far greater number are “uneducated.” One can be “unschooled” or “uneducated” no matter the setting. As a society, we should be focused on making sure that each child receives a good basic education. There are many ways to reach that goal. There is nothing scary about the fact that some parents make the choice to homeschool. The focus should not be on the particular setting or institution type. The focus should be on proper assessment of each child to ensure that child is receiving a good basic education and the foundation for later success in life.

Related:

New book: Homeschooling, the little option that could                https://drwilda.com/2012/10/12/new-book-homeschooling-the-little-option-that-could/

Homeschooled kids make the grade for college               https://drwilda.com/2012/07/02/homeschooled-kids-make-the-grade-for-college/

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The 01/14/13 Joy Jar

13 Jan

Sunshine can mean the warm from the sun or the warmth from the glow of a person or personality. Dictionary.com defines ‘sunshine’ as:

sun·shine

noun

1. the shining of the sun; direct light of the sun.

2. brightness or radiance; cheerfulness or happiness.

3. a source of cheer or happiness.

4. the effect of the sun in lighting and heating a place.

5. a place where the direct rays of the sun fall.

The Urban Dictionary defines ‘sunshine’ as:

Sunshine is a special someone who gives light and warmth in your life. Someone who you want to wake up with just like sunshine and know that that is what gives you life. Someone who is really hot and brightens your day and your life.Good morning sunshine!

However one defines ‘sunshine,’ it makes you feel warm, even on a cold day. Today’s deposit in the ‘Joy Jar’ is sunshine.

“Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.”

Walt Whitman

“The sun,–the bright sun, that brings back, not light alone, but new life, and hope, and freshness to man–burst upon the crowded city in clear and radiant glory. Through costly-coloured glass and paper-mended window, through cathedral dome and rotten crevice, it shed its equal ray.”

Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

“As the years pass, I am coming more and more to understand that it is the common, everyday blessings of our common everyday lives for which we should be particularly grateful. They are the things that fill our lives with comfort and our hearts with gladness — just the pure air to breathe and the strength to breath it; just warmth and shelter and home folks; just plain food that gives us strength; the bright sunshine on a cold day; and a cool breeze when the day is warm.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder, Writings to Young Women from Laura Ingalls Wilder – Volume One: On Wisdom and Virtues

Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.

James M. Barrie

“Keep your face to the sun and you will never see the shadows.”

Helen Keller

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