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The Council of Chief State School Officers report: Teacher training programs need reform

The Council of Chief State School Officers (CSSO) has released a report, Our Responsibility Our Promise: Transforming Educator Preparation and Entry into the Profession which calls for reform of teacher training programs. Moi wrote in Teacher credentials: ‘Teacher Performance Assessment’:

Because teacher training programs will be evaluated by the National Council on Teacher Quality, there is interest in examining how teachers are prepared. See, Building Better Teachers http://www.nctq.org/p/edschools/home.jsp Amy Hetzner and Becky Vevea of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel have written the article, How Best to Educate Future Teachers which is part of a series

Alverno College, the small women’s college on Milwaukee’s south side, has been widely cited as a national model for training teachers, thanks to its combination of clinical and classroom experience and use of video and other tools to evaluate whether graduates are meeting the standards for what makes a good teacher….

Key elements of an excellent teacher education program:

Strong content knowledge, teaching skills. Future teachers gain a solid grounding in the content to be taught as well as how to teach it.
Flexible methods. Emphasis is placed on teaching diverse learners – knowing how to differentiate teaching to reach a broad range of students.
Fieldwork. Coursework clearly is connected to fieldwork. The clinical experience, like in medical school, consists of intensive student-teaching, preferably for a semester or entire year, under the supervision of an experienced mentor.
Professional mentors. Mentors observe future teachers in the classroom – sometimes videotaping for later analysis – and work with them on everything from lesson-planning and creating assignments to monitoring student progress and grading.
Designated “learning schools.” Mentors and school sites for student-teaching are well-chosen. There are close relationships and a sense of joint responsibility among the school sites at which future teachers train, the local district and the teacher-education program.
Escalating teaching responsibilities. Future teachers gradually take over a full classroom, first teaching short segments on a single topic with a small group of students, then co-teaching with the mentor before assuming full responsibility for a class.
Feedback. Feedback from multiple sources (mentors, professors, peers) is routine.
Selective admission standards. Admission to the program is selective; not everyone has the necessary skills or demeanor to be an effective teacher.

Sources: National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education; faculty at Columbia University Teachers College, Stanford and Harvard Universities. Compiled by Justin Snider of The Hechinger Report

These are the elements that have made the graduates of Alverno College successful. https://drwilda.com/2012/07/31/teacher-credentials-teacher-performance-assessment/

Here is the press piece from CSSO:

Our Responsibility, Our Promise: Transforming Educator Preparation and Entry into the Profession

Author(s) CCSSO Task Force on Educator Preparation and Entry into the Profession

Publication date December 2012

publication pdf Click here to download Our Responsibility Our Promise: Transforming Educator Preparation and Entry into the Profession

Twenty-five states have agreed to advance the recommendations in the report. Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia

Click here to see quotes of support of this work. Organizations supporting this work: American Federation of Teachers, Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, Data Quality Campaign, National Association of State Boards of Education, National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, National Education Association, National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, State Higher Education Executive Officers.

Our Responsibility, Our Promise: Transforming Educator Preparation and Entry into the Profession was written by a CCSSO task force composed of current and former chief state school officers, with input from the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) and the National Governors Association (NGA). This report is a call to action for chiefs and an invitation to our colleagues, especially members of NASBE and NGA who contributed to this report, and those in educator preparation and others interested in transforming entry into the education profession for teachers and principals to join us in supporting the implementation of the recommendations contained in this report. While the report attempts to focus on the state policy levers chiefs can activate, it is clear that the work required by these recommendations is not easy and will require the leadership and collaboration of all stakeholders involved in P-20 education.

Task Force on Educator Preparation and Entry into the Profession

CCSSO

Tom Luna, Chair, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Idaho

Terry Holliday, Vice-Chair, Commissioner of Education, Kentucky

Virginia Barry, Commissioner of Education, New Hampshire

Mitchell Chester, Commissioner of Education, Massachusetts

Judy Jeffrey, Former Director of Education, Iowa

Christopher Koch, Superintendent of Education, Illinois

Rick Melmer, Former Secretary of Education, South Dakota

Jim Rex, Former State Superintendent of Education, South Carolina

Melody Schopp, Secretary of Education, South Dakota

NGA

David Archer, Senior Policy Advisor to Governor John Hickenlooper, Colorado

Jeanne Burns, Board of Regents, Louisiana

NASBE

Brenda Gullett, NASBE Board of Directors, Arkansas Board of Education

Steven Pound, NASBE Board of Directors, Maine Board of Education

Patrick A. Guida, Esquire, NASBE Board of Directors, Rhode Island Board of Education

Contact:Kate Dandokated@ccsso.org202-336-7034

Here is the conclusion of the report:

Through this report, we are asking all chief state school officers and leaders of the education systems in their respective states to commit to taking the following actions to ensure we have an education workforce prepared to enter the profession ready to teach and ready to lead.

We believe the entry point on the continuum of development for teachers and leaders is the foundation for the remainder of their career, and we must set a level of expectation that will ensure they are ready on day one. We feel strongly that, individually and collectively, chiefs should commit to the following state actions:

Licensure

1. States will revise and enforce their licensure standards for teachers and principals to support the teaching of more demanding content aligned to college- and career readiness and critical thinking skills to a diverse range of students.

2. States will work together to influence the development of innovative licensure performance assessments that are aligned to the revised licensure standards and include multiple measures of educators’ ability to perform, including the potential to impact student achievement and growth.

3. States will create multi-tiered licensure systems aligned to a coherent developmental continuum that reflects new performance expectations for educators and their implementation in the learning environment and to assessments that are linked to evidence of student achievement and growth.

4. States will reform current state licensure systems so they are more efficient, have true reciprocity across states, and so that their credentialing structures support effective teaching and leading toward student college- and career-readiness.

Program Approval

5. States will hold preparation programs accountable by exercising the state’s authority to determine which programs should operate and recommend candidates for licensure in the state, including establishing a clear and fair performance rating system to guide continuous improvement. States will act to close programs that continually receive the lowest rating and will provide incentives for programs whose ratings indicate exemplary performance.

6. States will adopt and implement rigorous program approval standards to assure that educator preparation programs recruit candidates based on supply and demand data, have highly selective admissions and exit criteria including mastery of content, provide high quality clinical practice throughout a candidate’s preparation that includes experiences with the responsibilities of a school year from beginning to end, and that produce quality candidates capable of positively impacting student achievement.

7. States will require alignment of preparation content standards to PK-12 student standards for all licensure areas.

8. States will provide feedback, data, support, and resources to preparation programs to assist them with continuous improvement and to act on any program approval or national accreditation recommendations.

Data Collection, Analysis, and Reporting

9. States will develop and support state-level governance structures to guide confidential and secure data collection, analysis, and reporting of PK-20 data and how it informs educator preparation programs, hiring practices, and professional learning.

Using stakeholder input, states will address and take appropriate action, individually and collectively, on the need for unique educator identifiers, links to non-traditional preparation providers, and the sharing of candidate data among organizations and across states.

10. States will use data collection, analysis, and reporting of multiple measures for continuous improvement and accountability of preparation programs.29

NEXT STEPS

Implementing these 10 recommended actions will take the leadership and political will of the chief state school officer and the involvement of many key stakeholders in each state including their partners from NASBE and NGA. Implementation will also require resources and support from many different levels of the system. Collectively, the commitment from a number of state chiefs to move forward with implementation of transformed policies in licensure; program approval; and data collection, analysis, and reporting will increase the knowledge and skills of the educator workforce.

Hiring teachers who are learner-ready and principals who are school-ready along with these focused actions will help chiefs meet their responsibility and promise of helping students reach our heightened expectations of college- and career-readiness. http://programs.ccsso.org/link/EMBARGOED121712OurResponsibilityOurPromise.pdf

Jay Mathews has written an interesting Washington Post article, Why teacher training fails our teachers:

American public elementary and secondary schools spend about $20 billion a year on what is called professional development — helping teachers do their jobs better. Many teachers will tell you much of that is a waste of time and money.

Now, three former teachers involved in training have discovered an important reason. Teachers are rarely given time and opportunity to practice what they have learned.

“Practice Perfect: 42 Rules for Getting Better at Getting Better,” is the new book by Doug Lemov, Erica Woolway and Katie Yezzi exposing this flaw in teacher training and the way most of us learn any complex skill. Professional athletes know the value of repeating moves again and again before the game starts. Michael Jordan was famous for how much time he spent practicing in the gym, even after he became a superstar…

For teachers, the authors of “Practice Perfect” say, pre-game repetition is crucial. “If a teacher’s performance during a given class is less than what she wanted, she cannot get it back,” they say. “She cannot as, say, a lawyer working on a contract might do, stop in the middle of her work and call someone to ask for advice. She can’t give it her best shot and then, as we are doing as we write this book, go back and tinker and revise and have the luxury of being held accountable for a final product that reflects actions taken and reconsidered over an extended period….”

They learned this only recently after analyzing the results of a study of great teachers in high-poverty public schools, reported in Lemov’s previous best-selling book, “Teach Like a Champion.” The teachers with the best results “were often the most likely to focus on small and seemingly mundane aspects of their daily work.” The authors liken this to legendary basketball coach John Wooden, who went so far as to teach players how to put their socks on correctly. But the insight did not immediately illumine the importance of practice….

The authors realized that their trainees hadn’t practiced. It was the equivalent of trying to learn a new backhand in the middle of a match at center court Wimbledon.

They added repetitive exercises to their training workshops. Teachers played students so the situation would resemble a real classroom. Teachers still had trouble getting it right. The real world situation was too distracting, The authors dialed down the student disruption so their trainees had a chance to do the technique correctly several times. Once it became automatic, they could handle unpredictable moments….

In the future, schools will still often spend big money on training teachers in ineffective ways. Learning to practice, this book vividly illustrates, takes time and effort, trial and error. It won’t happen tomorrow. But even a small movement in the direction of more practice will reap benefits, in teaching and many other things we do. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/class-struggle/post/why-teacher-training-fails-our-teachers/2012/10/03/f88d470a-0c56-11e2-bb5e-492c0d30bff6_blog.html

Every child has a right to a good basic education. In order to ensure that every child has a good basic education, there must be a quality teacher in every classroom.

Resources:

National Council on Teacher Quality

How I was evaluated as a first-year teacher – 10/04/2012

A first year teacher, ripe for feedback and improvement, gets none.

What’s the Latest on Teacher Evaluation? – 10/02/2012

We’ve got the skinny on what states are doing to evaluate their teachers and award them tenure. Read more

2011 State Teacher Policy Yearbook

January 2012

State of the States: Trends and Early Lessons on Teacher Evaluation and Effectiveness Policies

October 2011

State of the States 2012: Teacher Effectiveness Policies

October 2012

Center for Teaching Quality http://www.teachingquality.org/

The National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality http://www.tqsource.org/

Linda Darling-Hammond on teacher evaluation https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/linda-darling-hammond-on-teacher-evaluation/

Report: Measuring teacher effectiveness https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/report-measuring-teacher-effectiveness/

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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/

Tags: Alverno College, CSSO, education, How Best to Educate Future Teachers, milwaukee journal sentinel, National Council on Teacher Quality, Our Responsibility Our Promise Transforming Educator Preparation and Entry into the Profession, politics, research, Task Force on Educator Preparation and Entry into the Profession, teaching diverse learners, The Council of Chief State School Officers, Why teacher training fails our teachers

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Both sides in the gun debate are acting like morons

19 Dec

Here’s today’s COMMENT FROM AN OLD FART: The U.S. Constitution is a bit like the Bible. People want to select passage from both documents which suit their purpose and their intent. People don’t want to deal with the parts that they don’t agree with or that they find disagreeable.

Annotated Constitution

Amendment 2 Table of Contents

BEARING ARMS

SECOND AMENDMENT

A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed

Slate published this interesting 2001article, What Does the Second Amendment Say About the Right To Own Guns?

State law and state constitutions may change, but the progress of Second Amendment jurisprudence is glacial. As a matter of pure legal precedent, the Justice Department likely has the winning argument in this debate simply because the last time the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on this point was in 1939. In United States v. Miller, the court held that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is not applicable in the absence of a reasonable relationship to the “well regulated militia” provision of the Second Amendment. The court stated that:

In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a “shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length” at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.

The Supreme Court has turned down every opportunity to accept a new case and clarify the question of whether Miller established a definitive test requiring some connection between guns and state militias or whether it was announcing a one-time-only rule about Jack Miller and his shotgun. Still, the lower courts have followed the first view, and, in the wake of Miller, virtually every lower court has accepted the state militia/collective rights test as a settled point of law. While a fascinating normative debate over whether or not the right should be an individual one rages in the academy, in think tanks, and around the candy machines at NRA headquarters, the Second Amendment issue is not a close call in the courthouse. Eminent legal scholars, including Sanford Levinson and historians such as Emory’s Michael Bellesiles, have done some staggering scholarly work on the subject of the original intent of the Framers and the prevalence of guns at the time of the founding of the country. [Updated May 8, 2002: Bellesiles’ methodology has recently come under fire by constitutional scholars.] None of it has induced the Supreme Court to step into the fray.

The modern Supreme Court has invalidated federal gun laws, most recently in United States v. Lopez, but not on Second Amendment grounds. Nothing about the decision in Lopez reinforces an individual’s right to bear arms; it merely curbs congressional attempts to regulate guns, which is by no means the same thing.

Why do opinion surveys show that most American citizens believe in the individual rights position? Some legal scholars call this widespread public conviction a “hoax” and “false consciousness.” Some contend that the NRA has done a spectacular job of spinning an individual right out of law review articles, John Wayne movies, and effective propaganda. Others argue that the personal right to a gun is nevertheless a right whose time has come and that it’s just a matter of the courts catching up to public opinion. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2001/07/what_does_the_second_amendment_say_about_the_right_to_own_guns.html

There are many proposals for “rational” gun control.

One blogger proposes the following:

A proposal for rational gun control

Although I would personally like to see as many civilian-owned guns eliminated from mainstream society as possible, I realize that this is not a politically realistic goal. Thus, I present my own plans for gun control that I would consider a valid compromise. Perhaps policy discussions can start from these.

1. A national system for registering guns and ammunition. Part of the reason New York City has stiff gun laws and high gun death rates is that anybody can go from New York to a state with less restrictive laws, get a friend who lives in the state to buy the guns for them, and take those guns back to NYC. (Yes, I am aware this is illegal, but it happens.) First, a national system would prevent this by scaring those “friends” into not buying the guns legally and selling them illegally, for if the guns are used in an illegal crime, that person can be held accountable. Second, a national system would be more helpful in tracking crimes after they have happened, to bring the perpetrators to justice.

2. Instant background checks on people attempting to buy guns or ammunition. Brady is still patchwork, and does indeed have its flaws in tracking felons. Felons and ex-cons should not have access to weapons, and many misdemeanors and juvenile crimes should also count against a person’s record.

3. Stiffer sentences for gun crimes. This has been the position of the NRA for quite some time, and it is certainly one with which I agree.

4. Gun education. Many guns are involved in accidents that could easily have been prevented by a little care or forethought. Perhaps gun purchasers should be required to take lessons in gun safety, at the purchaser’s expense. Again, the NRA has long been a proponent of gun education.

5. General education. Study after study has concluded that there is a direct correlation between lack of education and violent crime. Every dollar spent on education now will prevent countless dollars worth of crime damage in the future. Think of all the private and public funds used to pay for gun violence — hospital bills, funerals, insurance bills, the actual cost of buying firearms. Now invest that money in education, and watch the crime rate drop.

6. Hand grip ID tagging. This is technologically probably still in the future, but it would be a good goal to work for. The theory is, each gun is “registered” to one’s person palm prints (the legal purchaser of the gun), and only that person can fire that gun. If another person tries, the gun simply will not fire. Thus, stolen guns become useless, and cannot be used to harm anybody in the course of a crime. http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~zj5j-gttl/guns.htm

What both proponents of gun control and those who advocate unfettered gun possession along with unlimited possession of ALL types of guns don’t want to acknowledge is that it ultimately goes back to the Constitutional process of a legislature enacting a law and the judiciary reviewing the Constitutionality of the law. Neither side may be happy with the result.

Resources:

Prof. Eugene Volokh, UCLA Law School *

I.              Text of the Second Amendment and Related Contemporaneous Provisions
II.              Calls for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms from State Ratification Conventions
III.              “The Right of the People” in Other Bill of Rights Provisions
IV.              Some Other Contemporaneous Constitutional Provisions With a Similar Grammatical Structure
V.              18th- and 19th-Century Commentary
       A.              William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765)
       B.              St. George Tucker, Blackstone’s Commentaries (1803)
       C.              Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833)
       D.              Thomas Cooley, General Principles of Constitutional Law (1880)
VI.              Supreme Court Cases
       A.              United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939)
       B.              Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393, 416-17, 449-51 (1857)
       C.              United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542, 551 (1876)
       D.              Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252, 264-66 (1886)
       E.              Logan v. United States, 144 U.S. 263, 286-87 (1892)
       F.              Miller v. Texas, 153 U.S. 535, 538-39 (1894)
       G.              Dissent in Brown v. Walker, 161 U.S. 591, 635 (1896) (Field, J., dissenting)
       H.              Robertson v. Baldwin, 165 U.S. 275, 280 (1897)
       I.              Maxwell v. Dow, 176 U.S. 581, 597 (1900)
       J.              Trono v. United States, 199 U.S. 521, 528 (1905)
       K.              Twining v. New Jersey, 211 U.S. 78, 98 (1908)
       L.              United States v. Schwimmer, 279 U.S. 644 (1929)
       M.              Dissent in Adamson v. California, 332 U.S. 46, 78 (1947) (Black, J., dissenting)
       N.              Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U.S. 763, 784 (1950) (Jackson, J., for the majority)
       O.              Knapp v. Schweitzer, 357 U.S. 371, 378 n.5 (1958) (Frankfurter, J., for the majority)
       P.              Konigsberg v. State Bar, 366 U.S. 36, 49 & n.10 (1961) (Harlan, J., for the majority)
       Q.              Dissent in Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 149-51 (1972) (Douglas, J., dissenting, joined by Marshall, J.)
       R.              Lewis v. United States, 445 U.S. 55, 65 (1980)
       S.              United States v. Verdugo- Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259, 265 (1990)
       T.              Casey v. Planned Parenthood, 505 U.S. 833, 848 (1992) (dictum)
       U.              Concurrence in Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898, 938-939 (1997) (Thomas, J., concurring)
       V.              Dissent in Muscarello v. United States, 524 U.S. 125, 143 (1998) (Ginsburg, J., joined by Rehnquist, C.J., and Scalia and Souter, JJ.)
VII.              Relevant Statutes
       A.              Militia Act of 1792
       B.              The currently effective Militia Act
       C.              The Freedmen’s Bureau Act (1866)
       D.              The Firearms Owners’ Protection Act (1986)
VIII.              Other Materials
IX.              State Constitutional Right to Keep and Bear Arms Provisions (Current and Superseded)
       A.               Sorted by state, though including both current and superseded provisions
       B.               Sorted by date, from 1776 to the present

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

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

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

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Dr. Wilda © https://drwilda.com/

Tags: amendment jurisprudence, constitution amendment, current-events, government, Gun Control, old fart, politics, Prof. Eugene Volokh, Second Amendment, state constitutions, state militia, state militias, u s constitution, UCLA Law School*, US Consitution, What Does the Second Amendment Say About the Right To Own Guns?

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Horrific Connecticut school shooting: Is posting the Ten Commandments at school really the problem?

14 Dec

Here’s today’s COMMENT FROM AN OLD FART: Today there was another horrific school shooting. AP reports in the article, AP: 27 Dead, Including 18 Children, At Sandy Hook School Shooting In Newtown:

Twenty-seven people, including 18 children, have been killed in a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, according to the Associated Press.

The report cites an official with knowledge of the situation.that there are at least 20 shooting victims. Many of the shootings took place in a kindergarten classroom, sources said. One entire classroom is unaccounted for, sources said. http://www.courant.com/news/breaking/hc-police-responding-to-incident-in-newtown-20121214,0,3969911.story

Here is a partial list of school shootings from the last 20 years:

CNN) — Here is a list of some violent incidents at U.S. schools over the last 20 years:

February 27, 2012 –– Chardon High School, Chardon, Ohio. Student Daniel Parmertor, 16, is killed and four others wounded when student T.J. Lane opens fire in the school, authorities say. On February 28, Demetrius Hewlin, 16, dies from his wounds, and Russell King Jr., 17, is declared brain-dead. On March1, T.J. Lane is charged with three counts of aggravated murder, two of attempted aggravated murder and one of felonious assault.

October 2, 2006 – West Nickel Mines School, Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. Charles Roberts IV, 32, goes to the small Amish school and takes at least 11 girls hostage. Five girls were killed and six others wounded. Roberts then killed himself.

November 8, 2005 – Campbell County Comprehensive High School, Jacksboro, Tennessee. A 15-year-old student opens fire on a principal and two assistant principals, killing one of them and critically wounding another, authorities said.

March 21, 2005 – Red Lake High School, Red Lake, Minnesota. Jeff Weise, 16, kills his grandfather and another adult, four fellow students, a teacher and a security officer. He then killed himself.

March 5, 2001 – Santana High School, Santee, California. Charles “Andy” Williams, 15, kills two classmates, a 14-year old and a 17-year old, and injures 13. Williams is sentenced in 2002 to at least 50 years in prison.

April 20, 1999 — Columbine High School, Littleton, Colorado. Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, kill 12 fellow students and one teacher before committing suicide in the school library.

May 21, 1998 – Thurston High School, Springfield, Oregon. After killing his parents the previous day, 15-year old Kip Kinkel returns to Thurston High armed with a rifle. He kills two students in the school cafeteria, a 16- and a 17-year old. He is sentenced to 112 years in prison.

March 24, 1998 – Westside Middle School, Jonesboro, Arkansas. Andrew Golden, 11, and Mitchell Johnson, 13, ambush fellow students and their teachers, killing five. Johnson is incarcerated in a youth facility and released on his 21st birthday in August 2005. Golden is released on his 21st birthday in May 2007.

December 1, 1997 – Heath High School, West Paducah, Kentucky. Michael Carneal, 14, opens fire on a school prayer group, killing three girls. He is serving life in prison.

February 2, 1996 –– Frontier Junior High School, Moses Lake, Washington. Barry Loukaitis, 14, takes a rifle to school and kills two classmates and a teacher. He was sentenced to life in prison.

May 1, 1992 – Lindhurst High School, Olivehurst, California. Eric Houston, a 20-year old dropout, returns to his old high school and kills a former teacher and three students. Houston is sentenced to death.

February 26, 1992 – Thomas Jefferson High School, Brooklyn, New York. A 15-year old shoots and kills two other students. The shooter, Kahlil Sumpter, was sentenced in 1993 to between 6 2/3 and 20 years in prison. He was released in 1998. http://fox8.com/2012/12/14/history-of-school-shootings/

See, Time Line of Worldwide School and Mass Shootings http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777958.html#ixzz2F3UWDwnB

At the Anti-Defamation site in the article, The Ten Commandments Controversy: A First Amendment Perspective:

In the majority of cases considering official posting of the Ten Commandments, the Court has extended this prohibition. In its 1980 (Stone v. Graham) decision striking down a Kentucky law requiring that a copy of the Ten Commandments be posted in every public school classroom, the Court said:

The pre-eminent purpose for posting the Ten Commandments on schoolroom walls is plainly religious in nature. The Ten Commandments are undeniably a sacred text in the Jewish and Christian faiths, and no legislative recitation of a supposed secular purpose can blind us to that fact. The Commandments do not confine themselves to arguably secular matters, such as honoring one’s parents, killing or murder, adultery, stealing, false witness, and covetousness. Rather, the first part of the Commandments concerns the religious duties of believers: worshipping the Lord God alone, avoiding idolatry, not using the Lord’s name in vain, and observing the Sabbath Day.

The Court recently issued two decisions concerning official display of the Ten Commandments with differing results. In McCreary v. ACLU of Kentucky, the Court considered county courthouse displays of the Ten Commandments in Kentucky. Similar to the Stone decision, it again recognized that the Ten Commandments is “… an unmistakably religious statement dealing with religious obligations and with morality subject to religious sanction.” The Court ultimately decided that the displays were unconstitutional because their history and context demonstrated a clear religious purpose and intent on the part of county officials.

In Van Orden v. Perry, the Court considered a forty-year-old granite Ten Commandments monument on the Texas capitol grounds – one of seventeen monuments on the broad plaza. Reaching an opposite result, the Court decided that this display is constitutionally permissible. However, Justice Breyer, who cast the deciding vote in the case, characterized the display as “borderline” and found that it served “a mixed but primarily nonreligious purpose.” Significantly, as with the McCreary decision, a majority of the Justices indicated that displays in public schools likely will be unconstitutional. In other situations, a display or posting’s location, history and context will be critical in determining its constitutionality. http://www.adl.org/10comm/print.asp

There are pros and cons of posting the Ten Commandments or any other statement of values.

The blog TresSugar posted a good summary of the pros and cons of posting the Ten Commandments:

PRO 1

Our government was based on religious principles from the very beginning. The 10 Commandments are the foundation of our moral government.

CON 1.1

Having religious principles does not mean that they wanted to use the government to force religion on the country. The ratification of the constitution by the states was held up because it didn’t have a written list of basic rights that couldn’t be taken away. The very first line in the Bill of Rights reads “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. After these were assured only then was the constitution ratified.

PRO 2

Since the court outlawed prayer, the nation has been in steady moral decline. Former Secretary of Education William Bennett revealed in his cultural indexes that between 1960 and 1990 there was a steady moral decline. During this period divorce double, teenage pregnancy went up 200%, teen suicide increased 300%, child abuse reached an all-time high, violent crime went up 500% and abortion increased 1000%. There is a strong correlation between the expulsion of prayer from our schools and the decline in morality.

CON 2.1

If you go back the other way in time, do you find higher morals in slavery, or our treatment of Indians, or more recently, Jim Crow laws in the South, or official discrimination against women or children being used as cheap labor?

CON 2.2

The Census Bureau reports that 63 percent of the population claims church membership, a figure that has remained virtually unchanged since the 1960 census.

CON 3

The BILL OF RIGHTS was designed to protect the minorities basic rights from the majority. In the case of religion “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. It says its against the constitution to prohibit free exercise of religion. Free is a key word here, state supported religion is not “FREE EXERCISE” its “FORCED RELIGION” and that is prohibited.

PRO 4

Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., a cheerleader for the measure, reportedly said that if the Ten Commandments had been posted at Columbine, the shootings would never have taken place.

CON 4.1

The boy who shot six of his fellow students in Barr’s home state of Georgia had attended a church service the night before.

CON 5

The book of EXODUS has two completely different versions of the 10 Commandments. EXODUS 20 and EXODUS 34. One Commandment that is common to both versions is keeping the Sabbath. In EXODUS 35 Moses tells the people that those who break the Sabbath, even lighting a fire in their homes, should be put to death. Will this Commandment teach our kids about ignoring inconvenient rules?

PRO 6

All that we would like to do is give the kids a foundation for moral behavior. This is not an evil conspiracy, its an attempt to make things better and safer for all kids.

CON 7

“This is about the government playing favorites and saying Judaism and Christianity are the appropriate religions and everyone else is wrong,” explains Peter Eliasberg, an ACLU attorney. “That’s not moral guidance, it’s dividing the people on the basis of religion.”

CON 8

The 1st Commandment says “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me”. I believe some reasonable people might consider this “establishment of religion”. http://religions-of-the-world.tressugar.com/Pro-Con-Ten-Commandments-posted-schools-6229083

In the attempt to eradicate all vestiges of religion from the public square, this society has thrown out a good deal of the values and moral principles which are the glue that holds a society together. Note the time line of school shootings after the 1980 Stone v. Graham case. Values education in schools should be a part of the curriculum.

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Resources:

Teaching Values in School: An Interview with Steve Johnson http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v13n1/interview.html

Integrating values and ethics into post secondary teaching for leadership development Principles, concepts, and strategies http://www.ed.psu.edu/educ/for-current-faculty-and-staff/strategic-plan-folder/prof-ethics-study-team/Appendix%20C%20-%20Ethics_Begley.pdf

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Tags: 27 Dead Including 18 Children At Sandy Hook School Shooting In Newtown:, current-events, education, list of school shootings, politics, Sandy Hook Elementary School, School Shootings, Ten Commandments, The Ten Commandments Controversy A First Amendment Perspective, TresSugar, Values Education

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USDA revises school lunch guidelines to include more meat and grains

12 Dec

Moi wrote about the school lunch program in School dinner programs: Trying to reduce the number of hungry children:

There are some very good reasons why meals are provided at schools. Education Bug has a history of the school lunch program

President Harry S. Truman began the national school lunch program in 1946 as a measure of national security. He did so after reading a study that revealed many young men had been rejected from the World War II draft due to medical conditions caused by childhood malnutrition. Since that time more than 180 million lunches have been served to American children who attend either a public school or a non-profit private school.

In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson extended the program by offering breakfast to school children. It began as a two years pilot program for children in rural areas and those living in poorer neighborhoods. It was believed that these children would have to skip breakfast in order to catch the bus for the long ride to school. There were also concerns that the poorer families could not always afford to feed their children breakfast. Johnson believed, like many of us today, that children would do better in school if they had a good breakfast to start their day. The pilot was such a success that it was decided the program should continue. By 1975, breakfast was being offered to all children in public or non-profit private school. This change was made because educators felt that more children were skipping breakfast due to both parent being in the workforce.

In 1968, a summer meals program was offered to low income children. Breakfast, lunch and afternoon snacks are still available to students each year, during the summer break. Any child in need can apply for the program at the end of the school year. Parents that are interested in the summer meals program should contact their local school administration.

Since its inception, the school lunch/meals programs have become available in more than 98,800 schools….

Hungry children have more difficulty in focusing and paying attention, their ability to learn is impacted. President Truman saw feeding hungry children as a key part of the national defense. https://drwilda.com/2012/01/28/school-dinner-programs-trying-to-reduce-the-number-of-hungry-children/

Mary Clare Jalonick of AP reports at Huffington Post in the article, School Lunches To Be Allowed Unlimited Meats, Grains, USDA Announces:

WASHINGTON — The Agriculture Department is responding to criticism over new school lunch rules by allowing more grains and meat in kids’ meals.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told members of Congress in a letter Friday that the department will do away with daily and weekly limits of meats and grains. Several lawmakers wrote the department after the new rules went into effect in September saying kids aren’t getting enough to eat. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/09/school-lunches-to-be-allo_n_2267731.html

See the press release: http://www.fns.usda.gov/cga/pressreleases/2012/0023.htm

Here is a sample menu: http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/Governance/Legislation/cnr_chart.pdf

The challenge is getting kids to eat the food mandated by the rules and for school districts to find “kid tasty” foods which are affordable. A Child’s health is too important to be the subject of tawdry political wrangling and high pressure tactics from big money interests. Our goal as a society should be:

A healthy child in a healthy family who attends a healthy school in a healthy neighborhood ©

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.
John F. Kennedy

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.
Confucius

Resources:

USDA changes school lunch requirements http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/271813-usda-changes-school-lunch-requirements

USDA backpedals on healthy school-lunch rules http://grist.org/news/usda-backpedals-on-healthy-school-lunch-rules/

National School Lunch Program Fact Sheet http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/lunch/aboutlunch/NSLPFactSheet.pdf

School dinner programs: Trying to reduce the number of hungry childrenhttps://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/school-dinner-programs-trying-to-reduce-the-number-of-hungry-children/

School lunches: The political hot potatohttps://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/school-lunches-the-political-hot-potato/

The government that money buys: School lunch cave in by Congresshttps://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/11/16/the-government-that-money-buys-school-lunch-cave-in-by-congress/

Do kids get enough time to eat lunch? https://drwilda.com/2012/08/28/do-kids-get-enough-time-to-eat-lunch/

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Tags: Dept. of Agriculture, Education Bug, history of the school lunch program, politics, School Lunch Program, School Lunches To Be Allowed Unlimited Meats Grains USDA Announces, USDA

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The education opportunity divide: Parents face jail for wanting a better life for their child

10 Dec

Here’s today’s COMMENT FROM AN OLD FART: Moi wrote about the importance of parenting in Not P.C., but it is true, parents and parenting matter:

Many “progressives” want to put forth the idea that families don’t matter, particularly in low-income communities of color. It is a different story in middle and upper income “progressive” families as they “helicopter parent “their children. There are some awesome single-parent households, but moi is going all “OLD FART” on you and saying that children need two active, engaged,and involved parents to thrive. http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/not-p-c-but-it-is-true-parents-and-parenting-matter/ The fact that two parents care very much about the well-being of the child means that they might face felony charges for caring too much.

Rosa Duarte of WFMZ69 News is reporting Parents face felony charges for sending daughter outside their district:

A Philadelphia couple is facing felony charges after allegedly lying about where they lived in order to send their daughter to a school outside their district.

Hamlet and Olesia Garcia were charged in August of this year with “theft of services”, a 3rd degree felony punishable by up to 7 years in prison, by the Lower Moreland School District in Montgomery County.

The Garcias are accused of sending their daughter to the district even though they didn’t pay property taxes, according to the District Attorney’s office. The couple cost tax payers $10,752.81.

Thursday, civil rights activists along with lawmakers held a press conference saying the laws and the ways Pennsylvania public schools are funded are unfair.

“The District Attorney should go after real criminals and not put parents in prison facing up to seven years and be registered as felons because they allegedly stole a quality education,” said former California State Senator Gloria Romero.

Romero introduced the nation’s first ‘Parent trigger’ law in 2008, which allows parents of a failing school district to vote on a method to restructure the school, mostly by transforming it into a charter school….

According to Bethlehem Area School Superintendent, Joseph Roy, stories like the Garcias’ are a symptom of a much bigger matter.

“This issue of inequities and funding has been going on for years and there have been different efforts to try to adjust it but never to full satisfaction,” said Roy.

As for a solution, those involved like the Garcias’ attorney Thomas Kenny said it’s up to legislators, “I would very much like the laws in the commonwealth to change and I hope today is the start of that process happening,” he said.

“One suggestion is to just have the state contribute more to public education, take the burden off the local taxpayers, another is to create more regional districts so you have a balance of wealthy areas and poorer areas in areas where they’re divided,” said Roy….http://www.wfmz.com/news/news-regional-southeasternpa/Parents-face-felony-charges-for-sending-daughter-outside-their-district/-/121434/17688040/-/ek6n7/-/index.html

The Garcias’ case is the beginning of many because education equity is the next great civil rights struggle.

Moi wrote inThe next great civil rights struggle: Disparity in education funding:

Plessy v. Ferguson established the principle of “separate but equal” in race issues. Brown v.Board of Education which overturned the principle of “separate but equal.” would not have been necessary, but for Plessy. See also, the history of Brown v. Board of Education

If one believes that all children, regardless of that child’s status have a right to a good basic education and that society must fund and implement policies, which support this principle. Then, one must discuss the issue of equity in education. Because of the segregation, which resulted after Plessy, most folks focus their analysis of Brown almost solely on race. The issue of equity was just as important. The equity issue was explained in terms of unequal resources and unequal access to education.

People tend to cluster in neighborhoods based upon class as much as race. Good teachers tend to gravitate toward neighborhoods where they are paid well and students come from families who mirror their personal backgrounds and values. Good teachers make a difference in a child’s life. One of the difficulties in busing to achieve equity in education is that neighborhoods tend to be segregated by class as well as race. People often make sacrifices to move into neighborhoods they perceive mirror their values. That is why there must be good schools in all segments of the city and there must be good schools in all parts of this state. A good education should not depend upon one’s class or status.

I know that the lawyers in Brown were told that lawsuits were futile and that the legislatures would address the issue of segregation eventually when the public was ready. Meanwhile, several generations of African Americans waited for people to come around and say the Constitution applied to us as well. Generations of African Americans suffered in inferior schools. This state cannot sacrifice the lives of children by not addressing the issue of equity in school funding in a timely manner.

The next huge case, like Brown, will be about equity in education funding. It may not come this year or the next year. It, like Brown, may come several years after a Plessy. It will come. Equity in education funding is the civil rights issue of this century. https://drwilda.com/2011/12/02/the-next-great-civil-rights-struggle-disparity-in-education-funding/

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Tags: Brown v. Board of Education, california state senator gloria romero, current-events, education, Education Choice, Education Equity, Hamlet and Olesia Garcia, Parents face felony charges for sending daughter outside their district, Plessy v. Ferguson, politics, senator gloria romero

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No more reading To Kill A Mockingbird: The scourge of the ‘Common Core,’ Producing automatons in mass

9 Dec

Here’s today’s COMMENT FROM AN OLD FART: Common Core Standards have been introduced in most of the country. As the implementation of the standards proceeds, moi observation is the structure is geared to mass produce automatons which are defined:

automatons plural of au·tom·a·ton (Noun)

Noun

A moving mechanical device made in imitation of a human being.
A machine that performs a function according to a predetermined set of coded instructions.

Moi wrote about Common Core Standards in Will ‘Common Core Standards’ increase education achievement?

There will continue to be battles between those who favor a more traditional education and those who are open to the latest education fad. These battles will be fought out in school board meetings, PTSAs, and the courts.

There is one way to, as Susan Powder says, “Stop the Insanity.” Genuine school choice allows parents or guardians to select the best educational setting for their child. 2012 Brown Center report from the Brookings Institution, How Well Are American Students Learning? raises questions about what effect, if any, the Common Core Standards will have on education achievement:

Discussion

What effect will the Common Core have on national achievement? The analysis presented here suggests very little impact. The quality of the Common Core standards is currently being hotly debated, but the quality of past curriculum standards has been unrelated to achievement. The rigor of performance standards—how high the bar is set for proficiency—has also been unrelated to achievement. Only a change in performance levels has been related to an increase in achievement, and that could just as easily be due to test score changes driving changes in policy, not the other way around.

The Common Core may reduce variation in achievement between states, but as a source of achievement disparities, that is not where the action is. Within-state variation is four to five times greater. The sources of variation in educational outcomes are not only of statistical importance but also bear on the question of how much state policy can be expected to change schools. Whatever reduction in variation between, say, Naperville and Chicago that can be ameliorated by common standards has already been accomplished by Illinois’s

state efforts. State standards have already had a crack at it. Other states provide even more deeply rooted historical examples.

California has had state curriculum frame-The Common Core may reduce variation in achievement between states, but as a source of achievement disparities, that is not where the action is. http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/reports/2012/0216_brown_education_loveless/0216_brown_education_loveless.pdf

See, Common Core won’t likely boost student achievement, analysis says http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/common-core-wont-likely-boost-student-achievement-analysis-says/2012/02/16/gIQAOfZuJR_blog.htmlThe Common Core State Standards Initiative has some excellent information about the standards. https://drwilda.com/2012/02/19/will-common-core-standards-increase-education-achievement/

Some classic American literature may be dropped from the curriculum.

The U.K.’s Telegraph reports in the article, Catcher in the Rye dropped from US school curriculum:

Schools in America are to drop classic books such as Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye from their curriculum in favour of ‘informational texts’.

A new school curriculum which will affect 46 out of 50 states will make it compulsory for at least 70 per cent of books studied to be non-fiction, in an effort to ready pupils for the workplace.

Books such as JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird will be replaced by “informational texts” approved by the Common Core State Standards.

Suggested non-fiction texts include Recommended Levels of Insulation by the the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the Invasive Plant Inventory, by California’s Invasive Plant Council.

The new educational standards have the backing of the influential National Governors’ Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, and are being part-funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Jamie Highfill, a teacher at Woodland Junior High School in Arkansas, told the Times that the directive was bad for a well-rounded education.

“I’m afraid we are taking out all imaginative reading and creativity in our English classes.

“In the end, education has to be about more than simply ensuring that kids can get a job. Isn’t it supposed to be about making well-rounded citizens?” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/9729383/Catcher-in-the-Rye-dropped-from-US-school-curriculum.html

The Common Core seems to ignore the value of a liberal arts education in favor of a checklist.

Moi wrote in Cultural literacy: Is there necessary core knowledge to be academically successful?

Back in the day there was this book entitled Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. It was published in 1988 and was written by E.D. Hirsch, Jr. Moi liked the concept, some others, not so much. “Cultural Literacy” is defined by Education. Com:

Having sufficient common knowledge, i.e., educational background, experiences, basic skills, and training, to function competently in a given society (the greater the level of comprehension of the given society’s habits, attitudes, history, etc., the higher the level of cultural literacy). http://www.education.com/definition/cultural-literacy/

Marci Kanstroom wrote E.D. Hirsch, Cultural Literacy and American Democracy which was published in Education Next liked the concept. http://educationnext.org/e-d-hirsch-cultural-literacy-and-american-democracy/ Others, like Patrick Scott criticized the concept in articles like Scott’s A Few Words More about E. D. Hirsch and Cultural Literacy. http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/378146?uid=3739960&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=55881093943 Scott takes issue with Hirsch’s criticism of education icons Dewey and the NEA.

Bernard Schweitzer wrote an interesting 2009 piece for the NEA, Cultural Literacy: Is It Time to Revisit the Debate?

Some will say, “What’s so wrong with being unable to pick up references to a few historical figures, most of them dead White males? Our students are equipped with vibrant local cultural knowledges of their own.” Others will caution me not to expect too much from freshmen, saying that it is my job to ensure that they leave the academy armed with a degree of common knowledge that they may not have when entering it. Yet others may be more concerned, agreeing that while a basic fund of knowledge should be expected of freshmen, my students are perhaps performing so poorly on general knowledge issues because most of them come from underprivileged socio-economic backgrounds (e.g., poor inner-city high schools) and diverse ethnic backgrounds (e.g., immigrants). But here’s the rub. If undergraduate students have never heard of Gandhi, Orwell, or Thoreau (or have no reason to remember them), they obviously have such a huge gap in general knowledge that four years of college education are not likely to make up for what has been missing since middle school. Although I may strive diligently to fill those gaps, I realize that we no longer live in a culture that encourages and reinforces a shared knowledge basis with regard to history, geography, literature, and the sciences. But that does not mean that this kind of cultural literacy has ceased to be relevant. Indeed, I believe it is still alive and well, but that it is now cultivated only in a narrow circle of the privileged classes. The reason I don’t see much evidence of this shared knowledge in my own classroom is that I do not, as a rule, encounter the products of the country’s elite preparatory school systems. What I’m saying, then, is that the issue of cultural literacy is socio-economically coded.

Some will say, ‘What’s so wrong with being unable to pick up references to a few historical figures,most of them dead White males?’

The problem with the argument that cultural literacy is irrelevant is that it does actually matter to some. It matters to the upper-middle and upper classes, who hold the reins of wealth and power. Those families who can afford to send their children to top schools can be sure that their offspring are inculcated with precisely the kind of cultural fluency that some are trying to persuade us holds no importance in today’s diversified world. The more we argue the unimportance of cultural literacy among the general populace, the more we relegate the possession of this knowledge to the province of a socio-economic elite, thereby contributing to a hardening of social stratification and a lessening of social mobility. In the upper echelons of society, cultural literacy indicates belonging, and it signals the circulation of knowledge within tightly knit coteries. http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/HE/TA09CulturalLiteracy.pdf

Whether one wants to argue that certain cultures are not included or do not have a prominent enough place in the definition of cultural literacy, the real question is what is the baseline knowledge necessary to be upwardly mobile?

Kenneth P. Ruscio argues in the Christian Science Monitor article, Why a liberal arts education is the best job preparation:

Although my own position, unsurprisingly, is that the fundamental philosophy of the liberal arts is more relevant today than it ever was, I base this belief on the strengths and weaknesses that today’s students bring to college. These strengths and weaknesses, in fact, are the opposite of what they were 20 years ago.

When I first started teaching, I found myself writing comments on term papers along the lines of, “You have a great thesis and you argue it with great passion and fluent writing. Unfortunately, you have no evidence to support it.”

When I left teaching a few years ago, I was writing comments like these: “Congratulations on the mass of data you have discovered. Unfortunately, you have no thesis or central argument. I have no idea what you are trying to prove.”

Students today can easily find information. The challenge is making sense of the whole, finding connections, evaluating the credibility of the information, taking a position, and dealing with complexity.

If ever there was a time when we should be emphasizing education – more than distributing information or training for specific jobs – if ever there was a time for the classic liberal arts, this is it. And I worry that in our enthusiasm to embrace new technologies, we will play too much to our students’ supposed strengths, ignoring the weaknesses they bring to us.

It is hard to find a commonly agreed-upon definition of the liberal arts. For those of us who experienced this kind of education, the definition would be personal. If we went to a college that claimed to be a liberal arts college, we would define a liberal arts education as what we got there.

For me, a liberal arts college is one premised on learning together what we cannot learn alone. A liberal arts education provides perspective and raises the “why” question along with the “what” question. In a hierarchy that starts with information, then moves up the ladder to knowledge, and then even higher to wisdom, a liberal arts college aspires to be operating at the highest rung.

One of the best books I have ever read on the liberal arts came out this year. “College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be” was written by Andrew Delbanco, a literature professor at Columbia University. Early on, he provides wonderful focus for what is to come.

“A few years ago,” he writes, “I came upon a manuscript diary – from 1850 – kept by a student at a small Methodist college, Emory and Henry, in southwest Virginia. One spring evening, after attending a sermon by the college president that left him troubled and apprehensive, he made the following entry in his journal: ‘Oh that the Lord would show me how to think and how to choose.’”

Mr. Delbanco considers that probably the best way to define the mission of the liberal arts: to teach people how to think and how to choose. http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2012/0919/Why-a-liberal-arts-education-is-the-best-job-preparation

We are developing a system to mass produce automatons.

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Tags: Automatons, Brookings Institution, Brown Center, Catcher in the Rye dropped from US school curriculum, Common Core Standards, Common Core won’t likely boost student achievement analysis says, Cultural Literacy, Cultural Literacy: Is It Time to Revisit the Debate?, Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, E.D. Hirsch Cultural Literacy and American Democracy, education, How Well Are American Students Learning?, Liberal Arts Education, literature, politics, Why a liberal arts education is the best job preparation

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The digital divide affects the college application process

8 Dec

Moi wrote in The digital divide in classrooms:

One of the major contributors to poverty in third world nations is limited access to education opportunities. The Asian Development Bank has the best concise synopsis of the link between Education and Poverty For a good article about education and poverty which has agood bibliography, go toPoverty and Education, Overview As technology becomes more prevalent in society and increasingly is used in schools, there is talk of a “digital divide” between the haves and have-nots. Laurence Wolff and Soledad MacKinnon define the “digital divide” in their article, What is the Digital Divide?

The “digital divide,” inequalities in access to and utilization of information and communication technologies (ICT), is immense. http://info.worldbank.org/etools/docs/library/57449/digitaldivide.pdf

Access to information technology varies within societies and it varies between countries. The focus of this article is the digital divide in education. https://drwilda.com/2012/01/25/the-digital-divide-in-classrooms/

Nora Fleming has written the provocative Education Week article, Digital Divide Hits College-Admissions Process: Some students lack hardware, savvy:

But while technology is changing the face of college admissions, not all students are reaping the benefits of this virtual access to resources and information. For disadvantaged students lacking awareness or the digital-connection capabilities, entry into college may become harder to obtain than ever before.

“Our first-generation college students, even if they have computers with high-speed Internet, still struggle through the college-application process because they do not have the same frame of reference and knowledge base when it comes to things like college-search websites,” said Darrell Sampson, a guidance counselor with the 182,000-student Fairfax County school district in Virginia.

“If you do not know what it is you are supposed to be looking for, or how the process is supposed to work,” he said, “you are probably not going to be accessing the wealth of information available through technology meant to assist you.”

Online Growth

Those same challenges to accessing college admissions—such as seeking out digital resources and determining credibility of information—follow students when they enter college, educators say, where digital resources, and the expectation to use them, abound.

In 1998, the Common Application, a standard admissions application accepted at colleges and universities in place of their own, was made available online for the first time.

Today, the application, supported by a nonprofit organization of the same name, is accepted by more than 488 higher education institutions, and similar application sites, like XAP and the Universal College Application, have also emerged, dramatically changing the college-admissions process. The Common Application received 2.78 million applications last year from 663,000 students, as a student can now fill out one form and submit it to many colleges at once.

The National Association for College Admission Counseling, based in Arlington, Va., reports that the proportion of virtual applications increased from 56.5 percent in 2004 to 85 percent in 2011 of all those received at four-year institutions. Given the ease of applying, the applications in total at each institution have also substantially increased, while the acceptance rate has declined, stiffening competition.

Virtual portals also enable students to track the status of their applications.

But the application is not the only facet of college admissions that has become virtual. Students can now use a whole host of websites, such as Naviance, Cappex, Zinch, and College Confidential to search for and get matched with potential schools, receive step-by-step guidance on admissions, take virtual tours, and practice for the SAT and the ACT.

Bob Patterson, the director of college outreach at Zinch, a website where students create a profile to get matched with colleges and scholarship money, says such sites help reach students through familiar, digital communication tools. That reduces stress in the admissions process, he said, particularly in high schools where the student-to-counselor ratio is very high.

According to NACAC, the national average is 421-to-1.

“The idea of instant feedback, online searches, and connecting with students in real time is the way higher education institutions will need to engage with the student of the future,” said Mr. Patterson, who worked as an admissions counselor for 15 years at Stanford University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, among other universities, before going to Zinch.

Web-Based Help

Cappex: Provides college reviews, admissions games, searchable information on colleges including video, and college and scholarship matching. www.cappex.com

College Board: Provides SAT registration with free sample questions, study guides, and information on local courses; guidance on how to find colleges, pay for them, and plan academic work to make student applications stronger. www.collegeboard.com

College Connection: Helps students find schools based on career goals, courses offered, and location; includes online degrees. www.collegeconnection.com

Common Application: Allows students to fill out a standard application and submit it electronically to as many member institutions (of 488) as desired; includes charts detailing deadlines and additional requirements of each member school. www.commonapp.org

Naviance: Helps students, their families, and their school counselors organize the admissions process through goal-setting and application management; also provides long-range-planning advice for students’ careers based on self-designed profiles and assessments. www.naviance.com

Princeton Review: Offers SAT, ACT, and PSAT preparation guidelines including free practice tests and free events, along with registration for paid courses; includes other college-search advice and general guidance. www.princetonreview.com

Zinch: Students create a profile and are matched with colleges, graduate schools, and scholarship money; students can connect with other students going through the admissions process for advice. www.zinch.com

SOURCE: Education Week

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/12/05/13digital.h32.html?tkn=XRPFs4cKjuDxKn8Oi8b07%2Bbadpo3TxPX9Sek&cmp=clp-edweek

See, Schools Must Bridge the Digital Divide http://www.abpc21.org/digitaldivide.html

Moi wrote about college access in College Board’s ‘Big Future’: Helping low-income kids apply to college:

The College Board announce the “Big Future” program:

College Board Introduces BigFuture.org, a Free Comprehensive College Planning Resource

See, Admissions 101: Will new tool help low-income students tackle admissions?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/class-struggle/post/admissions-101-will-new-tool-help-low-income-students-tackle-admissions/2012/04/18/gIQAVGl8QT_blog.html

Education Week had this take on “Big Future” in the article, College Board Launches New Web Resource for Students by Caralee Adams:

The material was developed in collaboration with an advisory group of educators and Education Conservancy, a nonprofit based in Portland, Ore., focused on improving the admissions process.

This idea was to create an interactive, user-friendly resource in response to concerns that the college-admissions process is becoming increasingly complex and access to expert counseling is unequal. “All students deserve access to good guidance information and top-notch online information,” says Ben-Yoseph. “The goal to make the college process more accessible, simple, and easier to navigate.”

Students can get to much of the information on BigFuture without signing up, but to create a plan or save your work, users do need to create an account. Those with College Board accounts can use their existing user names and passwords. (College Board’s privacy policy states that it does not sell student names or their related information, except through the optional Student Search Service program.)

Rather than being static and listing 10 things to do each year in high school, BigFuture starts the process by asking the user some questions and tailoring the action to the individual’s interests.

When searching for colleges that match a student’s interest on BigFuture, the user can sort by filters such as location, majors, sports, diversity, and cost and give each a weight of importance on a sliding scale. College-profile information of nearly 4,000 institutions is collected by the College Board in its Annual Survey of Colleges. Note: The price includes tuition and fees, but not room and board.

Information throughout the site is provided in nugget-sized tips and one-minute videos with student stories such as how they decided about going to school in a city, what role extracurricular activities played in deciding a major, and putting together a financial-aid plan for college. There are also videos from experts addressing topics of college planning.

College Board envisions the audience for BigFuture to be as young as 8th graders. The content can be applicable for students of any age interested in higher education, said Ben-Yoseph. The hope is that the tool will be engaging enough that it is used across a student’s entire high school career and by school guidance counselors. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/college_bound/2012/03/college_board_launches_new_web_resource_for_students.html

The best way to eliminate poverty is job creation, job growth, and job retention. The Asian Development Bank has the best concise synopsis of the link between Education and Poverty For a good article about education and poverty which has a good bibliography, go to Poverty and Education, Overview There will not be a good quality of life for most citizens without a strong education system. One of the major contributors to poverty in third world nations is limited access to education opportunities. Without continued sustained investment in education, we are the next third world country. https://drwilda.com/2012/04/19/college-boards-big-future-helping-low-income-kids-apply-to-college/

Resources:

College Preparation Checklist

College Preparation Checklist Brochure

Funding Education Beyond High School

Translating digital learning into K-12 education https://drwilda.com/2012/11/18/translating-digital-learning-into-k-12-education/

Rural schools and the digital divide https://drwilda.com/2012/06/21/rural-schools-and-the-digital-divide/

Many U.S. colleges use the ‘Common Application’ https://drwilda.com/2012/05/15/many-u-s-colleges-use-the-common-application/

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/

Tags: College Accessibility, College Admission, College Affordability, College Application, College Board Launches New Web Resource for Students, Digital Divide, Digital Divide Hits College-Admissions Process Some students lack hardware savvy, education, internet, politics, research, science, Technology, What is the Digital Divide?

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Study: Superintendents leave jobs in large school districts within three years

4 Dec

Moi wrote about school superintendents in Life expectancy of a superintendent: A lot of bullets and little glory:

Just about anyone in education has a tough job these days, from the building staff to the superintendent. There is pressure to perform in an environment of declining resources. Lately, the job of superintendent of large urban school districts has been characterized by turnover. Thomas E. Glass in The History of the Urban Superintendent writes:

The twenty-first century finds one-third of America’s public school children attending one of ten large urban (large-city) school districts. By 2020 approximately one-half of public school enrollment will be clustered in twenty districts. The educational stewardship of a majority of the nations youth rests uncomfortably on the shoulders of a very few large-city school superintendents. Their success and the success of their districts may very well determine the future of American democracy.

Urban districts are typically considered to be those located in the inner core of metropolitan areas having enrollments of more than 25,000 students. The research and literature about large-city school districts portray conditions of poverty, chronic academic underachievement, dropouts, crime, unstable school boards, reform policy churn, and high superintendent turnover.

The typical tenure of a superintendent in the largest large-city districts is two to three years. This brief tenure makes it unlikely a superintendent can develop and implement reform programs that can result in higher academic achievement–let alone re-build crumbling schools buildings, secure private sector assistance, and build a working relationship with the city’s political structure.

The large-city superintendency is a position defined by high expectations, intense stress, inadequate resources, and often a highly unstable politicized board of education.
Read more: Superintendent of Large-City School Systems – History of the Urban Superintendent, The Profession, School Boards,

Characteristics of the Large-City Superintendent http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2470/Superintendent-Large-City-School-Systems.html#ixzz0p6HySmU0

See, District Administration’s article, Superintendent Staying Power http://www.districtadministration.com/article/superintendent-staying-power

The National Council of Professors of Educational Administration has an excellent module, Factors Impacting Superintendent Turnover: Lessons from the Field

Superintendent and School Board Relationships

While instructional leadership is integral to the role of superintendent, the increasingly complex political aspects of the job must be handled as well (Education Writers Association, n.d.; Hoyle et al., 2005). Superintendent relationships with school boards were found to be a decisive element of superintendent tenure (Education Writers Association, n.d.). Often, conflict with the school board is cited as a common reason for superintendents leaving a district and hence their attrition (Rausch, 2001). Allen (1998) observed that superintendents listed the relationship with the board as a second reason for involuntary non-extension of a contract, while board members listed relationships with the superintendent as the major cause…

Superintendent Pressures on Multiple Fronts

Most superintendents agree that current issues schools face are similar to those confronted in years past, but not in size or complexity (Orr, 2002). In today’s American public schools, superintendents must guide challenging, dynamic education systems, while appropriately responding to social and political pressures (Rohland, 2002). In addition, Rohland speculated that the high standards and people-intensive nature of school districts are primary reasons the job of superintendent is so demanding. Similar to other professions, ascension on the career ladder in education is associated with increased exposure to criticism (Jazzar & Kimball, 2004). Fullan (1998) opined that due to the complex nature of executive leadership itself, there will always be dissatisfaction among constituents with respect to the leader’s performance. If the number of teachers were multiplied times the number of students, parents, and community members, the possibilities for conflict and outside pressures are endless (Parker, 1996). Success for the superintendent lies in gleaning wisdom from attacks and criticism, without being defeated in the process (Harvey, 2003).

Additional Factors Affecting the Superintendency

Time, one of the superintendent’s most valuable resources, can quickly be exhausted by special interest groups’ demands and community pressures (Glass et al., 2000; Harvey, 2003). According to the Colorado Association of School Executives, (CASE) (2003) the role of superintendent is labor intensive, often requiring 80 or more hours a week. Glass and colleagues (2000) found evidence to support the widely-held belief that the job of superintendent has become increasingly complex, with salary and benefits insufficient for the level of responsibility and accountability demanded. However, superintendents polled by Cooper and his colleagues (2000) have surmised that improved pay and benefits would possibly attract and retain more qualified individuals in the superintendent profession. In regard to superintendent self-perception of effectiveness, lack of fiscal resources was cited as a major reason for inhibiting superintendent effectiveness (CASE, 2003) and for explaining why superintendents are leaving the profession (Glass et al., 2000). In the AASA survey (Glass et al.), superintendents described efforts to obtain sufficient fiscal resources as a never-ending struggle. Too many insignificant demands from various stakeholders and compliance with increased state-mandated reforms was also provided by superintendents as a key factor in hindering superintendent effectiveness.Reports of low superintendent tenure, some as low as 2.5 years (Natkin et al., 2002), have contributed to negativity and a sense of crisis (Cooper et al., 2000) surrounding the superintendency. Nevertheless, existing research does not definitively identify specific factors contributing to superintendent tenure and turnover. The success or failure of various superintendents in the field is a subject that is unclear (Hoyle et al., 2005). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to determine factors or combination of factors contributing to length of tenure and rate of turnover among public school superintendents….http://cnx.org/content/m14507/latest/

https://drwilda.com/2011/12/16/life-expectancy-of-a-superintendent-a-lot-of-bullets-and-little-glory/

Education week has an article about a California study which examined superintendent turnover.

Sarah D. Sparks is reporting in the Education Week article, Study: More Churn at the Top in Large Districts:

Running one of the nation’s largest school districts typically comes with prestige and pay that draw would-be educational superstars, but also pressure and political complexity that cause them to burn out far faster than leaders of the majority of districts.

A study published in the December issue of the American Educational Research Journal finds in 90 percent of 100 California districts studied, 43 percent of superintendents left within three years—but 71 percent of superintendents left the largest 10 percent of districts, which include those of 29,000 or more students, during that time….

While superintendent turnover has not received as much focus from researchers or policymakers as teacher or principal turnover, stability at the central office has been linked to a greater likelihood of success for new education initiatives, which typically take five to seven years to mature.

One analysis of more than 2,700 districts by the Denver-based Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning, or McREL, found that a one standard deviation improvement in the quality of a superintendent, as measured by researchers’ criteria, was associated with a 9.5 percentile-point gain on state tests for the average district, and that student achievement growth was linked to longer tenures of district leaders…

A dysfunctional school board topped the list of reasons superintendents moved, the California study found. While the researchers initially separated the board’s internal functioning from its relationship with the district’s chief executive, “it turns out the school boards who function well together … are also the ones who are working well with their superintendents,” Mr. Grissom said.

While the study did not find a link between low test-score growth and superintendent turnover, Mr. Domenech of the AASA said poor executive and school board relations can become a self-reinforcing cycle with turnover.

“A board will hire a superintendent, but then in a period of three to five years, that board turns over,” he said, “and that superintendent is not the one they hired and there isn’t the same loyalty.

“In districts where you see the superintendents come and go, in some cases every year, those are dysfunctional because there’s never the length and the tenure necessary to make changes that are sustainable,” said Mr. Domenech. A superintendent for nearly 30 years, he previously led districts in Fairfax County, Va., and Long Island, N.Y.

Hiring From Within

The power of continuity may help explain one hopeful finding in the study: Nearly three out of four leaders hired from within the district were still there three years later.

“The ones who are hired from within are not just a little more likely to stay; they’re a lot more likely to stay,” Mr. Grissom said. “That finding was pretty stark.”

That makes sense to Mr. Domenech, who said homegrown leaders often have local roots that keep them in place. And they are already familiar with a system that can take a year or more for a newcomer to learn, he said. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/12/05/13turnover_ep.h32.html?tkn=VRXFoE4GlUw8BQHXKO38gUmxP9%2FQJaCTOC6m&cmp=clp-edweek

Citation:

Why Superintendents Turn Over

Jason A. Grissom and

Stephanie Andersen

+ Author Affiliations

Vanderbilt University

Washington University in St. Louis

Abstract

Although superintendent turnover can hinder district reform and improvement, research examining superintendent exits is scarce. This study identifies factors contributing to superintendent turnover in California by matching original superintendent and school board survey data with administrative data and information hand-collected from news sources on why superintendents left and where they went. Among 215 superintendents studied beginning in 2006, 45% exited within 3 years. Using a multinomial framework to separate retirements from other turnover, the authors find that factors such as how highly the school board rates its own functioning and the superintendent’s performance and whether the superintendent was hired internally strongly predict non-retirement exits 3 years later. Short-term district test score growth, however, is uncorrelated. Superintendents who move migrate away from rural districts toward larger, higher-paying districts in urban and suburban locations.

Published online before print October 10, 2012, doi: 10.3102/0002831212462622 Am Educ Res J December 2012 vol. 49 no. 6 1146-1180

» AbstractFree
Full Text
Full Text (PDF)

No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.

Peter Drucker

Resources:

Urban Superintendents, Characteristics and Tenure

Factors Impacting Superintendent Tenure

Superintendent Tenure

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

Tags: District Administration, education, Factors Impacting Superintendent Turnover Lessons from the Field, National Council of Professors of Educational Administration, politics, Study: More Churn at the Top in Large Districts, Superintendent, Superintendent Staying Power, The History of the Urban Superintendent, urban school districts, Why Superintendents Turn Over

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Generation lost: A future of low expectations

3 Dec

Here’s today’s COMMENT FROM AN OLD FART: Emmeline Zhao posted the article, Kids Count Youth And Work Report: Number Of Young Adults Out Of School, Work Hits Half-Century High at Huffington Post:

Nearly 6.5 million U.S. teens and young adults are neither in school nor working, according to a new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The report warns of a future of chronic unemployment due to a continuing failure to educate and train America’s youth in needed skills.

The most recent “Kids Count” report, one of the most widely cited surveys of how youth fare in the United States, found that young people aged 16 to 24 are facing serious barriers to successful careers as youth unemployment has reached its highest level since World War II. Only about half of young people in that age group held jobs in 2011, according to the report, titled “Youth and Work: Restoring Teen and Young Adult Connections to Opportunity.”

The employment rate for teens between the ages of 16 and 19 has fallen 42 percent over the last decade: 2.2 million teens and 4.3 million young adults aged 20 to 24 are neither working nor in school. Of those without school or work, 21 percent — or 1.4 million — are young parents.

North Dakota, Nebraska and Minnesota had the highest rates of employment among 20- to 24-year-olds. Laura Speer, one report’s authors, told Minnesota Public Radio that early employment is key to future success.

“The thing that you got and I got from our very first job is mostly about how to work,” Speer said. “How to be on a team, how to have a boss, how to show up on time. And those — what are termed as ‘soft skills’ — are things that are really critically important going forward.”

Young adults are facing more competition from older workers for increasingly scarce entry-level jobs. Many lack the skill set required for available jobs. Still others face obstacles beyond their control, such as low-performing schools, a lack of working-adult role models and impoverished upbringings.

The report shows that lack of education, opportunity and connection to school or work has long-term implications for both the affected youth and society as a whole.The 1.4 million young adults who are not in school, are unemployed and have children can “perpetuate an intergenerational cycle of poverty” as they continue to fail to find work, the report states. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/03/kids-count-youth-and-work-report_n_2233450.html?utm_hp_ref=education

See, Young, Educated and Jobless in France http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/03/world/europe/young-and-educated-in-france-find-employment-elusive.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0and and Unemployment in Euro Zone Rises to a New High http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/business/global/daily-euro-zone-watch.html

Moi discussed what many Americans feel is diminished prospects for their future in Americans, no longer dreaming:

The Victorian Contexts gives a good overview of the world of Charles Dickens.

Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.

Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.

“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.”

Charles Dickens

“Mr Jarndyce, and prevented his going any farther, when he had remarked that there were two classes of charitable people: one, the people who did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people who did a great deal and made no noise at all.”

Charles Dickens (Bleak House)

Throughout history there have been great empires who eventually challenged each other for dominance in a variety of areas. One of the most interesting historical rivalries was between Athens and Sparta. See, PBS’ The Two Faces of Greece: Athens and Sparta which has atable comparing the two cultures.

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.
Henry David Thoreau

Child Fund and the Alliance have conducted a survey of children around the globe about their hopes. Huffington Post is reporting in the story, Child Fund Alliance Survey: Kids In Developing Countries Dream Of Better Education (SLIDESHOW):

To find out what kids around the world dream of when it comes to pursuing the best life they can imagine, the ChildFund Alliance surveyed 5,100 children throughout Africa, Asia, the Americas and the United States. The nonprofit, which works with vulnerable kids in 56 countries, asked privileged kids and children in need questions about their ideal jobs and how they would improve their countries as president.

The survey concluded that those in developing countries are focused on education, while kids in the United States have the chance to set their sights on the arts and sports. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/29/childfund-alliance-survey_n_1118397.html?ref=email_share

See, American Dream Deferred: We Now Embrace More Modest, Personal Goals By Martha C. White http://moneyland.time.com/2011/12/01/american-dream-deferred-we-now-embrace-more-modest-personal-goals/#ixzz1fdM4RqcI

Perhaps, the diminished ability to dream at this juncture in time has to do with how Americans perceive the challenges at this point in time to themselves and their country. https://drwilda.com/2011/12/05/americans-no-longer-dreaming/

J. Maureen Henderson has an interesting piece at Forbes, Careers Are Dead. Welcome To Your Low-Wage, Temp Work Future:

According to the Economic Policy Institute, almost 30% of American workers are expected to hold low-wage jobs – defined as earnings at or below the poverty line to support a family of four – in 2020. This number will remain virtually unchanged from 2010. Given that roughly 50% of recent college grads are unemployed or underemployed and those who do work are much more likely to hold these types of jobs, this is a particular grim prospect for young workers hoping to leave these positions behind for greener career pastures.

And even if Millennial workers do manage to move from retail to the corporate world, there’s no guarantee that their office job will be on the career track. The number of temporary or contract positions was up 6% over last year’s numbers in the first quarter of 2012 according to the American Staffing Association. In fact, the number of temporary or contract jobs added to the economy has been increasing for nine consecutive quarters since the recession officially ended. Over 40% more people hold temp jobs now than in 2009. This growth starts to become something to worry about when temp jobs aren’t being converted to permanent ones and when contract work replaces full-time positions. As ASA CEO Richard Wahlquist put it when discussing the numbers:

“Employers remain hesitant to add permanent employees due to uncertainty about the current strength of the economy and future economic conditions, including impending tax increases and spending cuts expected to take effect in January 2013. In times like these, businesses are being much more strategic in sourcing additional talent and maintaining work force flexibility.”

And this cautious approach to staffing and reliance on a disposable workforce may continue for years. While there are certainly highly-skilled and in-demand professionals who are able to parlay their hired-gun status into big paydays or renaissance workers who are mashing up day jobs and dream jobs, those who benefit financially from the gig economy are in the minority. With low-wage occupations set to keep growing – even in economic hotspots such as Silicon Valley – most young workers may be destined to either cycle through a number of temporary positions in search of better wages and working conditions or resign themselves to juggling multiple low-wage jobs in order to support themselves if they aren’t able to find an entry point to the career track before they age out of their recent grad status. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jmaureenhenderson/2012/08/30/careers-are-dead-welcome-to-your-low-wage-temp-work-future/

The economy affects whether individuals feel they have the resources to build a family.

In 3rd world America: The economy affects the society of the future, moi said:

So what future have the Goldman Sucks, cash sluts, and credit crunch weasels along with we don’t care, we don’t have to Washington Georgetown and Chevy Chase set – you know, the the “masters of the universe” left those on a race to get through college? Lila Shapiro has the excellent post, Trading Down: Laid-Off Americans Taking Pay Cuts and Increasingly Kissing Their Old Lives Goodbye at Huffington Post:

This government, both parties, has failed to promote the kind of economic development AND policy which creates liveable wage jobs. That is why Mc Donalds is popular for more than its dollar menu. They are hiring people.

This economy must focus on job creation and job retention and yes, hope. Both for those racing through college and those who have paid their education and training dues. “You deserve a break today at Mc Donalds,” the only employer who seems to be hiring. https://drwilda.com/2011/11/22/3rd-world-america-the-economy-affects-the-society-of-the-future/

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

Tags: American Dream Deferred We Now Embrace More Modest Personal Goals, Careers Are Dead Welcome To Your Low-Wage Temp Work Future, Child Fund Alliance Survey Kids In Developing Countries Dream Of Better Education, College Graduate, current-events, Educated and Jobless in France, Kids Count Youth And Work Report Number Of Young Adults Out Of School Work Hits Half-Century High, PBS’ The Two Faces of Greece: Athens and Sparta, politics, Unemployment in Euro Zone Rises to a New High, Youth Unemployment

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Closing the door on some futures: Increasing the cost of a GED

2 Dec

Moi wrote in The GED as a door to the future:

There are a variety of reasons why people fail to complete high school and fail complete their high school education, According to the July 24, 2011 NPR report, School Dropout Rates Add To Fiscal Burden by Claudio Sanchez and Linda Wertheimer, “Nearly 1 million kids who start high school every year don’t make it to graduation.” http://www.npr.org/2011/07/24/138653393/school-dropout-rates-adds-to-fiscal-burden

There are many reasons why kids drop out of school. Kate Convissor lists the following reasons in the EduGuide article, Why Kids Drop Out of School:

While the reasons kids drop out vary, the following are six important risk factors:

Academic difficulty and failure. Struggling in school and failing classes is one of the main reasons teens drop out, and this pattern often shows up early. Students who fail eighth grade English or math, for example, are seventy-five percent more likely to drop out of high school.
Poor attendance. Teens who struggle in school are also absent a lot, and along with academic failure, absenteeism is an important future predictor for dropping out. As with the previous example, students who are absent for twenty percent of their eighth grade year (one day per week) are also highly likely to drop out in high school.
Being held back (retention). Linked to academic difficulty, students who are held back and who are older than the kids in their grade also tend to drop out.
Disengagement from school. Many kids who drop out say that school was boring and teachers did little to connect learning to real life. They didn’t feel invested in their school and they didn’t feel that adults seemed interested in them or their high school experience.
Transition to a new school. A poor transition from the smaller, more protected environment of middle school to the anonymity of a high school can cause a teen to have difficulty catching up-and some kids never do.
Other life factors. Pregnancy, family problems, and financial difficulties are all factors that distract a student from schoolwork and make keeping up more challenging. http://www.eduguide.org/library/viewarticle/2132/

Because many entry level jobs require at a minimum a high school diploma, the General Education Development Test or GED is often substituted for the high school diploma to show that an individual has reached a basic level of education achievement. https://drwilda.com/2011/11/17/the-ged-as-a-door-to-the-future/

The GED has been an option for many who failed to complete high school and cost is a factor to that population.

Diane Orson of NPR reports in the article, Educators Worry Revamped GED Will Be Too Pricey:

Last year, the GED Testing Service — part of the nonprofit American Council on Education — announced that it was merging with Pearson, a for-profit British company, and one of the largest educational testing companies in the world.

The merger, the testing service says, would help to generate the money needed to revamp the test. The new assessment will be more rigorous and aligned with Common Core Standards, a set of uniform educational standards now adopted by almost every state. The test will be offered only on computer, and it will cost more.

Fees to take the exam vary by state, says Randy Trask, president of the GED Testing Service.

Administrators at the adult education center are concerned that the GED overhaul will make it harder for many test takers to complete the exam.

“Historically, states have chosen to subsidize the GED test; some partially and some in its entirety,” Trask says. “The state then chooses what to charge test takers for the test. And the state bears — or has historically born — all of the costs associated with the delivery of that test and the scoring.”

In Connecticut, it currently costs $13 to take the GED. The actual price of the exam is closer to $60, but the state subsidizes the balance. The price of the new test, however, will jump to $120. And though Connecticut may pick up the difference for a while, state Rep. Walker says that probably won’t last. As a result, she’s worried the higher cost will hurt the low-income people the test is supposed to help.

“It is going to be prohibitive … People come here with pennies and nickels, bringing us change to pay for their GED,” Walker says. “So it’s going to be a class issue. People who have no money will never be able to actually take the GED.” http://www.npr.org/2012/11/28/165916695/educators-worry-revamped-ged-will-be-too-pricey?sc=emaf

Unless, children are given a meaningful education which provides them with basic skills to adapt to a changing environment, the education system is producing a permanent underclass which will not be able to participate in the next “new, new thing.”

The real issue is reducing the number of high school dropouts. Meanwhile, for those who fail to complete high school, the cost of a GED make become a barrier to moving forward with their lives.

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

Tags: Droput, education, Educators Worry Revamped GED Will Be Too Pricey, GED, General Education Development Test, NPR, politics, School Dropout Rates Add To Fiscal Burden, Why Kids Drop Out of School

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The Council of Chief State School Officers report: Teacher training programs need reform

Our Responsibility, Our Promise: Transforming Educator Preparation and Entry into the Profession

2011 State Teacher Policy Yearbook

Both sides in the gun debate are acting like morons

USDA revises school lunch guidelines to include more meat and grains

Mary Clare Jalonick of AP reports at Huffington Post in the article, School Lunches To Be Allowed Unlimited Meats, Grains, USDA Announces:

USDA changes school lunch requirements http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/271813-usda-changes-school-lunch-requirements

USDA backpedals on healthy school-lunch rules http://grist.org/news/usda-backpedals-on-healthy-school-lunch-rules/

The education opportunity divide: Parents face jail for wanting a better life for their child

Rosa Duarte of WFMZ69 News is reporting Parents face felony charges for sending daughter outside their district:

No more reading To Kill A Mockingbird: The scourge of the ‘Common Core,’ Producing automatons in mass

automatons plural of au·tom·a·ton (Noun)

The digital divide affects the college application process

Nora Fleming has written the provocative Education Week article, Digital Divide Hits College-Admissions Process: Some students lack hardware, savvy:

Online Growth

College Board Introduces BigFuture.org, a Free Comprehensive College Planning Resource

Translating digital learning into K-12 education https://drwilda.com/2012/11/18/translating-digital-learning-into-k-12-education/

Study: Superintendents leave jobs in large school districts within three years

Hiring From Within

Why Superintendents Turn Over

Generation lost: A future of low expectations

Closing the door on some futures: Increasing the cost of a GED

While the reasons kids drop out vary, the following are six important risk factors:

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Author(s)	CCSSO Task Force on Educator Preparation and Entry into the Profession
Publication date	December 2012
publication pdf	Click here to download Our Responsibility Our Promise: Transforming Educator Preparation and Entry into the Profession

Twenty-five states have agreed to advance the recommendations in the report.	Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia
Click here to see quotes of support of this work.	Organizations supporting this work: American Federation of Teachers, Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, Data Quality Campaign, National Association of State Boards of Education, National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, National Education Association, National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, State Higher Education Executive Officers.