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Tuesday, September 25, 2018

Study: Girls 'Significantly' Better Than Boys At Reading, Writing - Study Finds

Study: Girls 'Significantly' Better Than Boys At Reading, Writing - Study Finds

Study: Girls ‘Significantly’ Better Than Boys At Reading, Writing

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QUEENSLAND, Australia — Maybe they’re born with it. In the never-ending battle of the sexes, its the girls who prove victorious when it comes to grade-school English class skills. A new study finds that girls perform significantly better than boys in the U.S. on standardized tests of reading and writing abilities.
Researchers from Griffith University in Australia say the results are clear after reviewing the scores of more than 3.9 million American students from a 27-year span. Data was gathered from the the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which collected standardized test scores from students in the fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades.
The authors found that girls fared markedly better in both reading and writing in the fourth grade, only to see the gap widen in eighth and twelfth grades, especially when it came to writing.
“The common thinking is that boys and girls in grade school start with the same cognitive ability, but this research suggests otherwise,” says lead author David Reilly, a doctoral student at Griffith, in a release by the American Psychological Association. “Our research found that girls generally exhibit better reading and writing ability than boys as early as the fourth grade.”
Reilly and his team believe the surprising findings could be a result of boys being more likely to be diagnosed with a learning disability. Similarly, behavioral problems typically seen more frequently among boys may also make them more prone to delays, which Reilly says could even signal a neurological condition.
The authors also suggest the peer pressure boys face to follow masculine norms could contribute, making reading less of a priority for some.
“The magnitude of the writing gender gap was really quite surprising, as was the fact that there was no evidence for a decline in the gap for reading and writing over time. Many boys are highly proficient in reading, and yet really struggle when it comes to writing tasks,” Reilly argues in a university news release.
Other research has shown that girls use both brain hemispheres for reading and writing, while boys typically rely on just one.
“Reading and writing sets the stage for later schooling. While we’ve concentrated on basic literacy, the demands on students for writing grow stronger as they progress through education,” adds Reilly. “In particular, it’s crucial for high school and college entry. Each year, more women than men apply for college entry, and more women than men complete their college degrees. It has a cascading effect on students, either up or down.”
Reilly says curriculum needn’t be any different for either gender, but schools should consider pushing expressive writing exercises on boys earlier. Teachers could also work to make writing as big of a priority as reading and other subjects, such as the “STEM” (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) courses that have gained greater attention in recent years.
“For educational practice, I believe this study shows the need for a greater focus on writing beginning in primary continuing throughout high school, but in an ever-crowded curriculum that is focusing more on STEM, it highlights the increased need for further work,” he concludes.
The full study was published September 20, 2018 in the journal American Psychologist.
Study: Girls 'Significantly' Better Than Boys At Reading, Writing - Study Finds


Charter’s $30m payout sparks political backlash :: K-12 Daily

Charter’s $30m payout sparks political backlash :: K-12 Daily :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet

Charter’s $30m payout sparks political backlash



(Ariz.) Charter schools and policies supporting parental choice may have no greater champions than the Republican leadership in the Arizona state house, but a recent school real estate deal could test that commitment.
In a quiet move made earlier this month that has sparked headlines, a state oversight board voted unanimously to approve the transfer of a Phoenix area charter school from a for-profit corporation to a non-profit entity.
The action triggered a windfall profit of up to $30 million in tax money to the owner of the dispensing company, who also happens to be a member of the Arizona House of Representatives, according to published reports.
Eddie Farnsworth, R-Chandler, told the Arizona Republic last week that he deserved the profit-taking because he had invested millions of dollars in launching the charter school twenty years ago.
“I make no apologies for being successful,” he told reporters.
Farnsworth–an attorney and a one-time staff member to U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah–is also on the ballot in November, running for a seat in the state Senate.
Although the move has raised eyebrows among his GOP colleagues, few if any have criticized his action publicly. That said, Gov. Doug Ducey–who is locked in a dead-heat in his election bid with his Democratic challenger, reversed gears shortly after the Farnsworth deal became public, and endorsed a package of bills that would impose more accountability on charter schools and new restrictions on charter operators for profit-taking at public expense.
“Republicans ignore all the evidence of a problem while joining hands and chanting, “school choice, school choice, school choice,” wrote Republic columnist Laurie Roberts last week. “Indeed it is a choice to focus only on charter school successes—and there are certainly some—while ignoring problems rampant in the charter school industry.”
The Farnsworth controversy comes at a bad time for Republicans, who have been locked in an continue reading: Charter’s $30m payout sparks political backlash :: K-12 Daily :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet



No Thank You to Naviance – Seattle Education

No Thank You to Naviance – Seattle Education

NO THANK YOU TO NAVIANCE

feral families


The district has designed a scope and sequence of how to use Naviance with a focus on 11th and 12th grade but actual implementation will be left school to school. Once parents have forfeited their chance to opt out there will not be any other chances to give consent for certain portions. They told me it is an all in system with individual schools being left to make decisions about how they will accommodate students who opt out….
Through my daughter’s eighth grade year, I started to familiarize myself with how high school is organized nowadays in SPS. It’s been a long time since my Ingraham days of “tennis shoe registration” where we ran station to station with little index cards and golf pencils signing up for our courses manually. So with a few weeks until school let out when I received this email from Seattle Public Schools, my interest was peaked,
Dear families,
We are pleased to announce the district’s college and career planning tool, Naviance, will be available in the 2018-19 school year to support your student’s personalized journey through high school. This is a web-based, mobile-friendly tool that you and your student can use to explore interests and options, consider post-high school plans, and ensures all students can have access to post-high school planning supports.
The Naviance college and career planning tool will allow students to:
• Research careers and colleges: Learn about career fields linked to personal interests, compare data from college admissions offices, take personalized surveys to understand strengths and goals.
• Get involved in the planning process:Build a resume, manage timelines and deadlines for making decisions about colleges and careers; organize and track documents related to the college application process, such as requesting and submitting letters of recommendation and transcripts.
• High School and Beyond Plan: Schools will be using Naviance to deliver high school and beyond plan lessons in grades 8-12.  The high school and beyond plan is a graduation requirement, which Continue reading: No Thank You to Naviance – Seattle Education

New Yorker Profile Warns: When It Comes to Mark Zuckerberg, Be Careful! | janresseger

New Yorker Profile Warns: When It Comes to Mark Zuckerberg, Be Careful! | janresseger

New Yorker Profile Warns: When It Comes to Mark Zuckerberg, Be Careful!


Evan Osnos’s extraordinary profile of Mark Zuckerberg, published in the September 17, New Yorker, wouldn’t seem a fitting topic for coverage in this blog about public education. Osnos hardly touches on Mark Zuckerberg’s ventures thus far into education philanthropy—the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, which has made education-based philanthropy one of its primary foci, or the $100,000,000 gift to help Chris Christie and Cory Booker charterize the public schools in Newark, New Jersey, a controversial and poorly conceived initiative that did not improve the education of children in Newark.
Osnos’s profile explores the question of who has the power,”to pull the lever of what we see, hear, and experience.” Osnos is, of course, examining the role of Facebook and whether and how it functions as an arbiter of free speech. The central subject of the profile, however, is Mark Zuckerberg himself and how he thinks and operates.  Continuing to explore the issue of free speech, Osnos explains: “Zuckerberg is hoping to erect a scalable system, an orderly decision tree that accounts for every eventuality and exception, but the boundaries of speech are a bedevilling problem that defies mechanistic fixes.”
Last spring when Zuckerberg testified before Congress, the Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank described Zuckerberg as “the boy billionaire,” a caricature that precisely captures the Mark Zuckerberg Osnos depicts: a naif who knows coding and tech systems but who cannot comprehend his own and his company’s power.  Unfortunately, Zuckerberg also seems unable to grasp what he doesn’t know.
How the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative will affect public education remains unclear. Writing forChalkbeatMatt Barnum explains: “In late 2015, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan promised to donate 99 percent of their Facebook shares to their philanthropy, which would focus part of its work on improving American education… But the organization remains one of the least transparent funders in education.  Unlike a number of other philanthropies, CZI does not publicly list its grants, instead announcing only certain awards on Facebook or in press releases…  As a limited liability company, CZI is not required to list donations on its tax forms, unlike private foundations… The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s recent giving vaults CZI into the top echelon of education funders, though it remains behind the Gates Foundation and Walton Family Foundation for now.  Whereas CZI averaged a bit over $100 million in grants Continue reading: New Yorker Profile Warns: When It Comes to Mark Zuckerberg, Be Careful! | janresseger