Thursday, April 1, 2010

Elk Grove Citizen : Keeping kids on track

Elk Grove Citizen : Feature Story

Keeping kids on track

Photos by Laura Bemis - Coach Julius Lewis watches students run during a Franklin High School track team practice.

Elk Grove officer coaches youth in sports and at the station

By Cameron Macdonald - Citizen News Editor

Published: Thursday, April 1, 2010 5:06 PM PDT

This spring, Julius Lewis spends most of his workweek coaching teenagers – at a high school’s track and field, an elementary school’s basketball court, and in the Elk Grove police station.

The Elk Grove police officer spends mornings and early afternoons counseling and educating juvenile offenders looking for a second chance.

And then it’s off to either Franklin High School or Joseph Sims Elementary School.

As the head coach of Franklin’s track team, Lewis coaches and handles the scheduling, grade checks, and other paperwork for more than 90 students. He also coaches children involved in the Elk Grove Police Activities League (PAL) basketball league.

“I think they’re really appreciative when they have somebody who pays attention to them and genuinely cares about them,” he said about working with youth. “I enjoy watching them when the light bulb goes off when you can tell they get it – whether it be on the track or in

voiceofsandiego.org | News. Investigation. Analysis. Conversation. Intelligence.

Polling on a Bigger School Board

A private group of educators, philanthropists, business leaders and others are polling San Diegans about whether they want to see appointed members added to the San Diego Unified school board, according to parents who have gotten phone calls about the new proposal.

The survey asks parents whether they would want to see four appointed members join the five existing elected trustees to make up a bigger school board with nine trustees. The new members would be appointed by a community committee that could include university leaders, labor union representatives and other local leaders. Phone pollers asked parents about who they'd want on the committee.

The idea emerged from an informal group of people who were upset by former Superintendent Terry Grier's departure months

The Education Report Foot Race to the Top?

The Education Report

Foot Race to the Top?

By Katy Murphy
Thursday, April 1st, 2010 at 3:48 pm in Schwarzenegger, achievement gap, school reform
No Comments

California’s lackluster Race to the Top ranking in Round I (27th) came as a disappointment to state officials, who had pushed for legislation to make the state more competitive for the grant.

Now, the governor and the state superintendent of public instruction are proposing the feds add a new set of performance

(Mis)Understanding the NAEP Results (Part II) � The Quick and the Ed

(Mis)Understanding the NAEP Results (Part II)

by Chad Aldeman

People seemed to like my post explaining how changing demographics are masking improvements on the NAEP reading test. One comment that’s been voiced a couple times, by Kevin Drum and others, is that I used the Long-Term Trend NAEP as opposed to what everyone else was talking about, the main NAEP reading scores that were released last week. As I explained in the post, I used the Long-Term trend in this case because it has undergone fewer changes over the years and has been in use for longer. But, my point is not just limited to this version; it also applies to the main NAEP. Here are the score increases for fourth-grade reading from 1992 to 2009, by race/ethnicity:
Overall: +4
Whites: +6
Blacks: +13
Hispanics: +8
Asian/ Pacific

QUICK Hits

Not-the-April-Fools Edition.

So who at the NY Dept. of Education thought it was a good idea to spend $200,000 in RTT money on expensive desks and chairs? (New York Post)

Could a new law in the state that started the charter school movement lead many charter schools to close? (Star Tribune)

Not sure if that April 1 story is true? You need an April Fool’s Day Defense Kit.(Slate)

If college students’ brains can’t handle multitasking, what does that say about the rest of us? (New York Times)

Posted by Kris Amundson at 4:00 pm | Tags: Brain research, Charter Schools, College Graduation Rates, Race to the Top Fund | No Comments

Immigration reform is civil rights issue for Latinos: Menendez | - Hoboken Now - NJ.com

Immigration reform is civil rights issue for Latinos: Menendez | - Hoboken Now - NJ.com
Immigration reform is civil rights issue for Latinos: Menendez

By The Jersey Journal

April 01, 2010, 1:44PM

Herald NewsSen. Robert Menendez told the Star-Ledger editorial board yesterday that to Latinos, immigration reform is a civil rights issue. U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez told The Star-Ledger editorial board yesterday that to Latinos,immigration reform is the civil rights issue of their time.

Menendez, the former Union City mayor and son of Cuban immigrants, choked up when he spoke about getting to the Senate and hearing senators refer to "those people."

"In my life, I've had a series of firsts, and I've heard along the way what that means, 'those people,'" Menendez said.

"Latinos, when they hear 'those people,' when they hear the immigration debate, when they hear how it's phrased, they view that issue beyond their undocumented brothers and sisters, they view it about

Sen. Menendez on Latinos and immigration reform: 'It's the civil rights issue of their time'

Scoring Outliers' Effect on Race to Top - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Scoring Outliers' Effect on Race to Top

By Michele McNeil on April 1, 2010 6:03 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Louisiana officials are complaining that one Race to the Top judge sank their entire application.

Well, you can judge for yourself, but our own quick analysis shows Louisiana was affected more than any other finalist state by scoring outliers.

With the help of Stephen Sawchuk of Teacher Beat fame, we cobbled together our own scoring spreadsheet, throwing out the lowest and the highest score for each state, and averaging the remaining three scores. This means that a really hard grader, or a really easy grader, can't unduly influence the scores. We'll call this the McNeil-Sawchuk scoring system, inspired by the various scoring system changes in international figure skating.

The new scoring system would not have changed the outcomes for Delaware and Tennessee, which would have still been Nos. 1 and 2, respectively.

However, this would have vaulted Louisiana by 10 points to sixth from 11th place (and higher had it not lost those easy 15 STEM points), and Georgia would have fallen by 6.6 points from third place to seventh.

It turns out, Georgia and Louisiana were most affected by outliers. Georgia

The Women's Conference - Empowerment, Inspiration and Education for Women - The Home for Architects of Change

Want to be a special guest at

The Women’s Conference 2010?

Each month through September, we’re giving you the opportunity to win two complimentary Special Guest Passes to the nation’s premier forum for women, interview one of our top speakers and meet California First Lady Maria Shriver. The Women’s Conference 2010, to be held on October 25 and 26 in Long Beach, California, includes a stellar lineup of leaders, journalists, experts, authors and artists to inform and inspire you to become an Architect of Change. Our 2010 conference will be the biggest and best one yet!

THE GREAT APRIL GIVEAWAY

WHAT YOU WIN

The April Giveaway includes:
2 complimentary Special Guest Passes to The Women's Conference Day of Empowerment including the Minerva Awards and two Breakout Conversations on October 26, 2010 (Transportation, meals and hotel not included. Passes are nontransferable.)

An opportunity to interview icon Billie Jean King – visionary, innovator and champion - and have your interview video featured as part of our special online conference coverage

A meet-and-greet and photograph taken with Maria Shriver

HOW YOU WIN

Just tell us -- What’s the biggest risk you’ve ever taken and did it pay off?

Follow these 3 Simple Steps!

Go to our Community Forum.
If you’ve never registered on our site, just click Join Our Community at the top right of the Forum to register.
Finally, at the top of the Community Forum, under THE GREAT GIVEAWAY, tell us What’s the biggest risk you’ve ever taken & did it pay off? (Please limit your response to 200 words or less.)

The conference team will choose the most interesting and inspiring response posted on that section of our Community Forum between April 1 (9am PDT) through April 30 (11:59pm PDT). On May 5th, we’ll announce the winner.

Be sure to share this opportunity with your friends and family.

Click here for Official Rules for The Great Giveaway.

What Can Be Done to Stop Bullying? - The Learning Network Blog - NYTimes.com

April 1, 2010, 7:27 AM

What Can Be Done to Stop Bullying?

By HOLLY EPSTEIN OJALVO

Prince FamilyPhoebe Prince, 15, a freshman at South Hadley High School in western Massachusetts, hanged herself in January. Her family had recently moved from Ireland.

Questions about issues in the news for students 13 and older.

See all Student Opinion »

Nine students are being prosecuted for bullying a fellow student, Phoebe Prince, who committed suicide after being taunted and threatened. What, if anything, could and should the school have tried to protect Ms. Prince? What can and should teachers and administrators do at any school where students are bullying other kids?

In their article “9 Teenagers Are Charged After Classmate’s Suicide,” Erik Eckholm and Katie Zezima consider what happened at South Hadley High School in Massachusetts, and the legal fallout:

In the uproar around the suicides of Ms. Prince, 15, and an 11-year-old boy subjected to harassment in nearby Springfield last year, the Massachusetts legislature stepped up work on an anti-bullying law that is now near passage. The law would require school staff members to report suspected incidents and principals to investigate them. It would also demand that schools teach about the dangers of

Project Based Learning Video �Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

Project Based Learning Video

from Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech by Dean Shareski

I’ve been working with several teachers over the years in our district on the using project based learning. We’re by no means experts but are doing some nice work. These three high school teachers have taken the bull by the horns and restructured the school day to provide some learning not easily done in our traditional 40-75 minute classes. This 5 minute video tells part of their story.
From a storytelling perspective, I struggled with this one. I have about 90 minutes of footage including about 65 minutes of interviews. Trying to edit that down

Bullies: They can be stopped, but it takes a village. - By Alan E. Kazdin and Carlo Rotella - Slate Magazine

BulliesThey can be stopped, but it takes a village.

By Alan E. Kazdin and Carlo RotellaPosted Wednesday, March 31, 2010, at 2:50 PM ET

Authorities brought a series of charges Monday against nine teenagers accused of incessantly bullying 15-year-old South Hadley high school student Phoebe Prince for months before she killed herself. Last year, Alan E. Kazdin and Carlo Rotella cautioned against common but ineffective responses to bullying and outlined some solutions that actually work. The article is reprinted below.

These responses share three features:Let's say you find out that your child is being bullied by a schoolmate. Naturally, you want to do something right now to make it stop. Depending on your temperament and experience, one or more of four widely attempted common-sense solutions will occur to you: telling your child to stand up to the bully, telling your child to try to ignore and avoid the bully, taking matters into your own hands by calling the bully's parents or confronting the bully yourself, or asking your child's teacher to put a stop to it.

1) They all express genuine caring, concern, and good intentions.
2) You will feel better for taking action.
3) They are likely to be ineffective.

In order to understand why, let's focus on two aspects of bullying: It arises from a

Jeb Bush On MSNBC's "Morning Joe" : Controversy in Florida - THE DAILY RIFF - Be Smarter. About Education.

Jeb Bush On MSNBC's "Morning Joe" : Controversy in Florida

What Florida Does, So Will Our Nation?
Why Parents & Schools Need To Know About Merit Pay
& High-Stake Standardized Test Scores

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush visited Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski last week during their special "Great Expectations" in Education day at Alexander Elementary School in Gainsborough, Florida. He had much to crow about with NAEP scores in Florida being an outlier state showing gains while the rest of the country stagnated. However, the state of Florida is enbroiled in a hot-bed of controversy between teachers and policy-makers. Here is a bit of background info:

See here for conservative-oriented The Foundry's recap. An excerpt:

"Results from the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading assessment have just been released and are, well, uninspiring. Reading achievement, despite significant increases in spending over the past few decades and increasing federal policy intervention in the past decade, has remained flat.

The lackluster results indicate that the top-down approach of federal policy, characterized by No Child Left Behind and the current administration's policy, has not led to significant increases in student achievement.

But, despite the bad news, there is an outlier among the states- Florida. The Sunshine

Governor signs repeal on teachers' religious dress; ban will lift in July 2011 | OregonLive.com

Governor signs repeal on teachers' religious dress; ban will lift in July 2011

By Betsy Hammond, The Oregonian

April 01, 2010, 1:08PM

Michelle Cole/The OregonianSurrounded by lawmakers and rank-and-file Oregonians who support the change, Gov. Ted Kulongoski signs into law a bill that repeals Oregon's ban on teacher religious dress.
With supporters of religious freedom looking on, Gov. Ted Kulongoski signed a bill this morning that will end Oregon's ban on teachers wearing head scarves and other religious attire.

The ban won't lift until after the 2010-11 school year. The rationale for the delay is to give leaders of the state's labor and education agencies plenty of time to write detailed regulations for carrying out the new law.

The governor, who declined to comment on the issue while it was before lawmakers in February, called changing the law "The right thing to do." Some lawmakers in both parties opposed the bill on the grounds that schoolchildren might feel oppressed or proselytized by their teacher's religious headcovering or other similar attire.

Kulongoski forcefully disagreed. "Repeal is consistent with Oregon tradition that honors individual beliefs, values diversity, and promotes tolerance," he wrote in an official letter that accompanied his signature on the bill.

But he emphasized the importance of very clear statewide rules, to be

Local groups receive grant awards for children's books

by Roger Gregory, The Oregonian

The Portland area advisory board of First Book received requests for more than $44,000 in book grants

Cedar Hills Kindergarten enlists The Dougy Center to help it serve grieving families

by Washington County Reader Contributor

The school's parent education chairwoman says it's part of a national movement to give parents tools to help children cope with grief.

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