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Monday, April 5, 2010

Education - Everything you need to know about the world of education.

Education - Everything you need to know about the world of education.

It's a win-win for seniors who tutor kids


Experience Corps tutor Barbara Johnson helps out in a kindergarten class at Belmont Elementary in Baltimore. Experience Corps, a program operating in 22 cities nationwide, trains volunteers over 55 to tutor and mentor elementary school students. (Rob Carr - AP)













Negotiating the price of college -- Flagel, Part 4

Here is the fourth and last part of a financial aid primer written by Andrew Flagel, dean of admissions and associate vice president for enrollment development for George Mason University in Virginia. Check out Flagel’s amusing and forthright “Not Your Average Admissions Blog, A Beneath the Surface Look at Everything College Admissions (With a Few Shameless Plugs).” 


By Andrew Flagel 
For the most part, admissions and financial aid are honorable professions. My colleagues are generally very ethical people who strive to help students and deeply believe in the importance of their mission and the service they provide.
That being said, sometimes their work this time of year – the months that colleges and universities package financial aid – can seem a little dirty. I’m not talking DIRTY – I’ve yet to hear about a colleague finding a way to engineer financial aid kickbacks or helping the cartels launder money through financial aid.
Continue reading this post »

Parents spending more time with teens, college race blamed

Two economists who work 2,274 miles away have identified the essence of parenthood in the Washington area since 1995. It turns out we have been spending all that time with our older children — chauffeuring, applauding, coordinating, correcting, planning, obsessing — because we have a deep need to beat the other stressed-out parents in getting our kids into good colleges.
The researchers are Garey and Valerie A. Ramey, a married couple at the University of California-San Diego. They have done the hyper-active parent thing themselves and have a son at Stanford University to show for it. They also admit that most of this exhaustive parenting is done not by men but by women, including, by her own account, Ms. Ramey herself. To sum up, college-graduate soccer moms are trying to outdo all the other soccer moms to get their children into a good school so their daughters can repeat the cycle with their own children.
The Rameys met at the University of Arizona, where both graduated summa cum laude. They are brainy academics who like playful labels, so their study is titled “The Rug Rat Race.” They cite national time-use surveys to show that between 1995 and 2000 the hours spent by college-educated women caring for or handling travel and activities for 
Ed Buzz: The Nation



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EducationNews.org - EducationNewsToday

EducationNews.org - EducationNewsToday

EducationNewsToday

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Teacher bill needs improvements

The Florida House is poised to ram through sweeping changes to employment rules for public school teachers this week without listening to critics or allowing any improvements to the legislation. The bill (SB 6),
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Math lessons in Mandarin? Local schools go global

In a growing number of Seattle-area classrooms, students spend half their school day immersed in a language other than English. One example is Beacon Hill International School in Seattle, where kindergartners can study in Spanish or Mandarin Chinese. ...
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Report cites questionable charter-school practices

One Philadelphia charter-school operator runs a private parking lot on the side. Another rents out apartments and collects the rent at his school. Yet another rents property to herself, signing her lease as both tenant and landlord. ...
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Penn neighborhood blooms around a top school

The Yeows, Elizabeth and Emmanuel, both 37 and transplants from Southern California by way of the Washington suburbs, had their hearts set on a Center City lifestyle after Emmanuel, a federal employee, was transferred here last summer....
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East Providence schools deficit may reach $1 million as costs mushroom

EAST PROVIDENCE — School officials failed to track the expenses of up to 20 out-of-district special-education students, and the mistake created a deficit for the last fiscal year. ...
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New standard makes whiteboard content more accessible

In what educators and vendors are calling a giant step forward in education technology, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) recently announced that all major interactive whiteboard vendors have agreed to make their educational content available... ...
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New York schools brace for layoffs

School districts across New York are anticipating larger class sizes, fewer extracurricular activities and electives, and major layoffs. ...
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Teachers balk, leave state union

Teachers in a Marion County school district have become the first in Iowa to split from the state's largest teachers union. ...
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Tense time for students

After months of sifting through college catalogs and sweating out essays, the 12 seniors The Enquirer is following through the college admission process are three weeks from locking in on their schools. ...
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Judge says threats to confiscate children may be coercion

An Arizona homeschool family's constitutional lawsuit against authorities – including sheriff's deputies, social service workers and even an assistant attorney general – has been advanced by a judge who ruled that a threat to take the family's children into custody could have been perceived as coercion. ...
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Tutoring benefits seniors' health, students' skills

Experience Corps is a program operating in 22 cities nationwide that trains volunteers over 55 to......
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Healthy, and Safe, School Lunches

A Senate bill would set much-needed nutritional standards for the more than 30 million lunches served each school day to children across the country. ...
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School districts floating bond, tax rate issues

Construction, raises and technology are key goals for nine jurisdictions....
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Where's superman for the middle class?

4.4.10 - Guggenheim's film exposes the immense flaws in America's public school system and follows the lives of a handful of parents and their children who struggle to find alternative routes to a better education....
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Anti-bullying efforts show some progress

Even before the January suicide of Phoebe Prince, a 15-year-old Massachusetts girl who had been tormented by classmates, parents in San Diego County feared for the lives of their bullied children...
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Florida's merit-pay plan for teachers prompts debate

A measure moving through the Legislature would make performance paramount in deciding a teacher's pay raise....
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Chinese government's funding of Southland school's language program fuels controversy

Chinese government's funding of Southland school's language program fuels controversy A Hacienda Heights school will get free materials -- books, a laptop, playing cards -- from the Confucius Classroom language program. ...
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Dallas magnet schools top Houston group's rankings

llas ISD's magnet campuses again dominate a list of the best public high schools in Texas, while several of the city's large comprehensive high schools rank at the bottom....
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Keeping students engaged, motivated during middle-school years

What to do when kids stop caring about school. ...
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Utah Parents Challenge 'Democracy' in School's Motto

A group of Utah County parents is challenging a school district's use of the word democracy in its mission statement, saying it's historically inaccurate and an endorsement of socialist ideas. ...
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Rise & Shine: Harlem arts program must raise funds or shutter | GothamSchools

Rise & Shine: Harlem arts program must raise funds or shutter | GothamSchools

Rise & Shine: Harlem arts program must raise funds or shutter

by Philissa Cramer
  • The Harlem School of the Arts has to raise $500,000 immediately or close for good. (Daily News)
  • A 10-year-old allegedly stabbed a 5-year-old with a protractor on the bus home from school. (Post)
  • The $550 chairs included in the state’s failed Race to the Top plan are made by prison inmates. (Post)
  • The Queens girl arrested earlier this year for doodling on her desk is suing the city. (Daily News)
  • Northwest Indiana school officials want to implement New York City-style reforms. (Post-Tribune)
  • Marcus Winters: Seniority-based layoffs will rid the city of excellent young teachers. (City Journal)
  • Five of six prospective schools vying for charters right now would be located in New York City. (WGRZ)
  • New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn is the first city school to digitize student records. (Times)
  • A nonprofit arts program in Harlem has closed its doors, for at least the foreseeable future. (Times)
  • The Times says the school closure decision gives Mayor Bloomberg a second chance to follow the law.
  • President Obama is giving his Nobel Prize money to an organization that works with city schools. (NY1)
  • The city isn’t allowing Paul Robeson HS to keep a beloved local vending machine operator. (Daily News)
  • High school students are opposing State Sen. Eric Adams’s anti-sagging campaign. (Brooklyn Paper)
  • The Daily News says politicians should not be allowed to cheapen charter schools with dirty dealings.
  • Discouraged by their loss in Race to the Top, at least six states are considering not reapplying. (Times)
  • The Manhattan Institute’s president says we should stop over-funding schools and hospitals. (Post)
  • Eileen Norcross: NJ Gov.’s school budget cuts have him on a collision course with the union. (Post)
  • D.C.’s budget would slightly increase per-student spending, but force teacher layoffs. (Washington Post)
  • Working under a new teacher-created turnaround plan, Jefferson HS is making changes. (LA Times)
  • Schenectady has to build more schools while restructuring the ones it already has. (Times Union)
  • Unions and school districts are deciding whether to reopen contracts to stave off cuts. (Chicago Trib)
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Mommy Won’t Be Home For a While � InterACT

Mommy Won’t Be Home For a While � InterACT

Mommy Won’t Be Home For a While

by Martha Infante

image from La Cronica de Mexicali

It seems that recently, including today, the earth just can’t stop shaking. This afternoon we felt the effects of the Mexicali earthquake, almost 220 miles away, clearly and strongly here in Los Angeles. Coincidentally, the LAUSD middle school where I work has had Emergency Preparedness as our topic of professional development twice in the last month. As a native Californian, I have heard this spiel many times, and it always looms in the back of your mind. But its getting harder to ignore the signs that the earth is getting ready to release some energy around this part of the world. And we’d better be ready.

Which leads me to the difficult (and overdue) conversation I had with my daughter today.

See, as public servants, teachers are designated as Disaster Service Workers, according to the California

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Local News | Math lessons in Mandarin? Local schools go global | Seattle Times Newspaper

Local News | Math lessons in Mandarin? Local schools go global | Seattle Times Newspaper

Math lessons in Mandarin? Local schools go global

In a growing number of Seattle-area classrooms, students spend half their school day immersed in a language other than English. One example is Beacon Hill International School in Seattle, where kindergartners can study in Spanish or Mandarin Chinese.
By Linda Shaw
Seattle Times education reporter

Play video: Beacon Hill International School language immersion
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INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL FACTS
Number of language-immersion programs statewide:No precise count, but it's in the dozens.
In the Seattle area: Examples include Woodin Elementary in the Northshore School District; Puesta del Sol in the Bellevue School District; and Beacon Hill, Concord and John Stanford elementaries and Hamilton and Denny middle schools in Seattle.
Features of Seattle's international schools: All students learn more about global issues and perspectives, and parents may enroll children in language-immersion classes, in which students spend part of the day learning in English and part learning science, math or other subjects in another language. The languages per se are not taught, but students learn through repetition and teachers' visual clues. The schools also have English-only options.
Entrance requirements for Beacon Hill immersion classes: None for kindergartners and first-graders; other students must have some understanding of the selected language.
Source: Seattle Public Schools and Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction
For nearly an hour, no one speaks a word of English in this first-grade math class.
Not the teacher, Ying Ying Wu, who talks energetically in Mandarin's songlike tones.
Not the students — 6- and 7-year-olds who seem to follow along fine, even though only one speaks Mandarin at home.
Even the math test has been translated, by Wu, into Chinese characters.
At Beacon Hill International School, many students learn a second language along with their ABCs by spending half of each school day immersed in Mandarin Chinese or Spanish.
It's an approach parents are clamoring for because they want their children to be able to communicate in our increasingly international world. The waiting list at Seattle's first international school — John Stanford, in Wallingford — has been long since its program began in 2000.
Beacon Hill, which had no waiting list to speak of before it adopted a similar program 1-½ years ago, had to turn away 75 families last fall.
Yet such programs are still rare in Seattle and throughout the country, despite all the talk about global competitiveness and the fact that anyone will tell you it's best to learn languages when you're young. The United States is perhaps the only nation where foreign-language instruction typically doesn't begin until middle or high school. Even in Africa, elementary-school students are studying Chinese.
For a non-Mandarin-speaking visitor, Wu's class is a puzzle. The only way to figure out what's going on is to observe the children. It's only when they write their names on the top of their tests or answer a math
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Interview Of The Month: Carrie Rose From The Parent/Teacher Home Visit Project | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

Interview Of The Month: Carrie Rose From The Parent/Teacher Home Visit Project | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

Interview Of The Month: Carrie Rose From The Parent/Teacher Home Visit Project

by Larry Ferlazzo
Each month I interview people in the education world about whom I want to learn more. You can see read thosepast interviews here.
This month’s guest is Carrie Rose, Executive Director of the nationally acclaimed Parent/Teacher Home Visit Project. Our school works closely with Carrie and the Project, I’ve written a chapter about it in my book on parent engagement, and I also wrote an article about it last year for Teacher Magazine.
Can you give a brief description of what the Parent Teacher Home Visit Project is and how it came into being?
The Parent/Teacher Home Visit Project is a unique partnership between a community organizing group (Sacramento Area Congregations Together), a local teachers union (Sacramento City Teachers Association) and a school district (Sacramento City Unified School District). The project developed through an effort to address the cycle of blame that existed between parents and site personnel at several south Sacramento schools where there was a pervasive history of low student achievement, high levels of poverty, and where high percentages of children entered school as English learners. Home visits were identified by teachers as one way to build trust and respect. Community organizers recognized the potential for leadership development through home visits given the similarity to their model of 1:1 interactions. Parents, educators and community organizers came together to develop a training and model for the visits and launched the project in the 1998-1999 school year.
How did you get involved in it, and where do you get the energy to continue being the Executive Director?
My background is in social service and law. In 1999, when my children were very young, I was looking for a more
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San Francisco State removes free-speech-zone restrictions | California Watch

San Francisco State removes free-speech-zone restrictions | California Watch

San Francisco State removes free-speech-zone restrictions

by Erica Perez

A national free-speech group is patting San Francisco State University on the back for getting rid of its free-speech zones – restrictions on where rallies and demonstrations could take place on campus.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reported that the university has quietly revised its policy on the "Use of Buildings and Grounds." The old policy said rallies and demonstrations had to take place in public forum areas, such as Student Union Plaza. Literature could only be passed out behind blue lines marked on the pavement in the Student Union Plaza.

Flickr photo by coolmikeol

In the revised policy, there are no designated free-speech zones. The university allows for "spontaneous events": "Spontaneous events occasioned by news or issues coming into public knowledge may be held on campus without advance permission so long as they adhere to all University policies and the restrictions."

And as far as pamphlets go: "Distribution of literature may occur in University outdoor areas as long as

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New bill seeks to stamp out bad air in schools | California Watch

New bill seeks to stamp out bad air in schools | California Watch

New bill seeks to stamp out bad air in schools

April 5, 2010 | Corey G. Johnson

Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, D-Santa Monica, has sponsored a bill that aims to raise awareness of problems caused by toxic chemicals and dirty air in California schools.

Photo by Robert S. Donovan

Joined by a coalition of environmental groups and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the bill would declare April 26 as Healthy School Day and encourage schools to use "green" products on a daily basis.

According to the Environmental Working Group, ordinary cleaning supplies used in schools can expose children to multiple chemicals linked to asthma, cancer, and other documented health problems and to hundreds of other air contaminants that have never been tested for safety. One of the most harmful effects of these hazardous ingredients is the increase of the prevalence of asthma.

Nearly one million children statewide have asthma, making it the leading cause of absenteeism from a chronic illness. Yet the attention to school indoor quality is sporadic at best.

The number of school districts using green products include San Francisco, Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, Elk Grove, Fresno, Oakland, Fairfield-Suisun, Hemet, Martinez and Caliente Union. But many others don't. Ken Cook, president of Environmental Working Group, hopes to change that reality. He said in an email:

This statement is important because it will raise schools' awareness of greener

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