Beaverton third-graders among youngest in statewide Destination Imagination competition | OregonLive.com

Beaverton third-graders among youngest in statewide Destination Imagination competition | OregonLive.com

Beaverton third-graders among youngest in statewide Destination Imagination competition

By Melissa Navas, The Oregonian

April 09, 2010, 3:45PM

View full sizeThomas Boyd / The OregonianStudents from McKay Elementary School in Beaverton practice a skit during a team meeting for their upcoming Destination Imagination state tournament in Corvallis Saturday. The third-graders are among the youngest to compete this year. Kelton Paul, 9, right, plays Medusa while teammates improvise a scene. From right to left, Katie Truong, 9; Rowan Fox, 9 (on floor); Dominik Vlasak, 9; Jon Bynum, 8, (sitting); and Julian Dukes, 9. Jonathan Lim, 8, is not pictured.BEAVERTON -- Before the seven third-graders entered a world of make believe, they had to hash out the details: Who would be the heroine? Who would be the narrator? Who would travel back in time?

Their conversation on a recent afternoon sounded more like executives duking it out around a conference table than children playing. But in the end, the flickers of squabbling, frustration and stage fright subsided. And the kids at McKay Elementary School in Beaverton got back to being, well, kids.

Destination Imagination

What: A creative problem-solving competition for elementary, middle and high school students. Teams will compete for a chance to advance to the Global Finals in Tennessee in May.

When: 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday

Where: Crescent Valley High School,4444 N.W. Highland Dr., Corvallis

Information:oregondi.org oridodi.org

Team T3G will use their theater skills and more Saturday when they compete at theDestination Imagination state tournament, a competition highlighting creativity, teamwork and problem-solving. The event takes place at Crescent Valley High Schoolin Corvallis.

About 600 students from 75 teams will participate in the day-long competition in various challenges, including tasks with homemade robots or skits using homemade puppets or props made of recycled newspaper.

State finals winners will be invited to compete at the Global Finals in Knoxville, Tenn. in May.

McKay's Team T3G will be among the youngest in the tournament with participants ranging from third grade to high school.

Team T3G chose the "DIrect DIposit" challenge, which asked them to deliver objects to targets they could not see. This project requires them to focus on engineering, technical design and construction, math and theater arts.

Team manager Blanka Vlasak, who formed the team this year because the program sounded interesting, said she was skeptical of her students'

Milwaukee Vouchers are Only a Failure if By “Failure” You Mean “Failure” � The Quick and the Ed

Milwaukee Vouchers are Only a Failure if By “Failure” You Mean “Failure” � The Quick and the Ed

Milwaukee Vouchers are Only a Failure if By “Failure” You Mean “Failure”

by Kevin Carey

Rick Hess offers this spin on the newly-announced failure of the Milwaukee voucher program to improve student learning:

[The study found that] when it comes to test scores, students with vouchers are performing no differently than other kids. (It is worth noting that [voucher] students are being educated more cheaply than are district school students). What to make of the results? First off, 20 years in, it’s hard to argue that the nation’s biggest and most established voucher experiment has “worked” if the measure is whether vouchers lead to higher reading and math scores. Happily, that’s never been my preferred metric for structural reforms–both because I think it’s the wrong way to study them (see “Science and Nonscience“) but, more importantly, because choice-based reform

STUDENT Loan Reform

by Forrest Hinton

Education Sector’s student loan guru, Ben Miller, sat down with The Nation’s Christopher Hayes to talk federal student loan reform. Ben explained how the changes that come with these reforms will impact students — past, present, and future. Take a listen.

Vote for Cordova High Girls Group in Contest to Win $1500 — The Rancho Cordova Post

Vote for Cordova High Girls Group in Contest to Win $1500 — The Rancho Cordova Post

Vote for Cordova High Girls Group in Contest to Win $1500

by ANNE LOWE on APRIL 9, 2010 · 0 COMMENTS

in SCHOOLS

Voting is open until April 23 for an online contest in which Cordova High School is a finalist. If Cordova High wins, the school will be awarded $1,500 to go toward their Girls Group.

The contest is held by Apperson Print Resources, a supplier of educational products and services based out of Washington. Apperson holds the contest six times per year, and Franklin Elementary of Loomis, Calif. was announced the winner of the most recent contest. Cordova High is the only local school nominated for the current contest.

Cordova High Principal Jacky Levy said the Girls Group is a program they started to help support girls who are facing challenges in their lives. “The money will be used for field trips to colleges, volunteer activities, and for an end-of-the-year recognition ceremony,” she said in an email.

The contest rules state only one vote per email address will be accepted, and even if Cordova High doesn’t win first place, the school may still qualify for the second place prize of $750 or

Weingarten at West Philly High: A model community school? | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Weingarten at West Philly High: A model community school? | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Weingarten at West Philly High: A model community school?

by thenotebook on Apr 09 2010

by Bill Hangley, Jr.

The head of the national teachers union was at West Philadelphia High this week to ask, “How can I help you?” For many of the teachers at West, any help she provides may come too late.

Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, believes classroom instructors are unfairly scapegoated for the failures of school systems. She visited West to learn more about the “community school” modelthat offers the kind of diverse services and resources that the national No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law neither requires nor rewards.

Teachers and staff at West told Weingarten that despite significant improvements in school safety and a dramatic expansion of its community partnerships, West landed on the list of Renaissance Schools slated for “turnaround” because of poor scores on state reading and math tests, the PSSA.

The reliance on test scores as the primary measure of progress has left their staff’s future uncertain.

As a Renaissance School, West will lose at least half its teachers for next year. All of them will be transferred out and no more than half can be hired back.

To Weingarten, this kind of “turnaround,” embraced by the Obama administrationas its leading school reform strategy, amounts to little more than “teacher bashing” – holding teachers accountable for test-scores, but giving scant consideration to what else they might do to improve schools.

“I’m very uncomfortable with the fact that you see this public rhetoric, born out of political expediency, that essentially is targeted against the group of people in America that have opted to make a difference in the lives of other Americans,” she said.

Demanding such a drastic change in personnel at this stage of West’s reform efforts is not only premature, but indicates lack of appreciation for what has been achieved, staff members said.

“Any way you can define dysfunction, it was here,” said West’s principal Saliyah Cruz, who arrived three years ago. “It was pretty much a shell of a school. We had an environment where people could do some pretty horrible things to each other. The place is so big, nobody knew who anybody was.”

Now, staff members at West say the atmosphere has dramatically improved. With the help of a $6.3 million, three-year grant from the Department of Labor – awarded because West had landed on a list of “persistently dangerous” schools, West has after-school programs, tutoring, internships at outside organizations, and even spipends for students working on special projects.

The money also supports a staff of eight who run the school’s Student Success

Resources: The Holocaust - The Learning Network Blog - NYTimes.com

Resources: The Holocaust - The Learning Network Blog - NYTimes.com

April 9, 2010, 11:48 AM

Resources: The Holocaust

By HOLLY EPSTEIN OJALVO AND SHANNON DOYNE

Ian Waldie/Getty Images
In 2004, a survivor of the Holocaust, Leon Greenman, displayed the number that was tattooed on his arm at Auschwitz.Go to related Lede blog post »

GLOBAL HISTORY

Teaching ideas based on New York Times content.

• See all in Category »
• See all lesson plans »

In recognition of the Days of Remembrance, here are Learning Network lesson plans, New York Times resources and other Web sites for teaching and learning about the Holocaust.

Teachers, please join the conversation. How do you teach about the Holocaust? What advice do you have for others?

Lesson Plans on …

The Holocaust and Its Legacy
Genocidal Acts and Crimes Against Humanity
Tolerance, Hatred and Human Rights

Plus Related …

Times Topics
Selected Historical Times Articles on the Holocaust
Selected Recent Times Articles and Multimedia on the Holocaust
Articles on Elie Wiesel and “Night”
Articles on Anne Frank and “Diary of a Young Girl”
Other Resources on the Web

New York’s Race to the Top finalist presentation video hits the web | GothamSchools

New York’s Race to the Top finalist presentation video hits the web | GothamSchools

New York’s Race to the Top finalist presentation video hits the web

by Maura Walz

Last month, New York’s Race to the Top delegation traveled to Washington, D.C. to pitch its case for why the state deserved a slice of the $4.3 billion competitive federal grant pool. We already know the result, of course: New York was second-to-last among finalists, and was one of just three states that lost points after the interview round.
But today the U.S. Department of Education posted full videos of the presentation and the subsequent question-and-answer session, so we can now see precisely how the judges framed their questions and how the state defended itself. Many of the judges’ concerns are likely to drive how the state revises its application for the next round of competition.
Many of the questions revolve around how the state plans to build local support for its reforms, and particularly how the state can resolve disagreements between school districts trying to change how teachers are evaluated

The Breakdown: What Will Student Loan Reform Do?

The Breakdown: What Will Student Loan Reform Do?

by CHRISTOPHER HAYES

April 9, 2010

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Editor's Note: You can now subscribe to The Breakdown as a podcast on iTunes!

The recent passage of the healthcare bill brought about a number of unprecedented reforms, but perhaps one of the most important changes the bill made had little to do with healthcare at all. Largely overshadowed by the blockbuster provisions and politics of the healthcare package, the transformation of student loan practices from a bank-based system to direct government lending represents a drastic shift in how students will finance their education. To explain the changes and how they will affect students, past, present and future, Education Sector policy analyst and student loan expert Ben Miller joins DC Editor Christopher Hayes on The Breakdown.