EducationNews.org - EducationNewsToday

EducationNews.org - EducationNewsToday

EducationNews.org A Global Leading News Source Home Page April 26, 2010

EducationNews Today

As Recession Ebbs, Heavy Debt Threatens U.S. Higher Education 4.26.10 - As the nation's economy struggles to gain steady footing, experts say accumulating debt threatens the long-term financial security of U.S. colleges and universities in the recession's aftermath. Traditional schools focus on the basics 4.26.10 - Those include teaching techniques where students sit in rows and educators teach to the entire class instead of breaking into groups. All students are expected to learn the same things at the same pace.... Jay Mathews: Explosive book for a new teacher generation 4.26.10 - This new cohort of educators is frustrated with traditional teacher training. They think most education schools are too fond of theory (favorite ed school philosopher John Dewey died in 1952 before many of their parents were born) and too casual about preparing them for the practical challenges of teaching impoverished children.... Suit over how to grade students pits districts against Texas 4.26.10 - Eleven Texas school districts will ask an Austin judge today if they can keep cutting a break to students who badly fail courses despite a new law mandating truthful grading. .. Resistance to ROTC on elite campuses eases WASHINGTON - Administrators at Harvard, Brown, and other elite universities are softening their resistance to the Reserve Officers' Training Corps more than four decades after the military scholarship programs were driven from campus in the face of fierce antiwar sentiment ...

EdNews Reports

Texas Gives the Boot to Liberal Social Studies Bias 4.25.10 - After three days of contentious meetings, Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) members gave preliminary approval to revised social studies standards they say are intended to rein in the liberal bias of teachers and academics

Commentaries

An Interview with Dan Redford: What's Going on in Shanghai? 4.26.10 - Michael F. Shaughnessy - Shanghai is hosting the world's biggest World Expo ever, and I am serving as a U.S. Student Ambassador. I work at the USA Pavilion, and am living in state of the art apartments that have been erected within the last year to serve as the Expo Village. The nature of this evil is arrogance - the kind that has a deadly outcome Ernie Hunt's primary intention when he wrote Paris Under Siege (Publish America) was to bring attention to the issue of human slavery; in particular, the plight of some Muslim women....

Rise & Shine: State tests that start today are harder, officials say | GothamSchools

Rise & Shine: State tests that start today are harder, officials say | GothamSchools

Rise & Shine: State tests that start today are harder, officials say

by Philissa Cramer

• Many districts want to switch to performance-based layoffs, which could still cost young teachers. (Times)
• The business practices of the country’s largest for-profit charter school company raise red flags. (Times)
• A profile of Harlem Success CEO Eva Moskowitz explains why she wants to mobilize parents. (NY Mag)
• State education officials say fewer students will pass this year’s state tests, which start today. (Post)
• Test prep helps Brooklyn’s PS 172 post high test scores despite having lots of needy students. (Times)
• Race to the Top’s second round has brought a new round of union-state skirmishes. (Wall Street Journal)
• State Sen. John Sampson wants charter schools to have a certain number of special ed students. (Post)
• Three up-and-coming Harlem politicians are weighing runs against State Sen. Bill Perkins this fall. (Post)
• Mayor Bloomberg criticized Perkins for opposing charter schools when he benefited from choice. (Post)
• The Post says it can’t wait for someone to officially throw his hat in the ring to unseat Perkins.
• Families at University Heights High School in the Bronx continue to protest the school’s move. (Times)
• Global Tech Prep, a new school in Harlem, is using technology to engage its students. (Gotham Gazette)
• KIPP AMP Charter School wants out of the teachers union after joining last year. (GothamSchools, Post)
• The city’s plan to close the rubber rooms by December has some big logical flaws. (GothamSchools)
• The state and city teachers unions spent nearly $5 billion lobbying in 2009, down from $6.6 billion. (Post)
• More students from Queens’ PS 15 say a recently arrested teacher molested them, too. (Daily News)
• The Daily News says ed schools teach only “gobbeldegooky theory” by people such as “Thomas Dewey.”
• A tradition at Stuyvesant High School holds that students plan over-the-top prom proposals. (Post)
• Students who attended the high school fair for unplaced students faced only limited choices. (NY1)
• A math prodigy at Stuyvesant has been accepted to elite colleges — and he’s only in tenth grade. (Post)
• A student at Christopher Columbus High School in the Bronx died suddenly during gym class. (NY1)
• A recent fight at a Bronx high school building dominated a speakout for Bronx teenagers last week. (NY1)
• Students enjoy competing in Double Dutch jumprope, the city schools’ newest varsity sport. (WNYC)

NorthJersey.com: Schools create a community for teachers

NorthJersey.com: Schools create a community for teachers

Harrington Park is using Professional Learning Communities in its school.

Monday, April 26, 2010

BY MIKE CURLEY

THE RECORD

STAFF WRITER

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Harrington Park School Principal Brian Gatens recently discussed Professional Learning Communities, which are designed to improve the learning environment for teachers and students.

ROY CARATOZZOLO III/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

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Harrington Park School Principal Brian Gatens, center, at a 'PLC' meeting with professional developmental coach Patty McGee, left, and teachers Allison O'Brien, Kim Niland and Katie Rausa.

What are Professional Learning Communities?
The PLCs were a state initiative that the Northern Valley has held onto strongly. Ultimately, they're a way of organizing teachers in such a way that they work together in small communities. The old model treated teachers as an 'individual subcontractor.' The PLC model gets rid of that isolation, and teachers coordinate with one another. The teachers still have individual curriculums, but the focus is on student learning, and how they can get students to learn more.
How do the PLCs help students?
What benefits them the most is that teachers look at the student data, and tailor instructional choices based on student feedback. They're able to see how students are performing in class, and modify their instruction based on that.
Data assessment is taken of the students, and the teachers analyze it. They see what students are doing well, and who is having trouble, and re-teach as necessary. We're making a point of looking at student data, and how that will modify teachers' choices.
It's really taken away the idea of children being anonymous. The teachers know the children very well, and can teach better. It's improved the quality of instruction and improved communication between the professionals.
Is there coordination between the different subjects?
We've built in a common planning time between teachers. The biggest thing with PLCs is time. If you can't

Sacramento Press / Late Sac State alum wins journalism award

Sacramento Press / Late Sac State alum wins journalism award

Late Sac State alum wins journalism award

Jamie Gonzales was a good journalist and a better friend. Her tragic death at age 25 as a result of colorectal cancer never seemed fair to those who knew her.

Despite her short career in journalism, Jamie made an impact, and her work was recognized last week when the California Newspaper Publishers Association awarded her first place for column writing in its annual Better Newspapers Contest.

Her column/blog series focused on her “experiences and struggles with rectal cancer.”

Jamie graduated from California State University, Sacramento, with a degree in government-journalism in 2007. She spent some time as an intern at The Auburn Journal before working as a reporter at the Elk Grove Citizen, covering the city's government.

When she was diagnosed with cancer, the Citizen editors let her stay on, enabling her to continue doing what she loved. And when it got so bad that she couldn’t go into work, they allowed her to blog from home. In a time when newspapers are cutting every cost possible in order to stay solvent, I thought that concrete gesture of support was really special.

I know Jamie did.

I met Jamie during my first semester at the Sacramento State campus newspaper, The State Hornet. At the time, she was the photo editor. I was surprised when she made the transition into reporting, and then eventually became the breaking news editor.

It’s uncommon for a student journalist to do so much and actually do it well, but Jamie had a knack for the business. She was even writing a fantasy novel in her spare time.

“It's not hyperbole to say her work helped usher The State Hornet website

Jerry Large | Saving the Batwa with art | Seattle Times Newspaper

Jerry Large | Saving the Batwa with art | Seattle Times Newspaper

Saving the Batwa with art

Marsha Conn plans to help Batwa pygmies make art for profit. The Batwa need the income because their old ways of making a living have been...

Jerry Large

Seattle Times staff columnist

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Marsha Conn, center, with James Baranga and Mamia Magret from the Kitariro settlement in Uganda.

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Marsha Conn plans to help Batwa pygmies make art for profit.

The Batwa need the income because their old ways of making a living have been denied them. Worse, they have to reshape their culture to fit a new existence.

In the early 1990s they were moved out of their homes so that gorillas could have the mountain forests they once shared.

Conn is a retired teacher from Seattle whose acquaintance with the Batwa came about by chance, as is often the case with significant events.

Chance is also the way she became a teacher.

She told me she was approaching graduation from Boston University when her parents asked, 'Well, now what are you going to do for a living?' She hadn't given it a thought. So she took her English lit degree and applied to graduate school. She emerged an English teacher.

Conn taught in Chicago schools for 20 years before moving to Seattle in 1986. She had always integrated art work into her teaching and did more of that here including teaching other teachers how to do it before settling in at Seattle's Hawthorne Elementary School.

She loves traveling and nearly every summer during her teaching career, she would take off to see some new part of the world.

A few years ago, a friend bid at an auction on a trip for four to Bolivia to benefit Renton-based Smiles Forever, which trains girls to do dental work.

Conn went along and did an art project for the young girls.

A show at the Columbia City Gallery of portraits done by the Bolivians sold out on opening night and the

Students run 5K to raise cash for fitness education

Approximately 1,000 students, teachers, parents and school-board members — most from the Seattle School District — helped raise money for physical-education programs Sunday at the fifth annual Boardwalk 5K Run & Walk, which began and ended at Husky Stadium.

Battery-operated car is one high-schooler's senior project

A Spokane County high-school student his turned an old Geo Metro into a completely electric vehicle. He will be submitting it as his senior culminating project.

Surprise tucked into state budget bill: a panel to plan school-district mergers

The state budget isn't all dollars and cents this year. Buried deep in the budget bill passed this month is a $250,000 line item to create a school consolidation commission.

Study: Better teachers help children read faster

Genetics play the biggest role in determining how fast a child learns to read, but a good teacher can make a measurable difference as well, according to a study released Thursday.

Sex Tourist Professor Scrubs His Site � Student Activism

Sex Tourist Professor Scrubs His Site � Student Activism

Sex Tourist Professor Scrubs His Site

by Angus Johnston

Cal State Northridge Economics professor Kenneth Ng has shut down his website Big Baby Kenny in the wake of the site’s outing in the media, but the pages live on in Google’s cache.
The site, which promised to show readers “how to get banged better, cheaper, and more efficiently in the Thailand Girl Scene,” has been known to university administrators for months. Ng was initially defiant when approached by reporters last week, but backpedaled in the face of public outrage. University provost Harry Hellebrand released a statement on Friday thanking Ng “for his reflection and removal of the site.”
Although Ng says he “never encountered any child prostitution” in Thailand, and denies that his site was a sex tourism guide, his own writings, now deleted, reveal these claims to be lies. Ng makes a number of references to encountering girls whom he believed to be underage at sites of prostitution, sites for which he provided directions and GPS coordinates to his readers.
Warning: The excerpts provided below include depictions of child prostitution and the physical abuse of women.
Pages that have been taken down include…

Portland's high-stakes school plan will be unveiled Monday night | OregonLive.com

Portland's high-stakes school plan will be unveiled Monday night | OregonLive.com

Portland's high-stakes school plan will be unveiled Monday night

By Kimberly Melton, The Oregonian

April 26, 2010, 11:00PM

View full sizeStephanie Yao/The OregonianPortland Public Schools Superintendent Carole Smith, shown here meeting with a student advisory committee in 2007, will unveil her long-awaited plan tonight to reorganize the district's high schools.On Monday night, Portland Superintendent Carole Smith is expected to recommend the most sweeping changes in the history of Oregon's largest school district.

She wants to do something almost no other big-city superintendent has done in recent years -- upend the city's high schools to end racial and income disparities without a judge forcing the district to do so.

Read previous coverage

Read earlier storiesabout the Portland school district's effort to overhaul high schools.

Smith's main goal is to help reduce the stubbornly high dropout rate -- less than 60 percent of Portland Public Schools' high school students graduate in four years -- and end glaring inequities between the curriculum offered to most of the city's white and middle-class students and its minority and low-income teens.

Her plan would affect students and families in every sector of the city, particularly east of the Willamette River. One or more high schools would close, many schools' attendance boundaries would be redrawn, and the wide-open neighborhood-to-neighborhood transfers that have been a 30-year hallmark of Portland high schools could end.

Most big-city school districts have the same sort of disparities Portland does -- big, popular, high-achieving high schools in some parts of town and

Arts & Communication Magnet Academy student organizes dance at FX to benefit critically ill Franklin High junior

by Washington County Reader Contributor

Torrey Henderson decided to make helping her senior project when she found out Nakia Hentz needed a heart transplant.

Dennis Johnson, head of Oregon Student Assistance Commission, resigns

by Bill Graves, The Oregonian

Dennis Johnson, head of the Oregon Student Assistance Commission, resigned Friday. The agency has been under fire from the governor and legislative leaders after it promised scholarships to students without having enough money to grant them

Hillsboro School District warns residents to be wary of scam

by Wendy Owen, The Oregonian

Hillsboro School District warns of a scam in which someone is posing as a Century High representative, trying to sell ads and asking for credit card numbers.

Clackamas Community College's Veteran Education & Training Center prepares for returning National Guardsmen

by Nicole Dungca, The Oregonian

The center, opened in December 2009, has become a community where veterans can help other veterans navigate the mazes of the higher education system and the transition to civilian life.

P.S. 172 in Brooklyn Scores High Despite Poverty - NYTimes.com

P.S. 172 in Brooklyn Scores High Despite Poverty - NYTimes.com

Brooklyn School Scores High Despite Poverty

Michael Nagle for The New York Times

Fourth graders at P.S. 172 in Brooklyn, which outperforms its wealthier neighbors on state tests.

By SHARON OTTERMAN

Published: April 25, 2010

New York Test ScoresTo ace the state standardized tests, which begin on Monday, Public School 172 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, finds money for coaches in writing, reading and math. Teachers keep detailed notes on each child, writing down weaknesses and encouraging them to repeat tasks. There is after-school help and Saturday school.

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But at the start of this school year, seven or eight students were still falling behind. So the school hired a speech therapist who could analyze why they and other students stumbled in language. A psychologist produced detailed assessments and recommendations. A dental clinic staffed by Lutheran Medical Center opened an office just off the fourth-grade classrooms, diagnosing toothaches, a possible source of distraction, and providing free cleanings.

Perfection may seem a quixotic goal in New York City, where children enter school from every imaginable background and ability level. But on the tests, P.S. 172, also called the Beacon School of Excellence, is coming close — even though 80 percent of its students are poor enough to qualify for free lunch, nearly a quarter receive special education services, and many

“The Best…” Lists I’ve Updated In April | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

“The Best…” Lists I’ve Updated In April | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

“The Best…” Lists I’ve Updated In April

by Larry Ferlazzo

I’ve begun to methodically update and revise all 450 “The Best…” lists.
Of course, I update them all the time. However, in the past I haven’t necessarily done a thorough review to ensure that links are current, etc. So, in addition to creating new lists, each month I share a compilation of ones I’ve verified and revised:

Compound Word Game

English Central Adds Tools

Planet Positive Carbon Footprint Calculator

Olympic Heroes

“Word Is”

“Monumental volcano eruptions from the past”

New Health Care Law Infographics