Sunday, July 18, 2010

State sets its course with Moyer response | delawareonline.com | The News Journal

State sets its course with Moyer response

JULY 18, 2010

Reopening Moyer Academy Charter School this fall has implications beyond the greater potential for quality education for students whose repeated academic failure led to the school's closure.

The federal government has vested much confidence in Delaware as the lead winner in the first round of the Race to the Top education grants and its approach to education reform.

The Department of Education's evidenced-based proposal won a surprising buy-in from the state's teachers union.

And just two months ago, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan appointed Gov. Jack Markell to the National Assessment Governing Board. This is the panel responsible for deciding the structure of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the nation's report card given to students.

Indeed, Delaware is center stage as this country decides how to restructure reading, writing and math in and outside traditional classrooms. And with an eye on global competitiveness.

So it's important that DOE attack the challenges the state's other public schools face as zealously as it tackled the problems at Moyer Academy.

As News Journal education reporter Nichole Dobo points out, Moyer Academy was closed for more than

Charter school serves behavioral, academic needs | htrnews.com | Herald Times Reporter

Charter school serves behavioral, academic needs

Editor's note: This is part one of a two-part series looking in-depth at the Manitowoc County Comprehensive Charter School. Part two, which will be published next Sunday in print and online, will address students' behavioral and academic results after attending the school, and administrators' hopes for the school's future.

MANITOWOC - If Angela Beeman realized one thing as her son went through his first years of school, it was that the traditional school setting just wasn’t working for him.

Dawson Beeman started displaying behavioral problems in kindergarten - running back to the car when she dropped him off at school, for example. By the time he got to second grade, he threw tantrums and would run away from school.

At school, Dawson was "more or less just a body in a room," his mom said. "He shut down completely."

He wasn’t able to grow academically or socially, she said. Other kids at school didn’t want to be his friend.

For a while, he was in a mental institution in Wauwatosa, she said, and then went to a group home.

Then, Manitowoc public schools staff told her about the Manitowoc County Comprehensive Charter School, a countywide program scheduled to start in fall 2007.

Dawson became one of the school’s first students as a third-grader that fall, and as a fifth-grader

Free Technology for Teachers: Create Augmented Reality Layers Without Coding

FREE RESOURCES AND LESSON PLANS FOR TEACHING WITH TECHNOLOGY

Create Augmented Reality Layers Without Coding

by noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne)

I've only covered augmented reality a couple of times on this blog (most notably here) because creating augmented reality content requires a level of coding skill well beyond that which I and most teachers and students possess. That could change with the launch of Hoppala. Hoppala is a new augmented reality layer creation service that launched late last week. Creating an augmented reality layer is a essentially a drag and drop process when using Hoppala. Watch the video below to learned more about creating augmented reality content usingHoppala.

Can West Virginia learn from states with charter schools? � - News - The Charleston Gazette - West Virginia News and Sports -

Can West Virginia learn from states with charter schools?

By Davin White

Advertiser

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Walk into a Colorado charter school and you might see a student painting a picture while a few classmates explore a concept using the Socratic method.

Mark Hyatt, executive director of the Charter School Institute of Colorado, described a Montessori charter school as very "child-centric," where students learn at their own pace. Teachers also integrate activities like hiking or mountain biking into the lessons.

Hyatt describes a charter school as a place with its own niche that offers something different from a traditional public school.

As West Virginia lawmakers prepare to consider several education issues, including charter schools, advocates on both sides of the issue are making their points.

Research shows that students at some U.S. charter schools outperform traditional public schoolchildren, but other charters fail their students. Still, some advocates say West Virginia has 20 years worth of research allowing state lawmakers to craft a law that lets them monitor and sustain high-performing charter schools.

U. California Regents Bar Filmmaker, Drawing Protests - The Ticker - The Chronicle of Higher Education

U. California Regents Bar Filmmaker, Drawing Protests

A documentary filmmaker was barred from bringing his camera into a public meeting of the University of California's regents, and a state senator wants to know why.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the filmmaker, Ric Chavez, did not know that state law allows anyone to film public meetings of state bodies. He e-mailed UC's public information office for permission to film Thursday's meeting and was shut out because he had no press credential.

Sen. Leland Yee, a Democrat from San Francisco who chairs the Senate's committee on Public Records and Open Meetings Laws, wrote to UC President Mark Yudof asking why university policy "is in complete contradiction to state law." Liz Enochs, president of the Society of Professional Journalists' Northern California chapter, also wrote--in her

Should Seniority Count in Teacher Layoffs? - Newsweek

Chicago’s Lesson in Layoffs

Should the newest teachers go?

Charles Rex Arbogast / AP

Education reformers were feeling optimistic. With President Obama’s Race to the Top competition, which offers financial rewards to states willing to hold teachers accountable for their students’ performance, they’ve made real progress in weeding out poor teachers.

But now the reformers have spotted a dark cloud on the horizon. State budgets, particularly in badly managed big states like California, New York, and New Jersey, are out of control. Although Congress managed to avoid massive teacher layoffs last year with federal aid, the stimulus money is running out, and congressmen do not appear to be in the mood for more deficit spending. That means teacher layoffs are coming—perhaps more than 100,000 nationwide. In most states, union contracts or state law requires they be done by seniority, so the newest teachers are pink-slipped, no matter how good they are. “ ‘Last in, first out’ virtually guarantees that all our great, young teachers will be out of a job, and some of the least effective will stay in the classroom,” says Tim Knowles, director of the Urban Education

New U.S. HIV/AIDS Strategy Seeks To Revitalize Public Education Efforts

Main Category: HIV / AIDS
Article Date: 16 Jul 2010 - 3:00 PDT

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The Obama administration'sstrategy to combat HIV/AIDS in the U.S. will use new communication methods, such as social media and medically accurate school-based programs, to address the epidemic, Reuters reports. The White House announced the plan on Tuesday (Fox, Reuters, 7/13). It sets a 2015 deadline for reducing the annual number of new HIV infections by 25%, lowering the HIV transmission rate by 30%, increasing the proportion of patients accessing care within three months of diagnosis from the current 65% to 85%; and raising the number of HIV-positive individuals who are aware of their status from 79% to 90% (Women's Health Policy Report, 7/13).

By the end of this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will conduct an assessment of all social marketing and education campaigns associated with HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, according to the plan. CDC also will review campaigns related to substance abuse and risk behaviors associated with HIV; develop evidence-based efforts to educate the public about STIs; and ensure that school-based education provides "scientifically sound information about HIV

On UC's Risky Venture Into Online Education / Mortarboards without the bricks

On UC's Risky Venture Into Online Education

Mortarboards without the bricks

Sunday, July 18, 2010

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Paul Chinn / The Chronicle

Christopher Edley, dean of UC Berkeley School of Law, says online education could be an effective way to cut costs and preserve opportunity.

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MORE EDUCATION

Online learning matches UC's mission 07.18.10
UC Regents barring of filmmaker draws protest 07.17.10
UC denies filmmaker's right to tape meeting 07.16.10

A handful of administrators at the University of California are spearheading an effort to create an ambitious online educational program for undergraduates. The idea is that UC could become the first top-tier American university to offer a bachelor's degree over the Internet. It's a thought-provoking, fascinating and innovative concept. It's also a highly risky experiment.
Online education has a place - even in the university system. For students, it's impossible to beat the convenience and the accessibility of online learning. For workers, it can be a great way to expand their knowledge base without having to leave their jobs. Corporations, small businesses, even traffic schools - all of these institutions have shown that there's a positive place for online education in our society.
But that doesn't mean that the UC should jump into the fray.
As it stands now, online education is a hodgepodge effort by private, for-profit companies that are making gobs of money - but not providing much in the way of quality to students. UC Berkeley Law School Dean Christopher Edley, who is leading the online charge, said he first noticed this while serving on a university task force about

Fellowship Program Opens Doors for Minority Researchers

by Dana Forde , July 16, 2010

Categories:

Diversity,Research,Mentorship,Fellowships & Grants,Foundations,Graduate & Professional Schools,Scholarships /

Dr. Cherie Butts, who earned degrees at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center/UT Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, believes her career began to soar when she was chosen as an inaugural Keystone Symposia Fellow.

Dr. Cherié Butts, a researcher and drug reviewer in the Office of Biotechnology Products at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, enjoys her job as a scientist so much that she often prepares for the next day’s projects the night before.

“Some experiments can take three to four days and some can take weeks,” she says. Butts, whose research focus is to decipher how steroid hormones modify immune responses during disease in an effort to develop better therapeutic strategies, feels that one of the few things lacking in her satisfying career is more colleagues of color.

According to a 2006 National Science Foundation study, African-Americans, Hispanics and American Indians make up only 2.65 percent, 3.53 percent, and 0.59 percent, respectively, of life sciences academics at four-year institutions. Precise numbers are

On Formspring, an E-Vite to Insults and Crude Queries - NYTimes.com

Teenage Insults, Scrawled on Web, Not on Walls

By TAMAR LEWIN

Published: May 5, 2010

REPRINTS

It is the online version of the bathroom wall in school, the place to scrawl raw, anonymous gossip.

Formspring.me, a relatively new social networking site, has become a magnet for comments, many of them nasty and sexual, among the Facebookgeneration.

While Formspring is still under the radar of many parents and guidance counselors, over the last two months it has become an obsession for thousands of teenagers nationwide, a place to trade comments and questions like: Are you still friends with julia? Why

Charter-school bandwagon avoided by some states - USATODAY.com

Charter-school bandwagon avoided by some states

By Jessie L. Bonner and Dorie Turner, The Associated Press

BOISE — In her small timber town in northern Idaho, Christina Williams enrolled her son in the closest public school because she had few other choices near her home.

But as she watched him struggle for years — many mornings prying him out of bed and forcing him to go to school — Williams sought an alternative to the traditional classroom. The single mother now drives about 140 miles roundtrip each day to her 12-year-old son's charter school inSandpoint.

"It's killing my poor little car, but it is so worth the drive to me," Williams said in a telephone interview. "He was not getting the education he needed."

Williams would like a closer alternative, but Idaho allows just six new charter schools a year.

Several other states also put strict limits on the number of new charter schools. Another 11 states don't allow charters at all, even though the federal government has created a $4.35 billion competition to encourage charters and other educational innovations.

Most states adopted only modest measures to improve charter schools as a result of the "Race to the Top" competition and no new substantive charter school laws were passed, said Jeanne Allen, president and founder of the Center for

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Sunday, July 18, 2010