Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Adult education in Oakland faces budget cuts, layoffs – Oakland North -- North Oakland News, Food, Art and Events.

Adult education in Oakland faces budget cuts, layoffs

Students in one of Oakland's GED classes offered by the Students in a GED class offered by Oakland's Adult Education program listen as thier instructor explains parallel structure.

By: Lillian R. MongeauMarch 31, 2010 – 11:33 am

In Russia, Murod Lutfiyev was a veterinarian. In Oakland, he is a laid-off parking attendant taking a General Education Development, or GED, course in a spacious classroom at a converted Parks and Recreation building in downtown Oakland. His change in status has not dimmed his hopes for a successful future in America.

“I want to improve my English and work here in my field,” Lutfiyev said from the front row of Carolyn Chin’s two and a half hour GED course.

“Every day I am humbled by your effort,” Chin, who has taught adult education in Oakland for over 15 years, told the class after Lutfiyev explained his story. “I have so much respect for what you all are doing.”

The class of 17 smiled at her approval and some fiddled nervously with their English grammar worksheets. Though a few students had dropped out of high school in the US and were now returning to complete their degrees, 13 members of the class said they had immigrated to Oakland

A Question On Student Independent Reading About Gangs | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

A Question On Student Independent Reading About Gangs

Filed under reading, teacher resources

At our school, we place a strong emphasis on student independent reading and choosing books that interest them.

Katie Hull, my extraordinarily talented colleague and co-author of a future book on teaching writers to English Language Learners, raised an interesting question to me last week related to this practice. We’re interested in getting responses from other teachers.

Reading books about gang life is always a favorite among our students — both those who at risk for gang involvement and those who just find the books engaging. The books we have in our classroom libraries are written by former gang members (for example, by Luis Rodriguez) and have an anti-gang message.

However, Katie’s concern (and I think it’s a legitimate one) is that the ones who are being tempted by gang life may ignore the positive

Statement by the President on the Passing of Jaime Escalante | The White House

Statement by the President on the Passing of Jaime Escalante

by The White House

I was saddened to hear about the passing of Jaime Escalante today. While most of us got to know him through the movie that depicted his work teaching inner-city students calculus, the students whose lives he changed remain the true testament to his life’s work. Throughout his career Jaime opened the doors of success and higher education for his students one by one, and proved that where a person came from did not have to determine how far they could go. He instilled knowledge in his students, but more importantly he helped them find the passion and the will to fulfill their potential. Jaime’s story became famous. But he represented countless, valiant teachers throughout our country whose great works are known only to the young people whose lives they change. Michelle and I offer our condolences to Jaime’s family, and to all those who knew him and whose lives he touched.

The Perimeter Primate: On “So Much Reform, So Little Change”

On “So Much Reform, So Little Change”

by The Perimeter Primate

“After spending more than thirty years working in urban education, I have finally found a lucid description of many of the things I experienced as a classroom teacher and administrator. Hopefully the education community will use Dr. Payne's observations and insights in their efforts to improve urban education.” (Amazon reviewer, T. Tenny on "So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools" by Charles Payne)

In an effort to promote this book, I offer you a few excerpts from the first chapter. The bolds are mine.

Chapter 1: Dimensions of Demoralization

If we take organizational morale to be “the enthusiasm and persistence with which a member of a group engages in the prescribed activities of that group” (Manning 1991), the fact that an institution needs to squelch and marginalize its most energetic, most enthusiastic, or best-prepared members tells us these are demoralized institutions…
All this stands behind clocks that don’t get fixed and broken windows that don’t get repaired. Failed institutions make the simplest things difficult. The problems manifest themselves in so many ways that they may obscure the fact that many of the discrete problems are either generated by or reinforced by the sheer lack of connectedness among people. Giving up on the institutional mission goes hand in glove with giving up on one’s colleagues. The denizens of demoralized social spaces do what they have to but without little heart or hope. (p. 23)

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Whenever we talk about the social climate in inner-city schools, we need to make a special effort

So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools (Paperback)

~ Charles M. Payne (Author)

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Schools Matter: Across the Pond...Edison Expanding?

Across the Pond...Edison Expanding?

from Schools Matter by Kenneth Libby

From The Times (UK):

Business will seek to run state schools after shift in political attitudes
Greg Hurst, Education Editor
Businesses are looking to revolutionise state education by bidding to run hundreds of schools, as politicians open the door to new education providers.
Companies want to create national chains of state schools, eclipsing the current groups of charitable academy sponsors, which tend to be small and geographically based.
Although both the Government and the Conservatives say that organisations driven by profit should not run schools, both have created a path for them to enter the sector. Governing bodies of new, or existing, schools can appoint a contractor to operate the school on their behalf — a model used widely in the US.
VT Group, Serco and EdisonLearning are among companies that have applied to be accredited

Renaissance School reviews now online | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Renaissance School reviews now online

by Paul Socolar on Mar 31 2010

The 14 schools that were just named to be eitherRenaissance Schools or Promise Academies all underwent a school review process in February or March, conducted by Schoolworks, and the summary findings of those reviews are now accessible via the District website.

They make for interesting reading.

The purpose of the school reviews was to add a qualitative dimension to the process of naming Renaissance Schools, since the list of 14 Renaissance Eligible schools was based entirely on their poor school performance data.

The District had said that schools would be taken off the Renaissance list if the review showed strong evidence that they were already undergoing a turnaround, but Superintendent Ackerman said Tuesday that she thought all 14 schools needed radical intervention. And so at all the schools, the staff is being force-transferred and an outside provider or the Superintendent’s office will be put in

Dear Iowans, � The Quick and the Ed

Dear Iowans,

by Chad Aldeman

Your schools are not what they once were. Last week you were named one of only four states to have its fourth-grade reading scores decline on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, sometimes called the nation’s report card.
This is sad news, but it shouldn’t come as any great surprise: Iowa’s scores have been flat for nearly two decades. In 1992, you trailed only four states in fourth-grade reading. You now trail 25, including Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, and Wyoming.
It might be tempting to blame your declining scores on changing demographics, and that’s fair to some extent, but you haven’t had the same influx of minority students that your neighbor Minnesota has, for example, even though their scores have risen much faster than yours.
It’s hard to fault your politics or economics, either. Iowa’s a relatively moderate state politically and has been led recently by long-term governors. It has a powerful teachers union, but so do most Northern states. Its agricultural economy has helped it weather the bad times better than most. Iowa’s unemployment rate is high historically

QUICK Hits

by Kris Amundson

What do you remember about the teacher who challenged students to “Stand and Deliver?” (LA Times)
What will happen to textbooks—or the Kindle, for that matter—now that the iPad is here?(ReadWriteWeb)
What will the student loan reforms do to the rising costs of college? Not enough. (The Economist—and while you’re there, take a look at their other Education Reform Week blog posts)
What’s at stake if the US doesn’t increase college completion rates? (Huffington Post)

NINE High School Students Indicted In Bullying Case Of Phoebe Prince - THE DAILY RIFF - Be Smarter. About Education.

NINE High School Students Indicted In Bullying Case Of Phoebe Prince

What Parents & Schools Should Know: Listen To NPR Podcast
Nine Students INDICTED

"Some kinds of bullying can start to seem to normal to us"

As reported extensively in the press, Phoebe Prince, a student who moved with her family
from Ireland to western Massachusetts and attended South Hadley High School committed suicide from hanging herself after being bullied by fellow classmates.

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Check out NPR podcast below which is a quick round-up of the major issues surrounding this explosive story,
interviewing both Bridget Berman, the ninth grader who authored "Dorie Witt's Guide To Bullying" before entering high school, and Emily Brazelon, reporting on bullying in an informative recent multiple-story series forSlate (see story below podcast for links).

Click on book to go to Amazon.
The podcast below is from NPR's "The Take-Away's" week-long series Getting Schooled with John Hockenberry and Celeste Headlee. Link Here. Podcast below in red runs 7 minutes:

In addition, Slate has an informative series on bullying, aptly titled "BULL-E 2010: The New World Of Online Cruelty" by Emily Brazelon with link here. Topics include:

Suicide in South Hadley Nine teenagers have been charged with

To Scientists, Laughter Is No Joke _ It's Serious - ABC News

To Scientists, Laughter Is No Joke _ It's Serious

Funny how? Scientists study what's behind guffaws and find laughter links us in primal ways

The Associated Press
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By SETH BORENSTEIN AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON March 31, 2010 (AP)

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FILE - In this Nov. 9, 1967 file photo, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, munching on a cookie, and...

(AP)

So a scientist walks into a shopping mall to watch people laugh. There's no punchline. Laughter is a serious scientific subject, one that researchers are still trying to figure out.

Laughing is primal, our first way of communicating. Apes laugh. So do dogs and rats. Babies laugh long before they speak. No one teaches you how to laugh. You just do. And often you laugh involuntarily, in a specific rhythm and in certain spots in conversation.

You may laugh at a prank on April Fools' Day. But surprisingly, only 10 to 15 percent of laughter is the result of someone making a joke, said Baltimore neuroscientist Robert Provine, who has studied laughter for decades. Laughter is mostly about social responses rather than reaction to a joke.

"Laughter above all else is a social thing," Provine said. "The requirement for laughter is another person."

Over the years, Provine, a professor with the University of Maryland Baltimore County, has boiled laughter down to its basics.

"All language groups laugh `ha-ha-ha' basically the same way," he said. "Whether you speak Mandarin, French or English, everyone will understand laughter. ... There's a pattern generator in our brain that produces this sound."

Each "ha" is about one-15th of a second, repeated every fifth of a second, he said. Laugh faster or slower than that and it sounds more like panting or something else.

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