Return-Path: <nifl-assessment@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id gBG4bTX00552; Sun, 15 Dec 2002 23:37:29 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2002 23:37:29 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <69A32CFA.34989F93.00169211@aol.com> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-assessment@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-assessment@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-assessment@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: Dirose7@aol.com To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-assessment@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-ASSESSMENT:231] PEN Weekly Newsblast Clips & Cross-posts X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Mailer: Atlas Mailer 2.0 Status: O Content-Length: 21485 Lines: 385 Good morning, There are many good articles this week. Using data for decision making should be of particular interest. Does anyone have a few examples of how they have used data for decision making and program improvement? TOWARD SUCCESS AT SCALE While many districts share the goal of helping all students achieve at high levels, few qualify as high-performance systems. Tom Vander Ark outlines the strategic choices that district leaders must face as they attempt to steer their systems toward success. Whether a system is centralized or not, it takes the school board, senior district staff, unions, business and civic leaders, and parents and students working together to make the schools work. Radically changing the way a school system operates takes many acts of heroic leadership and a reshaping of virtually all the agreements between the district and schools, as well as many of the basic agreements within schools. Making any system work appears to take a sustained effort of at least a decade, with concerted efforts to broaden the leadership and ownership at all levels. http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k0212va1.htm COUNTING OUR BLESSINGS: FREE, QUALITY, PUBLIC EDUCATION Free, quality, public education are four of the sweetest words in the English language. For Reg Weaver, they mean high expectations, quality teachers and education support professionals, the latest technology and modern facilities -- a school system that is well funded. Americans remain staunchly loyal to public schools. Nine out of ten children in the United States today attend public school. What’s more, a quiet revolution in achievement is underway in our schools. So while we can count our blessings, we will not rest until every child attends a public school as good as our very best public schools. http://www.nea.org/columns/rw021215.html GOOD OR BAD? TEST PREP FIRMS INVADE OUR GRADE SCHOOLS After years of exacerbating class differences among the college-bound, test-prep companies are expanding their offerings downward to cover children as young as six. The reason is the testing mania spawned by the school reform movement. In the 1990s, outraged by the low quality of so many public schools, many states, encouraged by Washington, imposed rigorous tests that students must pass before they can advance to the next grade. Sensing an opportunity, companies like Kaplan Inc. began developing prep courses for those tests and marketing them to the anxious parents of K-12 students. This fever peaked last year with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, which requires universal testing in grades three through eight by 2006. Siobhan Gorman concludes that until the schools start doing their job, "kiddie test prep" programs could turn out to be the only hope that many kids have of getting through school with the basics of an education. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0212.gorman.html HONORING THE TEACHER’S HEART If schools are to be places that promote academic, social, and personal development for students, writes Sam Intrator everything hinges on the presence of intelligent, passionate, caring teachers working day after day in our nation's classrooms. Teachers have a colossal influence on what happens in our schools, because day after day, they are the ultimate decision makers and tone setters. They shape the world of the classroom by the activities they plan, the focus they attend to, and the relationships they nurture. If we want to attract and retain intelligent, passionate, caring teachers, we had better figure out what will sustain their vitality and faith in teaching. Education depends on what teachers do in their classrooms, and what teachers do in their classrooms is shaped by who they are, what they believe, and how vital and alive they are when they step before their students. http://www.teacherformation.org/html/rr/teachers_heart-f.cfm FOUNDATION WEIGHED TO AID SCHOOLS Education foundations, such as local education funds, are major partners with school districts across the nation. In Tennessee, three large metropolitan school systems already have foundations helping to mobilize public support for public education. The Nashville Public Education Foundation was established in 1987. Chattanooga established its Public Education Foundation one year later in 1988, and Memphis established its foundation in 1993. The public school systems in Maryville, Alcoa, Blount County, Sevier County, Hamblen County and Loudon County, also have set up education foundations. Foundations may raise millions or tens of thousands, depending on the size of the school system and the community that supports it. Chattanooga's Public Education Foundation (PEF) was recently able to attract a $4 million Annenberg Challenge grant to revise curriculum and instruction. The Carnegie Corporation awarded the foundation an $8 million New Society grant for work in the system's 17 public high schools. The foundation landed another $5 million grant from the Benwood Foundation to improve student achievement, by soliciting matching-fund donations of $2.5 million. "The school district wouldn't be in a position to raise that kind of money," said Annie Hall, PEF’s Senior Director for Program and Policy. "We can kind of dream big dreams and the superintendent can present them in partnership with us." http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/local_news/article/0,1406,KNS_347_1585915,00.html DATA-DRIVEN DISTRICTS: USING DATA TO INFORM KEY DECISIONS The old tools of education -- intuition, teaching philosophy, personal experience -- do not seem to be enough anymore. Virtually every state has put into place an assessment system intended to measure and validate student achievement and school performance. The call for greater accountability means administrators and teachers must show proof -- tangible, statistically valid evidence -- that what they are doing is working, that students are learning faster and better. Learn lessons from four districts that take different approaches to using data to inform key decisions. See also "Providing Data to Your Board" and "Using Data to Think Differently," which includes six lessons for giving the public a better way to size up student performance. http://www.aasa.org/publications/sa/2002_12/LaFee.htm TALENT DEVELOPMENT HIGH SCHOOLS The Johns Hopkins and Howard Universities have designed the comprehensive school change model "Talent Development" to address challenges posed by high standards for urban middle and high schools. Currently, ten middle and six high schools are implementing the Talent Development model in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Education Fund, a local education fund, plays a critical role in bringing the Talent Development model to schools throughout the city. First, the Fund has raised more than $1 million for the Talent Development effort and advocates for the model locally and nationally, because it addresses the critical needs of secondary schools. Learn more about the model and their third-year results. http://www.philaedfund.org/programs/tdm/index.htm LEGISLATION WON’T MAKE CHILDREN LEARN "Educators know the truth but are afraid to say it: All children cannot learn," writes David Finley. As an educator, he believes that all children can learn but all children cannot learn as much as all other children. And all children cannot learn to some preset state or federal standard, as is currently mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act and Arizona Learns legislation. He is the principal of a school Arizona has labeled "underperforming." Does this embarrass him? Not in the least. To him, the label is a misnomer. Schools are simply brick and mortar. They do not perform, over or under. The label really means that the school's instructional staff is underperforming. Since he knows that the teachers at his school are effective, dedicated professionals who are actually "overperforming," he is not the least bit embarrassed by being mislabeled. He believes labeling schools is nothing more than name-calling, something most of us learned not to do in kindergarten. To Finley, labeling schools will not improve them and actually runs counter to the intended purpose. http://www.arizonarepublic.com/opinions/articles/1210finley10.html CURRICULUM CONTENT: FAVORING DEPTH OVER BREDTH According to Ron Wolk, it seems obvious that any serious restructuring of a school in need of improvement has to begin with substantial restructuring of the curriculum. The curriculum profoundly influences the way schools are organized and run by determining how time is allocated, how space is used, and how students and teachers are grouped. Any curriculum should favor depth over breadth; it should help students make connections between ideas and concepts; it should help them see the relationships between knowledge within and across disciplines. And students should have the opportunity to apply what they learn in school to their daily lives. If that were to occur, perhaps more of them would know how to go on learning for a lifetime. http://www.teachermagazine.org/tmstory.cfm?slug=04persp.h14 OUR INVISIBLE DROPOUTS A labor market economist at Northeastern University, Sum has just completed a study of America’s young immigrant population. The report examines the work record of young immigrants and compares that record to others in the U.S. job market. One interesting finding: At the low end of the market, defined as young people between 16 and 24 without a high school education, 82 percent of immigrants have a job. For native-born Americans in the same age and skill range, the figure drops to 59 percent. For African Americans, the number falls to 37 percent. To make the point more clearly, 63 percent of African Americans in this group are neither working nor in school. The nation is busy worrying about threats from abroad and an economic slowdown at home. States and cities are wondering how they will maintain their services with budgets being slashed. Yet at a time when the slogan ''No child left behind'' is the mantra for the education system, maybe we need to expand our definition of ''child.'' According to this article, these older children left behind can only cause trouble -- both for themselves and the rest of us. http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/344/business/Our_invisible_droputs+.shtml CRISIS IN SEX EDUCATION: GIVE KIDS THE FULL STORY Despite evidence that comprehensive sex education prevents pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease, the Bush Administration continues to spend upwards of $100 million each year to promote "abstinence-only-until-marriage" programs that intentionally omit critical information about birth control and sexually transmitted disease prevention. The current issue of Rethinking Schools explores the dominance of abstinence-based sex ed programs and efforts by political and religious conservatives to push more complete discussions of sex and its consequences out of our classrooms. http://www.rethinkingschools.com/archive/curriss.shtml LESSONS TAILORED TO THE LEARNER, NOT THE TEACHER Federal law requires schools to create individualized education plans (IEPs) for special-education students, but says nothing about everyone else. Schools in Maryland, Vermont and Virginia, among other states, have adopted these personalized plans for regular-education students. The idea has gained so much momentum that Washington state schools Superintendent Terry Bergeson recently suggested creating "accelerated learning plans" statewide for seventh-graders who don't pass the Washington Assessment of Student Learning. The learning plans, which basically involve getting parents, teacher and student to draw up a list of goals and ways to reach them, have yielded numerous benefits. Parents say they feel like they're "part of the solution." Administrators say the plans are effective communication tools, building bridges between school and home. The plans are notorious for devouring special-education teachers' time. For most teachers, the problem is not the concept of an "individualized education." It's that managing a batch of education plans can seem like a second job. "It's more work for the teachers," said Principal Benjamin Wright. "But that's too bad. In the long run it's best for the kids." http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/134593043_edplan10m0.html CHANGES IN EARLY EDUCATION URGED Children who start kindergarten without basic skills fall far behind and never catch up, says a new report about early education. Targeting those skills, which range from using the restroom independently to sitting attentively while listening to a story, could reduce dropout rates and boost the skills of the future workforce. But to get there states must revamp the way they finance and manage child care and pre-kindergarten programs and streamline duplicate services from state organizations that help kids. http://arizonarepublic.com/arizona/articles/1210earlyed10.html IT’S TIME TO START THE SLOW SCHOOL MOVEMENT In many aspects of life, doing things slowly is associated with profound pleasure. The "slow food" movement began as a protest against the global proliferation of McDonald's restaurants. Maurice Holt calls for a similar backlash against today's "hamburger" approach toward education, which emphasizes uniformity, predictability, and measurability of processes and results. http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k0212hol.htm PARENT INVOLVEMENT POLICIES AND THE LAW: WHAT PARENTS NEED TO KNOW With the authorization of the No Child Left Behind Act each school in the United States receiving Title I funds is required to have a written policy that will actively involve parents in the education process of children. This provision for parent involvement may be confusing for some, but here to help is a new online resource from the National PTA. The resource answers questions about what parents can do to help schools comply with the new law. http://www.pta.org/parentinvolvement/helpchild/hc_piandlaw.asp SIX KEY LEVERAGE POINTS FOR PARENTS & COMMUNITY LEADERS A new report from Parent Leadership Associates and the National Coalition of Parents in Education (NCPIE) identifies six key leverage points for parents to use in advocating for quality education for all children. At each point, schools and districts must respond to parents’ priorities and concerns. Knowing where these are and how to use them will be critical to building strong parent involvement and a more effective Title I program. http://www.ncpie.org/ DIALOGUE ON FREEDOM: LAWYERS URGED TO EXPLAIN DEMOCRACY TO STUDENTS A Dialogue on Freedom is a carefully planned discussion between a lawyer or judge and a class of high school students. The program explores American values and civic traditions and the underlying principles of a free and democratic society. This site offers tips on preparing for, leading, and following up on classroom dialogues. http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/curriss.shtml |---------------GRANT AND FUNDING INFORMATION--------------| "High-Achieving Schools Grant Program" Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) is opening a competition to award grants to 10 public middle and high schools in the U.S. that are extremely successful in educating low-income students, particularly in science. The winning schools will receive equipment, cash, and training to integrate the use of wireless mobile computing technology into their science and other curriculum. The grant competition will be a two-stage process. Interested schools must apply online by Wednesday, December 18, 2002, via the HP High-Achieving Schools Web site. A limited number of finalists will be selected to submit a full proposal in March, and the award decision will be made in May 2003. http://grants.hp.com/achieve/ "Dell Computer's TechKnow Program" If your district has an urban population of students who are at risk of missing classes and not graduating, and the district is willing to establish and support a comprehensive training program and develop local community partnerships, it could become one of the 15 Dell TechKnow districts. Targeting at-risk middle school-aged students, TechKnow represents a multimillion-dollar commitment from Dell, including equipment, program development, and other support. This program is a partnership with school districts and will require additional commitment and resources at the local level. Second-year applications will be online in January 2003. http://www.dell.com/us/en/k12/topics/segtopic_seg_nav_001_techknow.htm "Leadership for a Changing World" Leadership for a Changing World is seeking nominations of community leaders across the country who are successfully tackling tough social problems. Twenty outstanding social justice leaders and leadership teams that are not broadly known beyond their immediate community or field will receive awards of $100,000 to advance their work, plus $30,000 for learning activities that will advance their efforts. The program also includes a major, multi-year research initiative and numerous forums to bring awardees together with other leaders to share experiences, address specific challenges, and explore opportunities for collaboration. Leaders must be nominated by someone who is well acquainted with their work and can attest to their qualifications. Nominations will be accepted through January 7, 2003. http://leadershipforchange.org/nomination/ "Emerging Young Artist Awards" The Emerging Young Artist Awards (EYAA) enables talented young Californians to pursue their dreams of becoming professional artists through financial support. The EYAA opens doors by providing up to $5,000 per year for four years ($20,000) to talented young artists while enrolled in a college/university degree program or professional training program in their artistic discipline. An individual may apply in any of these four categories: dance, music, theatre, and visual arts. Applicants must meet all of the following requirements: demonstrate need of financial assistance; high school senior who will be graduating in the 2002-2003 school year; legal resident of California; and student plans to enter a four-year institution or accredited professional training program. Application deadline: February 1, 2003. http://www.artsed411.org/eyaa.html "School Funding Services Grant of the Week" Each week School Funding Services, a division of New American Schools, features a new grant on their website. This week they highlight the Toshiba America Foundation’s Grants Program for 7-12 Math and Science Education. http://www.schoolfundingservices.org/newsViewer.asp?docId=2546 "FastWEB" FastWEB is the largest online scholarship search available, with 600,000 scholarships representing over one billion in scholarship dollars. It provides students with accurate, regularly updated information on scholarships, grants, and fellowships suited to their goals and qualifications, all at no cost to the student. Students should be advised that FastWEB collects and sells student information (such as name, address, e-mail address, date of birth, gender, and country of citizenship) collected through their site. http://www.fastweb.com/ "Federal Resources for Educational Excellence (FREE)" More than 30 Federal agencies formed a working group in 1997 to make hundreds of federally supported teaching and learning resources easier to find. The result of that work is the FREE website. http://www.ed.gov/free/ "Fundsnet Online Services" A comprehensive website dedicated to providing nonprofit organizations, colleges, and Universities with information on financial resources available on the Internet. http://www.fundsnetservices.com/ "Department of Education Forecast of Funding" This document lists virtually all programs and competitions under which the Department of Education has invited or expects to invite applications for new awards for FY 2003 and provides actual or estimated deadline dates for the transmittal of applications under these programs. The lists are in the form of charts -- organized according to the Department's principal program offices -- and include programs and competitions the Department has previously announced, as well as those it plans to announce at a later date. Note: This document is advisory only and is not an official application notice of the Department of Education. http://www.ed.gov/offices/OCFO/grants/forecast.html "eSchool News School Funding Center" Information on up-to-the-minute grant programs, funding sources, and technology funding. http://www.eschoolnews.com/resources/funding/ "Philanthropy News Digest-K-12 Funding Opportunities" K-12 Funding opportunities with links to grantseeking for teachers, learning technology, and more. http://fdncenter.org/funders/ "School Grants" A collection of resources and tips to help K-12 educators apply for and obtain special grants for a variety of projects. http://www.schoolgrants.org QUOTE OF THE WEEK "Most teachers have little control over school policy or curriculum or choice of texts or special placement of students, but most have a great deal of autonomy inside the classroom. To a degree shared by only a few other occupations, such as police work, public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid." -Tracy Kidder (author) Diane Rosenthal NIFL Assessment Moderator Executive Director LVA-SG (203324-5214
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