Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Senator Patty Murray says Literacy and LEARN are essential

Published Online: May 11, 2011

COMMENTARY

Literacy Education: The Foundation for All Learning

By Sen. Patty Murray

Premium article access courtesy of Edweek.org.

There is a lot of talk these days about making sure that the United States remains competitive in the 21st-century global economy. Government officials and the business community are working on ways to create and maintain jobs in growing industries, and policymakers and others are trying to figure out how to make sure our schools are effectively preparing our students for the jobs of tomorrow.

These efforts certainly need to continue. But as a former preschool teacher and school board member, I know that if students don’t have a strong foundation in reading and writing, there is very little else we can do to help them succeed in the modern world. Literacy needs to come first, and it needs to get the strong and consistent support from the federal government that it deserves.

Every teacher and administrator understands that literacy issues are a serious concern. Unfortunately, they see it every day. Too many students are struggling in classes, not turning in homework, and falling further and further behind.

It is a terrible thing to see a child struggle like that, and it’s happening far too often. More than 8 million students in grades 4-12 read below grade level. Only 32 percent of America’s 8th grade students, and roughly the same percentage of 12th graders, meet standards for reading “proficiency” for their grade level, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

And this problem is even worse in low-income areas. Among low-income 8th graders, just 16 percent read at a proficient level. And in a typical high-poverty urban school, approximately half of incoming 9th graders read at a 6th or 7th grade level.

This is simply unacceptable. Children who are not at least modestly skilled readers by the end of 3rd grade are far less likely to graduate from high school. And we all know the devastating effects of not having a high school diploma on students’ future career prospects.

Unfortunately, however, the federal commitment to literacy education has been inconsistent and, frankly, inadequate. In just the last few years, federal literacy funding declined from almost $540 million in fiscal year 2008 to $147 million in 2009, up to $200 million in 2010, and then down to absolutely nothing in 2011.

This doesn’t make sense. How can districts, schools, or teachers plan their literacy programs when they have absolutely no idea how much support they can expect from the federal government? It’s not fair to them, and it’s not fair to the students who desperately need for these programs to work.

So I feel very strongly that the federal government needs to be a strong and consistent partner in literacy education. I worked closely with teachers, administrators, policy experts, and advocates to put together legislation that would make this a reality, and I was proud to recently introduce the product of that work, a bill called the Literacy Education for All, Results for the Nation, or LEARN, Act.

My bill would provide $2.35 billion in grants to fund state and local school-based literacy programs. This is a serious investment, but I believe it is one well worth making. First of all, there is the moral issue: Every child deserves to know how to read and write. But I also think that if we don’t take literacy seriously, we will end up facing far greater costs down the line in the form of reduced economic output from students who could have earned more and paid more taxes if they knew how to read and write, higher safety-net spending for their families, and, unfortunately, increased use of the criminal-justice system.

“I feel very strongly that the federal government needs to be a strong and consistent partner in literacy education.”

These grants would be used to fund literacy education at all grade levels, from birth through high school graduation. I have heard from so many parents and teachers who have told me stories about students whose reading and writing fell behind in their early years, and who were then never able to catch up. So the LEARN Act specifically dedicates resources for literacy instruction and high-quality support on a continuum across all ages and developmental and grade levels.

My bill would make sure that the federal government can be counted on to be a strong partner to states and local districts by providing resources needed for new as well as existing literacy programs. It provides states with the flexibility to make their own decisions on selecting district grantees based on student need and reading-test scores. And it makes sure these programs are held accountable for their outcomes by requiring a rigorous national evaluation that includes stringent conflict-of-interest restrictions for programs’ peer-review processes.

The LEARN Act would also enhance the role of states in improving literacy instruction by supporting state literacy-leadership teams composed of literacy experts and relevant stakeholders tasked with developing comprehensive state literacy plans that build upon promising practices already being implemented in many states.

Since I know how important teachers are in literacy education, my bill also provides high-quality professional development for instructional staff and school leaders so they can stay on the cutting edge and continue their outstanding work teaching our students.

And finally, it would ensure that literacy education is strong where it is needed most by targeting funding to low-income schools and schools with low literacy levels, and by providing additional support to address the specific learning needs of struggling readers and writers, including English-language learners and students with disabilities.

To sum up, the LEARN Act proposes a new comprehensive federal literacy program to make sure students have the literacy skills to succeed in school and their future careers. It will help ensure that high-quality literacy instruction starts early and continues through high school for students who need extra support. And it fills a critical void at an important time, as so many states and districts across the country face especially tight budgets.

Here in Congress, we are working to reauthorize and reform the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to guarantee that it is actually working for our students and schools. I urge my colleagues in Congress to take up this fight with me, to ensure that the students of today, who will be the workers of tomorrow, have the literacy support they need to succeed.

As a mom who proudly remembers my own children learning how to read and write, I believe strongly that every child deserves to be able to discover the joy of opening up a book and diving into a story. And in the 21st century, literacy is no longer a luxury, it’s an absolute necessity to succeed in school, in future careers, and in life.

Patty Murray is the senior U.S. senator from Washington state. She is a Democrat.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Finishing the Year Strong

cut-and-pasted to maintain the link:

Finishing the School Year Strong

By Larry Ferlazzo

Premium article access courtesy of TeacherMagazine.org.

Introducing the Idea of a Strong Finish

Students can reflect on these two questions, turning their answers into posters that can be hung around the classroom as reminders and shared with each other:

• What are three things you can do to help finish the school year strong academically?

• What is one thing you can do to help your classmates finish the year strong academically?

Students’ own unit plan: Have small groups of students identify a topic in which they have a high-degree of interest, prepare a full-fledged unit instructional plan on the topic, and then teach a portion to the class or to another small group. Allowing students to assume the teacher's role can be a strong motivator near the end of the school year. Students should use whatever engaging instructional methods have been previously used in the class.

Other cooperative learning projects: If a student-created unit plan does not sound like a good idea for some reason, other cooperative learning lessons and strategies, including problem-based and project-based learning, can be a good alternative. Here's my list of best sites.

Field trip—real and/or virtual: A local, or not-so-local, field trip can always be an energizer. Learning activities in the days leading-up to the trip that are specifically related to the trip—followed by reflections afterward—can provide a good week’s worth of engagement. Sometimes a "real" field trip can be challenging logistically and financially. But thanks to Web 2.0 technology, you can now have students create their own virtual field trips. There are many free websites that will let users easily create virtual field trips. Students can use these applications to visit places online, describe them, and show them to their classmates.

Other technology projects: In general, the end of the school year is a great time to take the leap and try out more technology integration in your classroom. Engage students with learning experiences that are a good fit with digital tools and techniques. Create online projects for "authentic audiences" where people other than the teacher can see and comment on them.

How Can Teachers Stay Energized?

The previous suggestions relate to how we can help our students stay focused. What can teachers do to keep their own teaching energy turned up? Here are a few ideas that are modified versions of what community organizers (I was one for 19 years) are often urged to do when they are feeling "burned-out":

Work fewer hours: By this time of the year, "throwing time" at school doesn’t pay dividends. Cutting back on outrageous work hours per week can often result in feeling more energized in the classroom.

Read a stimulating book: Finding an intellectually-stimulating book (or article) on teaching and learning might get you excited to try out some new things—even though it’s the end of the year.

Watch an intellectually stimulating video on the Web: Watching one of the numerousshort and thought-provoking videos on the Web from sites like TED Talks, The Big Think, Ignite, Big Ideas Fest or Pop!Tech is another option. These videos are free and showcase presentations by people who are doing some of the most "cutting-edge" thinking and working in the world.

Write something useful for other teachers: Whether it’s a blog post or a lesson plan to be shared (or something else), forcing yourself to craft something public can keep your mind sharp.

Make a point to eat lunch—individually—with teachers you don’t know well, but are impressed with: It can be energizing to meet with another teacher and learn why they chose this profession, what they’ve discovered about teaching and learning, what gives them energy, and to hear their "story."

Though we generally think of the word "end" as a conclusion, we should keep in mind it comes from the Greek word anti, which means "before." While we might think we're concluding the school year, we are really—much more importantly—setting students, and ourselves, up for what comes next.

Larry Ferlazzo teaches English at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, California. He writes a popular blog for teachers and is the author of three books. He also supportsa blog that shares ideas and resources to improve the school-parent relationship.

WEB ONLY

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

First Amendment Freedoms Essay Contest.

http://nieonline.com/chicago/2011FAFpromo.cfm

First Amendment Freedoms Essay Contest.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and Greenberg Traurig, LLP, in partnership with Chicago Tribune News In Education and The Mash announce the 2011 Our First Amendment Freedoms art and essay contest for students in grades 7 through 11.

Students are asked to submit an essay or create a work of art that best addresses the following question:

Describe or portray how one or more of the five freedoms in the First Amendment personally affects your daily life.

First Place winners in each grade category (7-8 and 9-11) will receive $1,000. Second place winners will receive $250.
The classroom teacher with the most entries will be invited to the awards dinner and will receive $100.
The school with the most entries will receive an Anti-Defamation League's A World of Difference(R) Institute educational workshop.
Only one entry per student per category

Monday, May 2, 2011

Moonwalking with Einstein

This weekend, I finished Joshua Foer’s recent book, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. It’s a really enjoyable book with the author’s own training to compete in the U.S. Memory Championship serving as the main structural element. Lots about expertise and how memory and learning are intertwined. There were several things that made my teacher-brain perk up. Here’s a sample of things that made me think of student writers and student readers:

· Experts see the world differently. They notice things that non experts don't see; They home in on information that matters most, and have an almost automatic sense of what to do with it.

· In "deliberate practice"- you deliberately develop strategies for keeping out of the autonomous phase and in 'cognitive phase’ of skill acquisition. Amateur musicians spend practice times playing music, pros work thru tedious exercises or focus on specific, difficult parts of pieces.

· "When you want to get good at something, how you spend your time practicing is far more important than the amount of time you spend... to improve we must watch ourselves fail, and learn from our mistakes"

· Practice failing, says expertise expert K. Anders Ericsson... put yourself in the mind of someone far more competent at the task You're trying to master, and try to figure out how that person works through problems. For example: Ben Franklin used to read essays by great thinkers and try to reconstruct the author's argument according to BFS own' logic, then check

Let me know if you want to borrow the book!

· Experts see the world differently. They notice things that non experts don't see; They home in on information that matters most, and have an almost automatic sense of what to do with it.

Let me know if you want to borrow the book!

Friday, April 29, 2011

NYT: the limits of school reform

April 25, 2011

The Limits of School Reform

By JOE NOCERA

I find myself haunted by a 13-year-old boy named Saquan Townsend. It’s been more than two weeks since he was featured in The New York Times Magazine, yet I can’t get him out of my mind.

The article, by Jonathan Mahler, was about the heroic efforts of Ramón González, the principal of M.S. 223, a public middle school in the South Bronx, to make his school a place where his young charges can get a decent education and thus, perhaps, a better life. Surprisingly, though, González is not aligned with the public school reform movement, even though one of the movement’s leading lights, Joel Klein, was until fairly recently his boss as the head of the New York City school system.

Instead, González comes across as a skeptic, wary of the enthusiasm for, as the article puts it, “all of the educational experimentation” that took place on Klein’s watch. At its core, the reform movement believes that great teachers and improved teaching methods are all that’s required to improve student performance, so that’s all the reformers focus on. But it takes a lot more than that. Which is where Saquan comes in. His part of the story represents difficult truths that the reform movement has yet to face squarely — and needs to.

Saquan lands at M.S. 223 because his family has been placed in a nearby homeless shelter. (His mother fled Brooklyn out of fear that another son was in danger of being killed.) At first, he is so disruptive that a teacher, Emily Dodd, thinks he might have a mental disability. But working with him one on one, Dodd discovers that Saquan is, to the contrary, unusually intelligent — “brilliant” even.

From that point on, Dodd does everything a school reformer could hope for. She sends him text messages in the mornings, urging him to come to school. She gives him special help. She encourages him at every turn. For awhile, it seems to take.

Meanwhile, other forces are pushing him in another direction. His mother, who works nights and barely has time to see her son, comes across as indifferent to his schooling. Though she manages to move the family back to Brooklyn, the move means that Saquan has an hour-and-a-half commute to M.S. 223. As his grades and attendance slip, Dodd offers to tutor him. To no avail: He finally decides it isn’t worth the effort, and transfers to a school in Brooklyn.

The point is obvious, or at least it should be: Good teaching alone can’t overcome the many obstacles Saquan faces when he is not in school. Nor is he unusual. Mahler recounts how M.S. 223 gives away goodie bags to lure parents to parent association meetings, yet barely a dozen show up. He reports that during the summer, some students fall back a full year in reading comprehension — because they don’t read at home.

Going back to the famous Coleman report in the 1960s, social scientists have contended — and unquestionably proved — that students’ socioeconomic backgrounds vastly outweigh what goes on in the school as factors in determining how much they learn. Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute lists dozens of reasons why this is so, from the more frequent illness and stress poor students suffer, to the fact that they don’t hear the large vocabularies that middle-class children hear at home.

Yet the reformers act as if a student’s home life is irrelevant. “There is no question that family engagement can matter,” said Klein when I spoke to him. “But they seem to be saying that poverty is destiny, so let’s go home. We don’t yet know how much education can overcome poverty,” he insisted — notwithstanding the voluminous studies that have been done on the subject. “To let us off the hook prematurely seems, to me, to play into the hands of the other side.”

That last sentence strikes me as the key to the reformers’ resistance: To admit the importance of a student’s background, they fear, is to give ammo to the enemy — which to them are their social-scientist critics and the teachers’ unions. But that shouldn’t be the case. Making schools better is always a goal worth striving for, whether it means improving pedagogy itself or being able to fire bad teachers more easily. Without question, school reform has already achieved some real, though moderate, progress.

What needs to be acknowledged, however, is that school reform won’t fix everything. Though some poor students will succeed, others will fail. Demonizing teachers for the failures of poor students, and pretending that reforming the schools is all that is needed, as the reformers tend to do, is both misguided and counterproductive.

Over the long term, fixing our schools is going to involve a lot more than, well, just fixing our schools. In the short term, however, the reform movement could use something else: a dose of humility about what it can accomplish — and what it can’t.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Doninger v. Niehoff ruling in school's favor

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/school_law/2011/04/court_backs_discipline_of_stud.html?cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS2

Court Backs Discipline of Student Over Internet Speech

By Mark Walsh on April 25, 2011 1:19 PM | 1 Comment |

In a case raising novel issues about student speech rights in the Internet era, a federal appeals court has upheld the discipline of a Connecticut student who had harshly criticized school officials in her Web journal.

The closely watched case involves Avery Doninger, who was a junior at Lewis S. Mills High School in Burlington, Conn., in 2007 when she tussled with school officials over the scheduling of a band contest known as "Jamfest."

Doninger, who was a student council member and junior class secretary, went home and wrote in an entry in her public blog at the website livejournal.com that "jamfest is cancelled due to douchebags in central office" and that readers should contact the superintendent "to piss her off more."

School officials, citing disruption by the emails and Doninger's Web comments, barred her from running for senior class secretary. She wasn't suspended.

Doninger and her mother initially sought an injunction barring her discipline, but a district court and a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, in New York, which included then-Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor, ruled against her.

The student continued to press her claims for damages under the First Amendment's free-speech clause. She lost in 2009 in federal district court, which granted qualified immunity to the school officials who disciplined her.

In a decision on Monday, a new 2nd Circuit panel ruled unanimously that school officials were immune from Doninger's suit.

"It was objectively reasonable for school officials to conclude that Doninger's behavior was potentially disruptive of student government functions (such as the organization of Jamfest) and that Doninger was not free to engage in such behavior while serving as a class representative—a representative charged with working with these very same school officials to carry out her responsibilities," Judge Debra Ann Livingston said in her April 25 opinion for the panel in Doningerv. Niehoff.

The court said it was "not clearly established at the time of these events that Doninger had any First Amendment right not to be prohibited from running for senior class secretary because of offensive off-campus speech, at least when such speech pertained to a school event, invited students to read and respond to it by contacting school administrators, and it was reasonably foreseeable that the speech would come on to campus and thus come to the attention of school authorities."

The court stressed that it was stopping short of ruling whether the school discipline actually violated Doninger's free speech rights. And, "to be clear, we do not conclude in any way that school administrators are immune from First Amendment scrutiny when they react to student speech by limiting students' participation in extracurricular activities."

But the speech at issue in Doninger's case was closely tied to school events, and the student's role as a council member and class officer was signficant in the qualified-immunity analysis, the court said.

The court noted that the U.S. Supreme Court "has yet to speak on the scope of a school's authority to regulate expression that, like [Doninger's], does not occur on school grounds or at a school-sponsored event."

On a separate issue in the suit, the 2nd Circuit court upheld school officials' immunity over barring Doninger from wearing a T-shirt related to the controversy at a school election assembly. The T-shirts said "Team Avery" on the front, in reference to Doninger, and "Support LSM Freedom of Speech" on the back, referring to the high school. Doninger and her supporters were told they could not wear the shirts into the assembly.

The federal district court had sided with Doninger on the T-shirt issue, holding that her right to wear such a shirt into the assembly was clearly established.

But the 2nd Circuit panel reversed, granting immunity to school officials who barred the T-shirts, even if they were mistaken legally.

The school principal "faced a difficult task in assessing whether the threat of disruption was severe enough to justify preventing Doninger from wearing her T-shirt into the assembly," the 2nd circuit said. A reasonable jury might find that the threat of disruption was not sufficiently substantial, the court added.

"We cannot conclude, however, that such a mistake was anything but reasonable - the very sort of mistake for which the qualified immunity doctrine exists to shield officials against unwarranted liability."

Monday, April 25, 2011

From Summary to Synthesis: Common Core Standards in Action in NY

This was published today: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/25/nyregion/100-new-york-schools-try-common-core-approach.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

April 24, 2011

A Trial Run for School Standards That Encourage Deeper Thought

By FERNANDA SANTOS

Until this year, Ena Baxter, an English teacher at Hillcrest High School in Queens, would often have her 10th graders compose papers by summarizing a single piece of reading material.

Last month, for a paper on the influence of media on teenagers, she had them read a survey on the effects of cellphones and computers on young people’s lives, a newspaper column on the role of social media in the Tunisian uprising and a 4,200-word magazine article titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

A math teacher, José Rios, used to take a day or two on probabilities, drawing bell-shaped curves on the blackboard to illustrate the pattern known as normal distribution. This year, he stretched the lesson by a day and had students work in groups to try to draw the same type of graphic using the heights of the 15 boys in the class.

“Eventually, they figured out they couldn’t because the sample was too small,” Mr. Rios said. “They learned that the size of the sample matters, and I didn’t have to tell them.”

In three years, instruction in most of the country could look a lot like what is going on at Hillcrest, one of 100 schools in New York City experimenting with new curriculum standards known as the common core.

Forty-two states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands have signed on to the new standards, an ambitious set of goals that go beyond reading lists and math formulas to try to raise the bar not only on what students in every grade are expected to learn, but also on how teachers are expected to teach.

The standards, to go into effect in 2014, will replace a hodgepodge of state guidelines that have become the Achilles’ heel of the No Child Left Behind law. Many states, including New York, lowered standards in a push to meet the law’s requirement that all students reach grade level, as measured by each state, in English and math. President Obama has expressed a desire to rewrite the law, and many experts predict the common core will be a centerpiece of the effort.

The new standards give specific goals that, by the end of the 12th grade, should prepare students for college work. Book reports will ask students to analyze, not summarize. Presentations will be graded partly on how persuasively students express their ideas. History papers will require reading from multiple sources; the goal is to get students to see how beliefs and biases can influence the way different people describe the same events.

There are a number of challenges.

There are guidelines for what students are expected to do in each grade, but it is still up to districts, schools and teachers to fill in the finer points of the curriculum, like what books to read.

There is no national body responsible for seeing that the standards are carried out, because of fears of giving too much control of education to the federal government. So far, only a few other large cities, including Boston, Cleveland and Philadelphia, have begun to apply the standards in the classroom. And depending on how No Child Left Behind is refashioned, it may still be left to each state to measure its own success.

“The standards create a historic opportunity in that we now have a destination worth aiming for, but only time will tell if they’ll create historic change,” said Chester E. Finn Jr., an assistant secretary of education in the Reagan administration and the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a group that supports national standards.

With 3,200 students, Hillcrest is the second largest school in the city’s pilot. Its size and diversity — whites are a minority (4 percent), Muslims are the religious plurality (about 30 percent) and one-tenth of students are learning English — made it an ideal laboratory to test how the standards might work in the city, officials said.

On a recent Wednesday, Jill Lee, an English teacher, closed a unit on the meaning of the American dream not by assigning a first-person essay, as she once did, but by asking each student to interview an immigrant and write a profile of the person.

Eleni Giannousis made a change in her 10th-grade English class that might make some purists blanch. She had students watch the filmed stage performance of “Death of a Salesman,” starring Dustin Hoffman as Willy Loman, before they read the play. The idea was to have students absorb information through a medium they use for entertainment, one way she was experimenting with her lesson plans to try to meet the new goals.

“It wasn’t about making things easier for the students, but about challenging them to experience a classic in a different way,” Ms. Giannousis said.

While English classes will still include healthy amounts of fiction, the standards say that students should be reading more nonfiction texts as they get older, to prepare them for the kinds of material they will read in college and careers. In the fourth grade, students should be reading about the same amount from “literary” and “informational” texts, according to the standards; in the eighth grade, 45 percent should be literary and 55 percent informational, and by 12th grade, the split should be 30/70.

Shael Polakow-Suransky, the city’s chief academic officer, said the city plans to create an instructional package with exercises that teachers at Hillcrest and other schools have used; student work they have assigned; and guidelines for evaluating the work.

At a training session last month, teams representing several schools in the pilot were asked to list lessons they had learned. Teachers from the Forward School of Creative Writing, a middle school in the Williamsbridge section of the Bronx, wrote on a piece of cardboard: “Visuals help students make meaning” and “Many students are reading far below grade level.”

Timothy Shanahan, a professor of urban education at the University of Illinois at Chicago who helped write the common core standards for how to incorporate reading into science instruction, said that as a whole, the standards make no adjustments for students who are learning English or for children who might enter kindergarten without having been exposed to books.

“If I’m teaching fifth grade and I have a youngster in my class who reads as a first grader, throwing him a grade-level text is not going to do him any good, no matter what the standards say,” he said.

Mr. Polakow-Suransky, too, cautioned against overly optimistic expectations.

“This isn’t one of those things where you flip the switch and tomorrow, everything is going to be different,” he said.

The Paper Route

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Senator Patty Murray says Literacy and LEARN are essential

Literacy Education: The Foundation for All Learning

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Finishing the Year Strong

Finishing the School Year Strong

Introducing the Idea of a Strong Finish

How Can Teachers Stay Energized?

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

First Amendment Freedoms Essay Contest.

Monday, May 2, 2011

Moonwalking with Einstein

Friday, April 29, 2011

NYT: the limits of school reform

The Limits of School Reform

By JOE NOCERA

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Doninger v. Niehoff ruling in school's favor

Court Backs Discipline of Student Over Internet Speech

Monday, April 25, 2011

From Summary to Synthesis: Common Core Standards in Action in NY

A Trial Run for School Standards That Encourage Deeper Thought

By FERNANDA SANTOS

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