From: neweekly@list.nea.org
Date: Fri Nov 08 2002 - 07:29:16 PST
National Education WEEKLY November 8, 2002 Vol. 1 No. 5 News from NEW: For parents, it's not the economy, stupid. It's values, values, and values. Parents fear they are losing the battle to instill absolutely essential values in their children, according to the latest survey conducted by the Public Agenda, a New York-based citizen education and research organization. Parents are more concerned with protecting their child from negative social influences than about paying the bills. Their worries included teaching their children to succeed in school, to be well behaved with good values, to develop self-control, and to maintain good eating habits. CONTENTS COMMUNITIES 1. REALITY CLASSROOM: Creative Teacher Gives Students Life-Lesson in Civics 2. ABOUT FACE: More Miami-Dade Voucher Students Return to Public Schools STATES 3. CLOSING GAPS IN MINNESOTA: Education Leaders Devise New Plan 4. SMALLER CLASSES: New Jersey Offers More School-Within-School Academies THE NATION 5. CENTERING ON SCIENCE AND MATH: NSF Awards Aim to Beef Up Instruction RESEARCH AND EDUCATION PRACTICE 6.EDUCATION AT A GLANCE: International Group Releases Annual Report 7. DARE TO CHANGE: Anti-Drug Program Morphs Into a Possible Winner WEEKLY FEATURE 8. ELECTION EXTRA: Voters Show Support for Public Education COMMUNITIES 1. REALITY CLASSROOM: Chris Makris, a Concord, N.H., high school teacher, decided to give his students a chance to play a role in history, rather than simply writing about it. Makris' assignment: Students could volunteer for 10 hours for a political campaign or party, keeping a diary, and writing a paper about what they learned on the campaign trail. More than 30 students signed up to answer phones, wave signs, canvass neighborhoods and stuff envelopes for Democrats or Republicans. The students met local and national politicians and viewed the inner workings of a campaign. ''It looks like chaos, but you pick up on how they're organized and you see how much goes into it,'' said Austin Mullins, a student volunteer. (AP/Foster's Daily Democrat (Dover), 11/4) http://www4.fosters.com/news2002/nov_02/nov04_02/news/reg_nh1104k.asp 2. ABOUT FACE: More than one in four Miami-Dade County voucher students have returned to public schools since August, part of what is being called a dramatic turnaround statewide. Under Gov. Jeb Bush's Opportunity Scholarships program, the state pays for students from low-performing schools to attend private ones. It is the nation's only statewide voucher program. Several reasons were mentioned for the return of students. The reasons included transportation difficulties, a lack of familiar faces, a more demanding curriculum, firmer discipline standards, and culture shock experienced from the typically low-income students who transfer into a school with students from a higher socioeconomic group. ''The private schools were not the panacea they had expected,'' said Mercedes Toural, associate superintendent for education in Miami-Dade. Miami Herald, 11/3) http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/4430976.htm STATES 3.CLOSING GAPS IN MINNESOTA: Education leaders in the state of a thousand lakes are hammering out ways to change the way they judge students and schools. Although Minnesota frequently is cited as a high-performing state, averages can be deceiving. Minnesota Department of Education officials plan to use the new Elementary and Secondary Education Act to improve education for students who are minority, disadvantaged, and/or learning to speak English. Look for an expansion of the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment to cover all grades-three to eight-and a new requirement for testing the math and reading skills if ninth graders. Other changes are still being debated and subject to state funding. (Pioneer Press, 11/3) http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/living/education/4424729.htm 4. SMALLER CLASSES: Small classes and personal attention are the reasons many New Jersey students opt for the school-within-school academies sprouting up across the state. New Jersey's governor and state Department of Education are supporting the concept at the high school level. One goal is to encourage businesses to help schools in develop industry-related programs. Partnerships already have developed between high schools and Verizon, Commerce Bank, and Pfizer. While admissions policies vary, typically students must apply to and qualify for the academy programs. The Atlantic City Press is running a series of articles on the changing role of high schools in New Jersey. (Atlantic City Press, 11/4) http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/education/1104021ACADEMY.html THE NATION 5. CENTERING ON SCIENCE AND MATH: The National Science Foundation will invest in five new Centers for Learning and Teaching. The goal is to create quality professional development programs for teachers and research how students learn. The new centers, which include locations in Washington, D.C., Missouri and Georgia, will receive an estimated $10 million each over the next five years. The K-12 centers are expected to counter the expected impact of mass retirements of teachers and higher education faculty. The centers also will aim to build a body of research, especially in emerging and interdisciplinary mathematics and science topics; and help reduce the high proportion of teaching professionals who are teaching out of field. http://www.ehr.nsf.gov/esie/programs/clt/clt.asp RESEARCH AND EDUCATION PRACTICE 6. EDUCATION AT A GLANCE: Teachers in the United States spend more hours in front of their classes than their counterparts in other developed countries. Yet, on average U.S. students fare no better than classmates in the other countries. Those were among the education trends and findings from 32 industrialized nations in an annual report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association (NEA), said time in front of the class is not the only ingredient in student progress. ''You cannot just have face time without having the opportunity to plan what you're going to do.'' Weaver added that the key to helping low-income children succeed is providing better facilities, smaller classes, and better technology. Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution said that the more rigorous core curriculum of other countries makes it less likely that students will complete high school without taking college-preparatory courses. (AP/USA Today, 10/30) http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2002-10-30-students-average_x.htm 7. DARE TO CHANGE: A revamped anti-drug program shows promising results, say researchers from the Institute for Health and Social Policy at the University of Akron in Ohio. The Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program was created by Los Angeles police officers in 1983 and targeted fifth graders for the anti-drug message. About 80 percent of public schools use DARE as an anti-drug program. Recent reviews of the program found it to be ineffective. However, the new DARE curriculum focuses not only on fifth-grade students, but also on students in seventh and ninth grades. Teachers also help instruct and teach anti-drug lessons. The current study, financed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is tracking students in Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Newark, New Orleans, and St. Louis. (AP/Cleveland Plain Dealer, 10/29) http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/news/103588782782180.xml WEEKLY FEATURE 8. ELECTION EXTRA: Voters nationwide showed their support for public education by approving initiatives that called for new spending on school programs, despite hard economic times faced by most states. Florida voters backed smaller class size and topnotch preschools, while Colorado voters just said no to a ban on bilingual education that would have required all students to be placed in English-only classes after a year of native language instruction. Reg Weaver, the president of the National Education Association (NEA), praised the results of the education initiatives, which opponents have said would be too costly. "People are saying, find the money,'' Weaver said. ''If it's important, they'll find it, just like they did with the tax cut, homeland security and the airline industry." Here are results on key education-related ballot measures: Arkansas voted against the removal of sales taxes on food and medicine, which in turn would have reduced revenue for the state's public schools. Arizona voted to dedicate a portion of sales taxes and public land revenues for public education. California voted yes for a historic $13.5 billion school-construction bond (Proposition 47) and voted with Hollywood's own kindergarten cop, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to increase state grants for before-and after-school programs by $400 million (Proposition 49). Colorado voted against a ban on bilingual education programs that would have required all students to be placed in English-only classes after a year of native language instruction. Florida voted to offer voluntary, universal, high quality pre-kindergarten classes for all four-year-olds (Amendment 8); to reduce public school class sizes (Amendment 9); and to create a new governing structure for higher education (Amendment 11). (The New York Times, 11/07) http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/07/politics/campaigns/07BALL.html http://www.ballotwatch.org/2002POSTReport.pdf --Barbara Pape, Editor ***FACT OF THE WEEK*** California: More Students Are Earning Their Diplomas More and more students are completing high school in California. The public high school completion rate in California has improved by 6 percent since 1991. This increase is one of the best in the country. (NCES, Dropout Rates in the United States: 2000. November 2001) http://www.nea.org/goodnews/ca01.html --- You are currently subscribed to neweekly as: hdrc@youth.net. To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-neweekly-396500R@list.nea.org