Click here to find out more and download the guide.
Jim Arey, a 2001 Golden Apple Fellow, is a social studies teacher at Elk Grove High School, in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. For eleven years, Jim was teacher and coordinator of the Public Service Practicum Community Resource program. The Public Service Practicum combines academics with real life learning in the form of non-paid internships, field experiences, and volunteer community service. Jim is a recipient of multiple awards and recognitions including the Golden Apple Award. He has encouraged his students to apply for and earn over $1 million dollars in college grants and scholarships. Jim has assisted in a multitude of community fundraising efforts including the Soldier Memorial fund, Heart of a Marine Foundation, and Community Character Coalition of Elk Grove.
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“Let’s Communicate”: Resources for all teachers”
This presentation outline gives an overview of a wide range of online tools that teachers can use. Tips for online communication, interesting videos, links to the best sites for blogging, and much more.
MIDI Lab: Resources for music teachers”
This flyer outlines the process of setting up a high-tech music lab and describes the evolution of the music lab over a five-year period, along with helpful resources for starting your own lab. A companion website give an overview of Carol’s music technology curriculum and many more resources.
Click here to find all the free resources from Golden Apple Fellows
Carol Broos is a 2008 Fellow and a born teacher. She has been teaching 4th-8th grade music at Sunset Ridge School in Northfield, Illinois for over twenty years. Her website www.carolbroos.com has won national awards; her blog www.beatechie.com is one of the top 100 Music Education blogs. She frequently presents at state and national conventions both in technology and music. She is a 2006 Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund Teacher, a Finalist in TechLearning’s 2007 Leader of the Year, the 2008 IL Music Teacher of the Year, a 2008 Google Teacher Academy, and a 2009 Apple Distinguished Educator.
]]>A note from Cheryl:
When I was working as a Head Start teacher in the early 1980’s, I was frustrated with the lack of diverse characters in the picture books in my classroom. I’d been a writer all of my life, heading up The Scribblers Club as a Roosevelt High School student in Des Moines, Iowa, and writing poetry for friends and magazines, editorials for newspapers, liturgies for church, and plays for various organizations. I admit it: I always knew I could write for kids, but took that talent for granted. I was the geek who was so thrilled whenever we were assigned 500-word essays in grade school. I entertained my little brothers and sisters and their friends with my Dr. Seuss take-offs. When Kennedy died, I wrote a poem that made my whole school start to cry again. I knew the power of playing with words. So, along with my hippie-era penchant for righting wrongs, as well as my civil rights work, my little 3 and 4 year- old Head Start students finally gave me the motivation for getting some stories out of my heart and into publication. Around that time, our local NAACP president befriended me. I think it no coincidence that Cynthia Davis Brown was also a retired 3rd grade Chicago Public School teacher. She took me, like a student, like a daughter, under her wings and saw that I developed the faith and know-how to do more than simply self-publish my manuscripts. She has been the angel at my shoulder ever since, and I hope she’s proud.
So, that’s how I got here! No matter how you’ve come to the writing life, and no matter how your students get there, if you’ve never tried to get something published before, these pages should help you! You will learn the basics:
What follows is a highly personal list of what I perceive to be 5 key education trends . . . expressed as injunctions. I would love to have readers comment on my choices and list picks of their own. These are in no particular order, just things I’m picking up surfing the internet, reading Educational Leadership, Edutopia and other education publications, and following Obama’s/Duncan’s education priorities.
Today is the 5th and final trend in this series.
5. Start young and focus on reading.
President Obama and Secretary Duncan have placed a high priority on early childhood education as the key to improving student achievement. High quality, universal early childhood education can generate a generation of children entering elementary school ready to read and to learn. The early years are critical in laying the groundwork for developing literacy, which leads to success in school, graduation from high school, entry into higher education and success in securing jobs demanding intellectual capital. Reading is Everybody’s Business!! This is something we’ve seen illustrated recently as Secretary Duncan and the Obamas have gone public reading to children. Whatever else is or isn’t done educationally, reading is the basis for learning how to learn, the bedrock of education. Deep in our national DNA is the image of Abraham Lincoln, our 16th president, largely self-taught, trudging miles to get library books and reading by candlelight.
Expect a renewed emphasis on this most important of skills, the bedrock of all other learning, and the call for more and better early childhood education and for more teachers to become highly skilled teachers of reading. Arne Duncan’s work in Chicago focused on early childhood education and reading. Golden Apple Award-winning teachers developed a Children’s Reading Bill of Rights to help schools and communities define a reading agenda for children, and we are sharing it as one of this month’s Free Resources.
The International Reading Association is a repository of excellent research and policy recommendations, including recommendations to President Obama. For more, check out their website.
What trends in education have you noticed?
]]>What follows is a highly personal list of what I perceive to be 5 key education trends . . . expressed as injunctions. I would love to have readers comment on my choices and list picks of their own. These are in no particular order, just things I’m picking up surfing the internet, reading Educational Leadership, Edutopia and other education publications, and following Obama’s/Duncan’s education priorities.
Last week, I looked at three trends in education. This week, I’ll be sharing two more. Today, #4:
4. The digital divides need closing.
Definitely one of the most urgent priorities is to guarantee that students acquire the 21st century technological skills they will need to compete successfully with students in other countries for the high quality lifestyles and living wages that are in everyone’s best interest. For that to happen, two digital divides need closing. We all know about the first – ensuring that poor kids have the same access to technology that more advantaged kids have. That’s the original digital divide and by all accounts it is widening rather than shrinking. And that brings us to the second: in many high poverty schools, computers and other high tech equipment sit gathering dust, in some cases still in their original boxes, because teachers are either technology averse, haven’t received adequate professional development to use the technology or our current priorities under NCLB seem to preclude more innovative instructional approaches – those involving technology. There is a digital divide between kids and their teachers across socio-economic groups. It’s just less problematic in more advantaged communities where kids have access to technology after school, when much of their real learning is taking place, driven by their own interests. All teachers need to become more sophisticated users of technology for instruction. That means they need to understand how to harness web 2.0 features for classrooms across the nation.
For more, check out Edutopia.
Check back in a few days for the 5th and final trend in this series!
]]>What follows is a highly personal list of what I perceive to be 5 key education trends . . . expressed as injunctions. I would love to have readers comment on my choices and list picks of their own. These are in no particular order, just things I’m picking up surfing the internet, reading Educational Leadership, Edutopia and other education publications, and following Obama’s/Duncan’s education priorities.
A few days ago, I published the first two trends: It’s the Teachers, Stupid! and It’s the Students, Stupid! Here’s #3:
3. Children need 21st Century Skills.
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a collaboration including business and technology leaders such Apple, Dell, Microsoft, and Verizon, and educational organizations such as Discovery Education, Scholastic, and the NEA, advocates for the full implementation of a new framework for conceptualizing education in the 21st Century, arguing that,
There is a profound gap between the knowledge and skills most students learn in school and the knowledge and skills they need in typical 21st century communities and workplaces...U.S. schools must align classroom environments with real world environments by infusing 21st century skills.
The framework, which has already been adopted by state partners in ten states, emphasizes a wide variety of themes, including critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, technology skills, self-directed learning, leadership, and cross-cultural understanding.
In an examination of West Virginia’s implementation of the 21st Century Skills Framework, EdWeek noted that successful integration of the framework would require a “fundamental change in teachers’ roles.”.
In his recent education speech (3/10/09), outlining his administration’s focus for the future, President Obama expanded on this idea:
In a 21st-century world where jobs can be shipped wherever there’s an Internet connection, where a child born in Dallas is now competing with a child in New Delhi, where your best job qualification is not what you do, but what you know—education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity and success, it’s a prerequisite for success. I’m calling on our nation’s governors and state education chiefs to develop standards and assessments that don’t simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test, but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking and entrepreneurship and creativity.
It will take all of us working together, not just state education chiefs and state governors, to gear up our education system so that students learn what they need to know for successful participation in the new age. We have to educate students for the future, not the past.
For more, check out: http://www.21stcenturyskills.org
In the next week, I’ll discuss two more trends in education.
]]>What follows is a highly personal list of what I perceive to be 5 key education trends . . . expressed as injunctions. I would love to have readers comment on my choices and list picks of their own. These are in no particular order, just things I’m picking up surfing the internet, reading Educational Leadership, Edutopia and other education publications, and following Obama’s/Duncan’s education priorities.
Without further ado, here are the first two trends:
1. It’s the teachers, stupid!
It’s turning out that the single most important common denominator in high student achievement gains by students in high needs schools, is the quality of the teaching. Children, who have accomplished teachers, and as many in a row as possible, simply do better. Now that this is a known fact, there is an impetus to identify more such individuals, give them the training and resources they need, get them into the schools of greatest need and reward them adequately for the important work they are doing and the results they are helping their students achieve. Golden Apple has developed a Commitment to Teaching Excellence to guide and inspire teachers in their profession, and we’ve posted it as this month’s Free Resource. Find it here.
For more on the importance of high-quality teachers, check out Ed Trust, which publishes excellent studies on this topic.
2. It’s the students, stupid!
This is, of course, the corollary of #1. Secretary of Education Duncan is famously known for putting the needs of students before any other consideration – as well it should be. “My job is to fight for children, to fight for kids,” Duncan said. “When you do that, tough decisions become pretty clear in your head very quickly.” In a recent editorial, he called for “rewarding good teachers and removing bad ones” Teachers who are not highly effective either need excellent, high quality, professional development, a deepening of their content knowledge and the will and commitment to improve, or they need to make way for those who will be effective with children. From Arne Duncan to Bill Gates, the message is clear. We must focus on what is best for students, how students learn best and from whom . . . so trend #2 is a greater emphasis on students . . . kids come first!
For more on Duncan and the Obama administration’s education policy, check out this article.
Stay tuned over the next few weeks, as I post three more interesting trends in the public discourse on education.
]]>Obama’s call to the nation’s youth to enter teaching is certainly laudable. The president’s remark that “the most important factor (to a student’s) success… (is) the person standing in front of the classroom” echoes the sentiments Golden Apple has proclaimed for decades, and we hail those that heed his call.
But the truest measure of educational improvement is not who enters the profession, but who stays and deepens their understanding of and commitment to teaching and inspiring children. A brief teaching stint to buttress one’s resume, before leaving for another field, does not improve a classroom, a school or a community.
Dom continues with a call for authentic assessment:
]]>What was missing from Obama’s remarks, in our opinion, is the recognition that children need to be evaluated by more than their ability to achieve on timed, multiple-choice standardized tests. This mania has harmed our classrooms, dumbed-down curricula and virtually ignored problem-solving, critical thinking and creativity. These are attributes that will create the world-class education system we all desire for our children.
Golden Apple feels strongly that there needs to be a significant focus on finding ways to include those attributes in all levels of education, to raise our standards and give our children the best chance to succeed in the world.
This month, please enjoy the “I CAN” Checklist of Skills for New Teachers.
The “I CAN” Checklist was developed by Golden Apple Fellow, Dr. Renee Cargerman Dolezal, and is based on a decade of work by Golden Apple teachers in the Golden Apple Teacher Education (GATE) program, from 1998 to 2008. GATE partnered with Northwestern University, ICTC, UIC, and Chicago Public Schools to provide alternative certification and prepare new teachers for work in classrooms throughout Chicago. Special thanks to Golden Apple Fellows and staff and NU-Teach staff, as well as the outstanding GATE teachers and helpful principals who work daily to inspire their students.
Download now [PDF, 4 pages]
Find out more on the Golden Apple Free Resources Page.
Renee Cargerman Dolezal, PhD, is a 1992 Golden Apple Fellow. Renee was Chairperson of the English department at Arts of Living, a Chicago Public Alternative School for pregnant teens where she and her students developed the Baby Lit program and an award-winning cable TV series, Teen Moms Only. She received her doctorate in Performance Studies from Northwestern University. Renee served as Director of the GATE program in 2008, and is currently a consultant, mentor, and Field Instructor in Illinois.
]]>After years of being ignored by the Bush administration, advocates of early childhood education are anticipating a change for the better from the incoming Obama administration. President-elect Obama has pledged $10 billion for early childhood education. That money would be the largest federal initiative for educating young children since Head Start begain in 1965. When asked whether the current recession would force a scaling back in the pledge, transition spokeswoman Jen Pdaki said, “We simply cannot afford to sideline key priorities like education.”
Given that research shows the value of early childhood education, it is good to see that the new administration will be directing resources where they can do the most good. Noble Prize winning economist James J. Heckman has reported that, “Enriched pre-kindergarten programs available to disadvantaged children on a voluntary basis, coupled with home visitation programs, have a strong record of pormoting achievement for disadvantaged children, improving their labor market outcomes and reducing involvement in crime. Such programs are likely to generate substantial savings to society and to promote higher economic growth...” His research also indicated that ability gaps between disadvantaged and other children open up early, before schooling typically begins at age five.
Recently, eight national institutions, including National-Louis University, the National Head Start Association and the Aspire Institute issued a call for the reinvention of higher education programs for early childhood teachers and other professionals working with children from birth to age five. In their announcement, they point out that research has continually shown that, in order for children to have exceptional, high quality early care and education, they must have teachers and staff with specialized knowledge and skill. It would make sense for some of the billions of dollars pledged for early childhood education to go to the institutions that will train the needed early childhood educators.
President-elect Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, has been a strong advocate for early childhood education. That speaks well for growth in Head Start and related programs.
]]>President-elect Obama’s proposed economic stimulus package includes money for school construction and to expand broadband access for schools. The president-elect himself has said, “It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption...here in the country that invented the Internet, every child should have a chance to get online.” He has pledged a sweeping effort to modernize school buildings and equip classrooms with computers as part of the economic stimulus plan. So, it can reasonably be expected that the $500 billion economic recovery bill will include billions in grants for school modernization, computer linkups and renovation.
However, some school officials are lobbying lawmakers to include more money for education in the package . They hope that the stimulus bill will include money for special education, teacher training and grants for other educational needs. Edward R. Kealy, executive director of the lobbying group Committee for Education Funding says that over the long term, education is one of the best places for federal dollars because, “It actually has the strongest possibility of being able to pay back.” Since the main intent of the stimulus package is to create 3 million new jobs, it is not clear that such attempts to direct money to existing programs will be successful.
There are lots of questions to be answered at this point. How will individual public schools obtain their share of the stimulus money? How will the money be allocated, who will be eligible and will there be competition for grants? Details will become clearer when Congress returns to work after the holiday break. It behooves the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers to keep an eye on the process and offer teacher input to the writing of the final bill.
Almost 30,000 United States public schools failed to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) this year. This was a 28 percent yearly increase of schools failing to meet the testing standards under the No Child Left Behind act (NCLB). Critics say that an increasing number of schools to be labelled as failing is inevitable. Those critics say the law has set unrealistic requirements, including the demand that all students be proficient in math and reading by the 2013-14 school year.
As far back as 2003, the National Education Association was pointing out that AYP rules caused many good schools to be listed as failures. In that year, for example, Ridgewood High School in New Jersey was placed on the early warning list because 3 students (who had left the school) did not take the required test. Despite the fact that Ridgewood High boasted an average SAT score of 1174 (the national average in 2003 was 1026) they were placed on the early-warning list. In Florida, Gulfport Elementary received a $40,000 bonus check from Governor Jeb Bush because of its academic excellence. However, that same year, NCLB test reported that the school had failed to meet AYP requirements.
The American Federation of Teachers points out that AYP does not in fact measure the yearly progress of the same students over time. Not surprisingly, the evidence shows that whether or not a school makes AYP does not necessaily depend on its effectiveness or the presence or absence or size of achievement gaps. The union predicts that almost all schools will have failed AYP by 2014 and points out that no other nation has been, or is close to, meeting the kind of standard that has been set by NCLB.
The superintendent of the Mat-Su school district in Arkansas recently felt compelled to write a letter to the parents explaining that the schools in his district that failed to meet AYP were not bad schools. He points out in the letter that many of his “failing” schools met 30 of the 31 target measurements this year but were still downgraded under NCLB rules.
NCLB has set standards and developed rules that will make it almost impossible for public schools to meet AYP requirements in future years. Whether this was the intended result of NCLB or not, major changes must be made as soon as possible. Arne Duncan, as CEO of Chicago Public Schools, has been no fan of NCLB’s requirements . Perhaps his tenure as Secretary of Education will include the revision or removal of NCLB high-stakes testing as the be-all and end-all of educational measurement.
]]>Last week, the US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit heard arguments challenging the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) as an unfunded mandate. Robert H. Chanin, general counsel for the National Education Association told judges, “States and school districts are prisoners of this law. There are obligations that are placed on them by [NCLB], but the money is not enough to implement those requirements.” The suit, Pontiac School District vs Spelling has been wending its way through the courts since April of 2005.
When President Bush vetoed the 2008 education appropriations bill it resulted in a $14.8 billion annual gap in funding for NCLB programs. That is on top of a previously underfunded gap of $56.1 billion. Section 9527(a) of NCLB states that, “Nothing in this act shall be construed to authorize an officer or employee of the Federal government to mandate, direct, or control a state, local education agency....or any political subdivision thereof to spend any funds or incur any costs not paid for under this Act.” Despite the wording of the bill, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings argued, “NCLB is not an unfunded mandate. It is a voluntary compact between the States and the Federal government, which asks that in exchange for Federal tax dollars, results be demonstrated.”
The suit was originally dismissed in the US District Court for the Eastern Court of Michigan but the dismissal was reversed by a three judge panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. The school district’s case has precedent behind it.In 2006, the US Supreme Court ruled in Arlington Central School District vs Murphy that in spending-clause legislation, Congress must clearly express its intent to impose conditions on the grant of federal aid.
I was not able to find a timetable for the release of the circuit court’s decision on the case. It certainly puts an interesting twist on the reconsideration of NCLB that will take place under the incoming administration. A court judgement in favor of the school district might well place the current stress on high stakes testing in question.
The decision has been made. The next Secretary of Education will be Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan. After seven years at the helm of the third largest school district in the nation, Duncan will follow his basketball buddy to Washington DC.
In tapping Duncan, the President-elect said, “When it comes to school reform, Arne is the most hands-on of hands-on practitioners. When faced with tough decisions, Arne doesn’t blink.” President-elect Obama went on to say, “[Duncan] is not beholden to any one ideology, and he’s worked tirelessly to improve teacher quality. In just seven years he boosted elementary test scores here in Chicago from 38 percent of students meeting the standards to 67 percent. The dropout rate has gone down every year he’s been in charge.”
Mayor Daley selected Duncan to head the Chicago Schools in 2001. Prior to assuming the CEO position, Duncan was deputy chief of staff to former Chicago schools chief Paul Vallas. Since his appointment, he has gained a reputation as a reformer willing to take on the teachers’ union and punish underperforming schools. His recent decisions to support a pilot program offering pay for good grades, consider public boarding schools, and create a gay-friendly high school have bolstered his image as being open to new ideas. (3)
Duncan’s selection as Secretary of Education leaves Chicago with the problem of finding someone as dedicated as Duncan is to the idea that education is a civil rights issue. I would be interested in hearing opinions about this appointment from members of TEN who are Chicago teachers. I am also curious as to who teachers would recommend as the new head of the Chicago public schools.
Yesterday saw the release of the most recent results of the quadrennial Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). The report is based on science and mathematics tests given to representative samples of students at the 4th and 8th grade levels. Fourth Graders from 36 countires and eighth graders in 48 different nations were tested.
The test results produced a mixed bag of commentary. The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) is discouraged. The NSTA website says, “Science scores for both fourth and eighth grade students have remained flat since 1995 and scores for minority students are dismal.” The NSTA blames the poor results primarily on the fact that science education has been eliminated from many K-6 classrooms. Education Week tends to agree with the negative assessment, using the headline, “Asians Best US Students in Math and Science.” The article goes on to point out measurable improvement in the math scores of US Fourth graders but noted that nothing has changed in the US position relative to other nations.
MSNBC finds more positive news saying that, “In math and science, American kids are doing better than people think...but some Asian countries have an edge in math that just keeps growing. US students have made significant gains in math since 1995 and score above average on international fourth and eighth grade tests.” The New York Times also picks out the higher math scores for their headline and quotes the acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statisics who said, “We were pleased to see improvements in math, and wished we’d seen more in science.”
Overall, scores in the US were above the international average in each subject and grade. However, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong dominated the fourth grade tests. Several developing eastern European countries (such as Hungary, Latvia,and the Czech Republic) outscored the US on some of the tests. In one interesting part of the study, Massachusetts and Minnesota were graded as though they were separate countries. Both states did better than all but the top performing Asian countries. The overall TIMSS findings match the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) that recently found some progress in math and less progress in science.
So, what should we draw from this latest test? Has the emphasis on reading under No Child Left Behind distracted schools from providing a more rounded education for our children? Should we be spending more time on science education?
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