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• IRA summarizes ESEA proposal

  3/19/2010 10:45:00 AM

  On March 15, the Obama administration sent to Congress its blueprint for a new Elementary and Secondary Education Act to replace No Child Left Behind. For further information, read the full document or IRA's summary.

  Policy

• Ever forget a book you read? Join the club...

  3/19/2010 9:44:48 AM

  At a bookstore, I had picked up a novel called The Black Obelisk by Erich Maria Remarque, the German author of All Quiet on the Western Front, which was published in 1928. The plot of The Black Obelisk, which came out in 1956, unfolds in Germany following World War I. It has historical veracity, sharply differentiated characters, Nazis, and, believe it or not, humor. I loved it for the first 60 pages—at which point I realized that I had loved it before, 40-odd years ago. 

  I was enjoying it so much the second time that I kept going to the end. My pleasure came in different ways: At the first reading I wondered what would happen; the second time around I was full of anticipation for what I knew was coming. I had the sensation that I was walking a familiar path, one strewn with long-undisturbed memories of my own life around the time of that first reading.

  Read more of this (if you remember to) by Richard O'Mara in The Urbanite online.

  Feature

  Feature Reading Disabilities

• World Banks OKs $1.05 billion in education projects for India

  3/19/2010 9:33:56 AM

  The World Bank has approved two projects worth $ 1.05 billion (over Rs 4,800 crore) for India, aimed at expanding the reach of primary schools and the quality of engineering education in the country.

  In a statement, the World Bank further said India has made significant progress in meeting its education goals, especially at the primary level. Read more in The Hindu online.

  Global Literacy

  Early Childhood Literacy Reading promotion

• Going beyond bracketology

  3/19/2010 9:21:49 AM

  There must be more to life than bracketology. But once March Madness sets in, it's hard not to become a college basketball fanatic. For those who want to do so more intelligently (or who need good reading material for those timeouts), Marjorie Kehe, The Christian Science Monitor's book editor, offers a list of 10 books she guarantess will both boost knowledge and increase spectator pleasure. Bounce down the court to the website.

  Opinion

  Feature Motivation Reading promotion

• Still celebrating Patrick and the Irish love of literature, language, libraries

  3/18/2010 9:27:43 AM

  Why should we celebrate the Irish?

  No doubt, several reasons could be proffered. But for me one answer stands out. Long, long ago the Irish pulled off a remarkable feat: They saved the books of the Western world and left them as gifts for all humanity. It was the Irish who were around to pick up the pieces when the Roman Empire collapsed in the West under the increasing assaults of Germanic tribes.

  It is hard to overstate the momentousness of that collapse. By the early sixth century, Western Europe had become largely illiterate, its teachers dead, its students on the run, its libraries turned into kindling. Ireland, however, had just settled down, thanks to a tough old bird named Patrick, a Roman citizen raised in the province of Britain who had been grabbed by Irish slavers when he was a teenager.

  The Irish fanned out across Europe, salvaging books wherever they could, making copies, reassembling libraries and teaching the newly settled barbarians of the continent to read and write. 

  Read more of this piece by Thomas Cahill in The New York Times online.

  Feature

  Libraries Writing

• "How Well Are American Students Learning?" report released

  3/18/2010 9:18:44 AM

  The 2009 Brown Center on Education Policy annual report, "How Well Are American Students Learning?", analyzes the state of American education using the latest measures of student learning, uncovers and explains important trends in achievement test scores, and identifies promising and disappointing educational reforms. The 2009 research shows the persistence of test scores and school performance, as well as examines the narrowing gap between high and low-achievers. Read the full report at the Brookings website.

  Research and Reports

  Issues in the News Struggling Readers Methodology Socioeconomic Factors Low Literacy

• Study: Digital media affect early childhood literacy

  3/18/2010 9:00:00 AM

  The Pearson Foundation recently released “The Digital World of Young Children: Emergent Literacy,” a research white paper on the effects of digital media on young children’s learning, at the annual Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) International Symposium.

  Authored by early childhood education experts Jay Blanchard and Terry Moore from Arizona State University, the white paper examines the latest research on how young children learn using increasingly personalized and mobile media, including cell phones, television, video games, smart devices, and computers. The report focuses on the impact of these new ways of learning and highlights the degree to which these emergent literacies are rooted in young people’s use of common-place mobile devices--especially in developing and least-developed nations.  

  Blanchard’s and Moore’s research finds that developmental milestones are changing as a new generation of young children approach learning and literacy in ways not thought possible in the past. According to this new report, digital media is already transforming the language and cultural practices that enable early literacy development, making possible a new kind of personal and global interconnectedness.  

  The full report, as well as an executive summary of the study, can be accessed online.  

  Research and Reports

  Early Childhood Literacy Research Literacy and Technology

• New IRA book spotlights boys and reading

  3/18/2010 8:45:00 AM

  According to a new study from the Center on Educational Policy that analyzed state test scores in reading and math, “the lagging performance by boys in reading is the most pressing gender-gap issue facing our schools.” In some states, boys are scoring a full 10 percentage points below girls on standardized reading tests.

  These statistics reaffirm what noted expert William Brozo has been telling us for years. In his second edition of To Be a Boy, To Be a Reader: Engaging Teen and Preteen Boys in Active Literacy, Brozo sheds light on “the boy crisis” and offers solutions. Brozo emphasizes that “engaged readers have a much greater chance of staying in school, expanding career and life options, and maturing into self-actualized adults.” The premise is simple—meet boys where they are, then help them get to where they need to be. But the ideas offered in Brozo’s book are crucial, providing exactly the framework needed to motivate, inspire, and truly reach boys before it’s too late.

  To Be a Boy, To Be a Reader centers on engaging boys with books that contain positive male archetypes. Readers will get full descriptions—with literature examples—of all 10 archetypes, as well as a new chapter that focuses on using alternative texts such as graphic novels and comic books. In addition, the book offers fresh ideas for involving parents and community leaders in boys’ literacy growth and an expansive, fully updated young adult literature list, organized by the 10 archetypes.

  To Be a Boy, To Be a Reader will be available from IRA in late April at a cost of $22.95 for IRA members and $28.95 for others. To find out more or to pre-order, visit the book's page on the IRA website.  

  IRA Publications

• Report: Girls outperforming boys on standardized reading tests

  3/17/2010 9:17:32 AM

  Girls are outperforming boys in every state in the nation on standardized reading tests, according to a new national report. And in Utah, girls score as well or better than boys in math -- until they reach high school.The study, by the Washington D.C.-based Center on Education Policy (CEP), examined 2008 state test scores for boys and girls in fourth, eighth and 10th grades.

  "We have good news for girls, but bad news for boys," Jack Jennings, president and chief executive of the CEP, said in a phone interview with reporters. "In no state in the country are boys doing better than girls in reading at the elementary, middle or high-school level. This trend of boys lagging behind girls in reading is no fluke."

  The gap between percentages of boys and girls who were proficient in reading was larger than 10 points in many states. Read this story in The Salt Lake Tribune or see the report at the Center's website.

  Research and Reports

  Early Childhood Literacy Adolescent Literacy Gender Issues

• Poverty-stricken school in South Africa performs "miracle" in pass rates

  3/17/2010 9:07:45 AM

  Ethembeni Enrichment Centre, a school in a run-down part of Port Elizabeth, the largest city in Eastern Cape, South Africa's poorest province, has achieved a remarkable 100% pass rate for a dozen years.

  It is the first day of applications for the 2011 school year and a woman in traditional Xhosa attire is filling out a form for her child. Ethembeni only accepts pupils whose mother tongue is Xhosa, which generally translates into poor and black. The annual school fees are R3,800 (US$506), excluding stationery. Many poor parents make sacrifices to keep their children in school, but school principal Elbe Malherbe Malherbe believes in affordable -- not free -- education, because it is an "investment by pupils, parents and teachers [that] everyone must buy into".
  
  The language of instruction is English, class attendance is compulsory, homework must be completed, pupils must clean the classrooms and grounds every day, and parents must be involved in their child's education.
  "The classrooms were barely furnished. The driveway to the school was a rocky, narrow passage ... The school hall was packed with a few hundred eager faces, the children virtually sitting on top of one another on the floor ... I saw struggle, hunger and poverty etched into each child's countenance," educationist and vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State, Jonathan Jansen, recounted after a recent visit.
  
  "For any child to pass under these difficult circumstances, it would take a miracle," he wrote. Yet nearly two-thirds of the 70 pupils in Ethembeni's 2009 matric, or final year, class achieved a university-entrance pass, while other financially comparable schools hung on at the bottom of the academic achievement ladder. Read more at IRIN News online.

  Global Literacy

  Teacher Training Socioeconomic Factors Low Literacy Curriculum

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