Your source for news from the world of literacy

• Common Core State Standards Initiative group members announced

  7/2/2009 9:00:00 AM

  The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) announced Thursday, July 1, the names of the experts serving on the Common Core State Standards Development Work Group and Feedback Group and provided more detailed information on the college and career ready standards development process.

  Three literacy experts who are members of the International Reading Association (IRA) have been named to the Feedback Group: Peter Afflerbach, Michael Kamil, and Timothy Shanahan, former president of IRA.

  The college and career ready standards are expected to be ready for comment July 2009. The K-12 standards work is expected to be completed in December 2009. For more information, visit the new Common Core website.

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• Missouri governor signs on to common core standards

  7/1/2009 9:06:24 AM

  Missouri Governor Jay Nixon has signed the first part of a memorandum developing a common core of educational standards in English and math at the K-12 level, uniting his state with the 46 other states already on board with such standards. The plan is expected to go forward after the Missouri State Board of Education's scheduled announcement of the state's new education commissioner Thursday morning (July 2, 2009).

  In a letter to Ray Scheppach, executive director of the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Nixon stated that he supports the standards.“It is important to take this first step and join in this nationwide process to develop a common core of state standards in English arts and mathematics for elementary and secondary students based on research and evidence-based learning,” Nixon stated in the letter.

  ACT and other testing organizations will develop the standards, said Russell Thompson, president of the State Board of Education and a former Columbia superintendent. The advantage is that schools can compare student test scores state-by-state or compare one state to the national average, he said. Read more in The Missourian online.

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• A "license to teach" in England's state schools is planned

  7/1/2009 8:55:40 AM

  Teachers will need a new "license to teach" to work in state schools in England, which will be reviewed every five years and revoked if they are not up to scratch, under plans to eradicate poorly performing staff from the English education system.

  The government yesterday unveiled plans to roll out a licensing system, similar to that in place for doctors and solicitors, under which all teachers will be assessed regularly by their headteachers and face being barred from schools if they are not performing well enough.

  Ed Balls, the schools secretary, said: "It may be that we will discover some teachers who don't make the grade ... we want this to be a profession that is continually learning and developing and that will be central to the license. It's saying we want to ensure the best teachers in every classroom in every part of the country."

  The plan is contained in a white paper published yesterday by Balls, setting out widespread changes to the English school system. The licensing system follows concerns among headteachers that it is difficult to sack under-performing staff, who often move schools to avoid being dismissed. It will be introduced in September 2010, starting with newly qualified teachers, those returning to work after a break from the profession and supply teachers, before a national rollout. Read more about the plan in The Guardian online.

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• Study: Bedtime conversation may be better than stories for language development

  7/1/2009 8:37:45 AM

  Reading children bedtime stories may not be as effective in helping them to learn language as talking to them before they go to sleep, according to new research. Engaging them in basic conversation could be up to six times more effective than reading to them, U.S. health experts believe.

  Even if the baby or toddler cannot form words, their primitive responses to a conversation helps develop their language skills, they said. What the study calls “adult monologuing” -- in other words, grown ups talking at children -- had a “weak” impact on language development, said the study. Parents have been reading fairytales and other stories to babies for generations, often just to help them sleep or to form a bond between them. It is also recommended by child health experts around the world as a good way to develop language.

  Competitive parents wanting to give their children as many academic advantages as possible often carefully choose books to help the babies learn to talk or read faster. Yet this may have little effect compared to the very simple exercise of a one-on-one conversations between the adult and child, said the research by Frederick Zimmerman and colleagues from the UCLA School of Public Health, California, to be published in the journal Pediatrics. Read the article in The Telegraph online.

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• IBBY regional conference set

  6/30/2009 9:35:00 AM

  The 2009 International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) Regional Conference, scheduled for October 2-4, 2009, in St. Charles, Illinois, featured speakers from more than 15 countries on five continents, including Shaun Tan from Australia, author of The Arrival and Tales from Outer Suburbia. The early bird registration deadline for the conference has been extended to July 15.

  For further information and online registration, visit the following page on the United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY) website.

   

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• Time may be ripe for common set of standards

  6/30/2009 8:46:35 AM

  Efforts to establish national education standards have always foundered on the shoals of culture wars and fears of too much federal control. But the time may be ripe for something close: a common set of standards for K-12 math and reading that states could opt to adopt.

  Forty-seven states now support drafting such standards by year's end. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been using his bully pulpit, and the promise of federal stimulus money, to encourage states to abandon the current mishmash of individual standards.

  "We've got the best shot we've ever had at getting national standards and tests in this country," says Michael Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a research group in Washington that recently hosted a discussion on internationally benchmarked standards. "But there's still a lot of peril on the road," he says. While state leaders are eager to collaborate, "not a single state has promised to adopt the standards." Read the article in The Christian Science Monitor online.

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• Summer reading lists change with the times

  6/30/2009 8:35:00 AM

  Summer reading lists for high school students, which have traditionally focused on heavy literary classics, are becoming much more reader friendly in many places, according to an article by Lisa Kocian of The Boston Globe. These days, many lists feature books by contemporary authors such as Dan Brown and Mitch Albom.

  "I'm concerned about turning reading into work," said Donna Johns, a library teacher at Newton North High School. "Sometimes you do read for work, for information, for class, but sometimes you really should just be reading for pleasure."

  Concord-Carlisle High School, meanwhile, is in the second year of its One School One Book program; in a schoolwide vote students chose Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, about one man's work to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

  To learn more, read the full article.

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• This summer school is fun, students say

  6/29/2009 10:11:14 AM

  Camp tents and card games and toy horses that whinny? These kids may be in rooms full of desks and it may be June, but isn’t there some kind of law that says summer school can’t be fun?

  “I love it,” veteran teacher Sharon Hartshorne exuded when asked about the summer school reading program at Dallas Elementary, “And I love it because during the school year I see students who don’t want to get involved or who show they are not interested, yet in the summer time they shine.”

  Even a casual tour of the classrooms shows this is not the summer school the older generation may remember. Each day opens with a brief group assembly that more closely resembles a pep rally as teachers rev up the students for their three hours of learning. Some students will get one-on-one attention and the three hours of classes are filled with fun, engaging activities.

  “We emphasize skills, but we always try to keep the big ideas of reading, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension and fluency,” she said. The goal isn’t necessarily to make specific gains in specific skills, though some of the sophisticated techniques do that. That occurs throughout the school year as teachers strive to meet specific benchmarks. For example, by the end of second grade, students are expected to read 90 words a minute. By the end of fifth, it’s 125." Read more in The Wilkes Barre Times Leader online.

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• Study: Low literacy affecting Philadelphia's labor market

  6/29/2009 9:50:24 AM

  More than half of Philadelphia's working-age adults, about 550,000 people, cannot handle the basic arithmetic and reading necessary to succeed in the majority of jobs in the city.

  "If you have low literacy, you have a labor market that doesn't welcome you," said Paul Harrington, a labor economist who created a study of workforce readiness for the Philadelphia Workforce Investment Board. The study will be released today.

  The average Philadelphia score for prose literacy -- meaning the ability to read simple instructions and pull some facts out of a paragraph -- is 260 out of 500. Yet people who are health-care technicians, secretaries, teachers, engineers, architects, scientists, computer technicians, drafters, managers, librarians, bankers, insurers, security guards, repairmen, and community organizers -- the majority of jobs in Philadelphia -- need higher scores, from 277 to 336, to accomplish their tasks. Read more in The Philiadelphia Inquirer online.

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• OECD offers new "education lighthouse"

  6/29/2009 9:46:00 AM

  As part of its drive to help governments and other stakeholders respond to the global economic crisis, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has launched an online collaborative platform called "educationtoday" to pool knowledge and facilitate exchange on education issues. This "education lighthouse" is designed to inform education professionals and other interested stakeholders on the latest developments in the education sector.

  For further information, visit the educationtoday website.

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• Peer review helps identify struggling teachers and help them

  6/29/2009 9:14:36 AM

  Jean Bernstein rang a cowbell, her cue to quiet the sixth-graders at Roberto Clemente Middle School for a lesson on multiplying decimals. "You need to settle down," she said. But that afternoon in Germantown, students seemed intent on chatting, clapping and exchanging high-fives. As the teacher led the class through a sheet of problems, one boy punctuated every answer by exclaiming, "I agree!"

  The students might have cut Bernstein some slack had they known that she, too, was being graded. Last fall, Bernstein entered Peer Assistance and Review, a Montgomery County program that identifies struggling teachers and tries to help them improve. Those who do not face dismissal.

  Peer review, embraced by more than 80 school systems nationwide, confronts one of public education's most vexing problems: What to do with under-performing teachers? Union contracts and tenure rules tend to make it difficult to dismiss ineffective teachers. But in Montgomery, the union is teaming with school officials to weed out -- or, better yet, help improve -- teachers who fall short. Read the article in The Washington Post online.

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• Cutting summer programs could hinder academic progress

  6/26/2009 8:00:00 AM

  Last year, Joseline and Mirelyne De Leon attended free summer school in downtown Los Angeles while their parents worked. It provided more than just a haven during the day. It also gave the two girls, 13 and 10 years old, the academic help they needed to bolster their grades for the following school year.

  This year, budget cuts have forced the Los Angeles Unified School District to drop summer classes for elementary- and middle-school students, leaving their father, Rudy De Leon, trying to scrape up $50 a week for each girl for a private program. He is glad his daughters will receive some teaching over the summer. But they won’t receive school credit, and De Leon worries they might fall behind. “We’ll try to do the best we can,” he says.

  Families across the country are facing similar dilemmas as state and local budget cuts are hitting school districts hard—forcing many of them to make cuts in summer programs that many educators consider critical to students’ academic success. The American Association of School Administrators found that about a quarter of school districts have cut summer and after-school programs this year, a threefold increase from 2008, according to a March survey of more than 800 administrators nationwide. Read the article in The Wall Street Journal online.

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• Georgia continues probe into alleged cheating to meet AYP

  6/25/2009 9:41:00 AM

  At least three Glynn County educators suspected in the Burroughs-Molette Elementary School in Brunswick, Georgia, cheating scandal will be reported to the state for possible discipline as investigations continue to identify whoever corrected student answers on a mandated test last summer.

  Superintendent Howard Mann said the educators "had the most immediate access to the test and answer sheets" after it was completed by students. It's possible that others also had access to it, said Mann, citing a Governor's Office of Student Achievement investigation, and a separate probe by Andy Lakin, school system attorney. Mann declined to identify the educators.

  Evidence so far shows that someone altered the results of the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test math retest taken by 15 of 23 Burroughs-Molette students last summer, according to the state investigation. The higher test scores allowed Burroughs-Molette to meet mandated Adequate Yearly Progress student achievement standards and avoid sanctions under the federal No Child Left Behind law. Read more about this and allegations of cheating in other Georgia schools in The Florida Times-Union online.

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• Teachers team up to meet the needs of kids

  6/25/2009 9:12:59 AM

  The old proverb, “Two heads are better than one,” has special meaning for the teachers in the Chillicothe R-2 School District in Chillicothe, Missouri, because it describes the district’s philosophy of instruction in the classroom.

  The district has been operating with Professional Learning Communities for three years and, during that time, the shift toward teacher collaboration is not only evident, but in full swing at each of the school district’s student population centers.

  “It used to be that teachers taught in isolation,” said R-2 Superintendent Dr. Linda Gray Smith. She noted that before PLCs, teachers walked into their classrooms, closed the doors and either “swam very well or they sunk.”
  “By working together, you get the best minds to meet the needs of the kids,” Smith explained. Read more in The Constitution-Tribune online.

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• Education Secretary kicks off "Read to the Top" summer reading campaign

  6/25/2009 8:57:30 AM

   U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on Wednesday kicked off the Department's summer reading campaign--"Read to the Top!" --with the children's classic books "Clifford the Big Red Dog" and "Where the Wild Things Are." The Secretary read to young children, including his own, on the plaza of the Department's Lyndon Baines Johnson headquarters building. The initiative is in response to President Obama's "United We Serve" national volunteer campaign that calls for all Americans to serve in their communities over the summer.

  At lunchtime throughout the summer, the Department's weekly reading campaign, which runs through Sept. 11, will feature various children's books read by the Secretary, other Cabinet members and top Administration officials.

  In addition to the Department's efforts to stop summer reading loss through "Read to the Top!" it also awards Striving Readers grants aimed at raising the literacy level of adolescent students and building a strong, scientific research base for adolescent literacy instruction. This year's competition is underway, and the deadline is Aug. 10. When this year's grants are awarded, State Education Agencies will receive approximately $7.2 million to implement and evaluate supplemental literacy programs for struggling readers in middle and high schools. For more information about these grants, log onto www.ed.gov/programs/strivingreaders/applicant.html.

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• Elementary school in DC area may sport Obama's name

  6/25/2009 8:49:03 AM

  President Obama's name would grace a new Prince George's County elementary school a few miles from the White House under a proposal scheduled for a vote tonight, barely five months after he took office.

  If the Prince George's Board of Education approves the plan, Barack Obama Elementary School would be the first in the Washington, DC, region named after the president. The school is under construction outside the Capital Beltway in Upper Marlboro and is slated for completion by year's end.

  The school would not be the first in the country named after Obama. The Hempstead Union Free School District in New York voted to rename Ludlum Elementary School for him in November shortly after his victory in the presidential election. Since then, several other school boards nationwide have taken steps to name new schools or rename old ones after the president. (The honors haven't been confined to the United States: Antigua has plans to name its largest mountain and a national park after him.) Read more in The Washington Post online.

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• Districts step up recruitment efforts as "boomer" teachers retire

  6/24/2009 9:13:29 AM

  A spike in the number of baby boomer teachers retiring has school districts across the country preparing for a teacher shortage. A spokesperson for The National Commission on Teaching and America's Future said they expect the number of retiring teachers to peak soon.

  In Oklahoma, nearly half of the teachers are older than 50. That means Oklahoma will more than likely soon see a sharp increase in the number of retiring teachers. "Teachers, like everyone else, want to enjoy their golden years, and they're looking forward to their retirement," said James Wilbanks, executive director of Teachers' Retirement System.

  In June, the number of retiring teachers in Oklahoma rose from an average of about 800 in years past to 1,077, according to Oklahoma Teachers' Retirement System reports. The Retirement System predicts the increase in retirees to continue over the next decade, and with a decreasing number of incoming applicants, a teacher shortage seems all too possible. But Tierney Cook with Oklahoma City Public Schools said the district has a plan: "Recruitment, recruitment, recruitment." Read more at NewsOn6.com.

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• Summer's a good time to wrestle with a couple of good books

  6/24/2009 9:05:35 AM

  World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) is teaming with the Young Adult Library Services Association for the SummerSlam Reading Jam, which kicks off today in libraries across the country, according to Kevin Eck, who blogs about professional wrestling for The Baltimore Sun.

  Participating libraries will award a poster featuring WWE stars Rey Mysterio, Evan Bourne, Beth Phoenix and Eve to the first 25 kids between 10 and 18 who check out two books. Each poster will be numbered. On July 17, two poster numbers will be drawn, and the kids with those numbers will each win an all-expenses-paid trip for two to SummerSlam at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on Aug. 23. There also will be prizes for runners-up. Read more and find a list of participating libraries at Ring Posts.

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• Tennessee teacher education program a model, council says

  6/24/2009 8:44:28 AM

  Tennessee is at the forefront of major education reform, according to the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, which accredits more than 700 teacher education programs around the United States. Now NCATE wants to raise the bar by implementing nationwide what has worked in Tennessee.

  The council announced on June 23, 2009, what many educators call the most significant revision of teacher education requirements in more than a decade. In order to secure NCATE accreditation after 2013, colleges and universities will have to modify their education programs to implement redesign guidelines created by the Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR) or similar pilot programs.

  “A big difference will be the student teaching component,” said Carlette Hardin, interim dean of the College of Education at Austin Peay State University. “Right now, students do a semester of student teaching at two schools. By 2013, education seniors will have a whole year of student teaching,” said Hardin. Two other big changes: the implementation of data-driven models and performance-based assessment for teaching candidates.

  The redesign, called the Teacher Quality Initiative, has been in the works since 2006. Read more in The Leaf-Chronicle online.

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• Sherman Alexie's "True Diary" draws protests

  6/23/2009 9:23:26 AM

  Antioch High School has agreed to form a committee that includes parents to review books after an assigned summer reading book drew protests because of its language and description of sexual acts. Chicago-area Community High School District 117 Superintendent Jay Sabatino said that after reading the book, he and two school board members decided to keep it on the summer reading list. "The consensus is we feel it is a valuable read, a good read… . We will continue to offer an alternative if someone wants one," Sabatino said.
  
  Earlier, school board President Wayne Sobczak said he doubted the book -- The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie -- would be pulled from shelves as some parents wanted. "I am sensing the book is going to stay because it is age-appropriate," said Sobczak, who said he had also received positive input from parents who read the book. He noted that the 400 incoming freshmen already have an alternate book that they may choose to read. Read more about the controversy in The Chicago Tribune online.

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