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It’s an irony of the testing era that many educators have pointed out: As fateful as standardized tests have become for schools, they generally have little significance for the kids who actually take them. The San Marcos Unified School District in California wants to change that by implementing a “grade bump” program that would enable high school students to boost their course grades by scoring well on state tests. The idea is to give transcript-conscious students a reason to take the tests more seriously. “It’s demoralizing when you know that the school is being graded and the student is not,” says San Marcos board member Beckie Garrett. Not everyone is so high on the idea, however. English teacher Mike Spangler recently told the school board that the program would be unfair to kids who don’t test well and, by allowing them to fall back on their test scores, could give some students one more reason not to pay attention in class.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As tech-savvy as Americans like to think they are, a new report by the World Economic Forum ranks the U.S. 7th in terms of its development and use of technology. At the top of the heap is Denmark, followed by Sweden, Singapore, Finland, and Switzerland. Although the U.S. is still technologically formidable, according to the forum, its pesky regulatory rules and the snail’s pace at which individuals and organizations adopt new technology is allowing other countries to pull ahead. The forum’s report echoes assertions made in a recent study by the U.S.-based AEA (formerly known as the American Electronics Association), which blames some of the problem on math and science education deficits.

But don’t blame the kids. They’re the ones—at least in Massachusetts, where at least 80 districts are not keeping up with technology needs—who end up bringing their own laptops to class. That’s the only way some schools, otherwise stuck with outdated PCs, are able to make use of educational software and CD-Roms. This is a bit of a nightmare scenario for the IT folks, who have to worry about viruses and securing networks. In addition, the state Department of Ed reports that half of Massachusetts’ teachers are still in the early stages of tech literacy. Education Commissioner David Driscoll is understandably concerned that the state’s schools are not keeping up with the pace of technological change. “It’s not a question of schools and districts making progress,” he says. “It’s a matter of ... not making as much progress as there should be.”

Posted by Rich Shea, Teacher Magazine at 4:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After the death of a star student last spring, Florida high school teacher Paul Moore got to thinking about accountability. The student, Jeffrey Johnson, was the third at Miami Carol City Senior High School to be shot to death that academic year. Moore drafted a petition to governor Charlie Crist demanding that he make the state's schools and their surrounding communities safer. He concluded: "You are accountable to us for it!" Moore's petition, which several thousand people have signed, focuses on tightening Florida's gun laws, which are among the most lenient in the country. "I see these kids as the canary in the coal mine," Moore says. "They're the first to go. But ultimately all our lives are in danger."

Posted by Denise Kersten Wills at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The mantra at most schools these days—and rightly so—is something along the lines of, “All of our students will succeed.” But is that what every teacher really thinks? When it comes to city schools, at least, the answer is no. A new survey, sponsored by the National School Boards Association, finds that of the 4,700 K-12 educators polled anonymously in a dozen urban districts, 25 percent said most kids wouldn’t succeed in a community college or university. And another 18 percent weren’t certain. Administrators, perhaps predictably, weren’t as pessimistic: While roughly 16 percent admitted their students “are not motivated to learn,” only 7 percent ruled out higher-ed success altogether. The survey’s author, a professor of education law and policy, says he’s suprised by the relatively high percentage of negative teacher comments. But John Mitchell, of the American Federation of Teachers, suggests that exactly when each educator filled out the survey may have something to do with the results. “You go through a lot in a day, and you have days when you feel optimistic and days when you don’t.”

Posted by Rich Shea, Teacher Magazine at 5:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Public-school integration has been the law of the land ever since 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled “separate but equal” schooling unconstitutional.

But now a class-action lawsuit in Florida charges that the Pinellas County School Board’s policy of equal access to education has unconstitutionally failed to properly educate the district's 20,000 African American students.

The suit, headed for trial this July, was filed seven years ago by a father on behalf of his son, then a student at Sawgrass Elementary School in St. Petersburg. The boy had academic problems that were "typical of those difficulties commonly faced by students of African descent," the lawsuit said. Because the school system hadn’t given him and other African American students academic help uniquely tailored to their race, the suit concludes, schools were breaking the law.

African American students in the county lag far behind whites on standardized-test scores and are more than twice as likely to be suspended, but district officials insist it would be racist to treat all black students differently than their white peers.

"Our programs are designed to address a student's academic needs, not their skin color," said school board member Nancy Bostock. Her own son, an African American student in a county school, is officially a plaintiff under the terms of the suit.

Posted by Scott J. Cech, Teacher Magazine at 5:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

An award-winning poet is speaking out in defense of two teachers in Los Angeles who were fired in connection with a planned recital of one of her poems.

Earlier this month, administrators at the Celerity Nascent Charter School dismissed teachers Marisol Alba and Sean Strauss for signing a student’s letter protesting the school’s decision to cancel a reading of Marilyn Nelson’s poem “A Wreath for Emmett Till” during a Black History Month program.

Now Nelson, a former National Book Award finalist, is urging that the teachers be reinstated. “It’s a terrible injustice,” she said. “I wanted them to know that they’re not alone. They raised their voices and that took courage.”

In canceling the reading, school officials had argued that the story of Emmett Till, the teenager whose brutal 1955 murder in Mississippi helped set off the civil rights movement, was inappropriate for younger students and sent the wrong message for the event. “We don’t want to focus on how the history of the country has been checkered but on how we dress for success, walk proud, and celebrate all the accomplishments we’ve made,” said Vielka McFarland, Celerity’s executive director.

According to Strauss’s termination letter, he was dismissed in part for “authorizing by physical signature a nonsupportive message to the administrative staff.”

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The news stories pop up with a regularity that triggers yawns instead of gasps: A student's "hit list" has been found in a locker, notebook, or online. It contains the names of classmates and categorizes them according to the harm the writer wants to inflict upon them—ranging from "kill" to "knock out cold." As hit lists become almost commonplace, school officials and experts are debating both what the lists mean and how best to respond.

"It's like a fad ... It becomes something that's popular to do," says a university professor who's studied kids who kill their peers. Some students argue that the lists are simply a way to release anger and stress. But others, like Ronald Stephens of the National School Safety Center, say hit lists—especially the online variety—can portend real danger. "Challenges or threats that are communicated in written form have a tendency to escalate," Stephens says.

Paradoxically, while hit lists have become more common, school violence has actually declined since the early 1990s. But those statistics don't comfort school officials when they're faced with a hit list at their school.

What do you think? Are hit lists a "blueprint for deadly action," or essentially harmless?

Posted by at 1:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Science fairs have long been an education staple, but students in Florida displayed their knowledge of a different subject this week. The Polk County History Fair's theme of "Triumph and Tragedy" inspired interactive exhibits on the Black Death, Galileo's criminal trial, the Warsaw ghetto, and other scenes from the past. Two students even performed a skit on the history of standardized testing. "Anyone can sit in a classroom all day and learn," said Brittany Stephens, one half of the testing-skit duo. "But with the [history fair], you get involved and care about your subject." Rozy Scott, the district's American history grant manager, couldn't help noticing the irony in Stephens' choice of subject. Scott suspects schools' growing focus on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which does not include a history portion, contributed to decreased participation in the fair this year.

Posted by Amanda Jones at 1:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Like flowers in spring, those little tricks that supposedly boost student performance pop up every standardized-testing season. Some paint classroom walls a soothing pink while others, hoping to pump the adrenaline, lead pre-test physical exercises. In parts of Maryland this week, they’re handing out peppermint candies. And, as it turns out, there may be a good scientific reason. Back in the ’90s, a study at the University of Cincinnati concluded that the peppermint scent helped test subjects focus better on long-term tasks. Reactions at the 800-student Eastern Middle School in Silver Spring are mixed. “I don’t think [peppermint] makes you smarter,” one 11-year-old says, “but it clears your mind and makes you feel more confident.” An ETS research scientist suggests that, even if the science is questionable, the suggestion that peppermint helps may have a positive impact. But Paul Skilton-Sylvester, at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, believes folks are missing the point. Using a Philadelphia specialty as an example, he comments (with due sarcasm): “We’ve found that test scores go up when there’s a steady diet of cheese steaks with provolone, in combination with exciting lessons that ask students to wrestle with important ideas connected to real world problems.” Chew on that.

Posted by Rich Shea, Teacher Magazine at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

What if there were someone at each high school whose only responsibility was to keep students from dropping out?

That’s the job description of 363 newly minted “graduation coaches” in Georgia, but the description is the only easy part of the work: about a third of the state’s high school students never make it to commencement.

“Figuring out the best way to do this job has been a constant challenge,” says Kim Stewart, a former English teacher and guidance counselor who became North Gwinnett High School’s graduation coach when the program was launched this year. “But I’m allowed the creativity to plan a program and come up with the best ways to help students.”

Posted by Scott J. Cech, Teacher Magazine at 5:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

From the changing-world department: An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal laments the displacement of libraries in today’s learning environment. While many adults “recall the libraries of our childhoods as magical places,” writes columnist Jeff Zaslow, kids today—virtually weaned on Google—“feel little connection” to the local stacks. “The library is removed from their lives,” comments one retired librarian. “It’s a last-ditch place to go if they need to find something out.” Zaslow believes the trend has a direct educational impact: As students become more reliant on the Internet for schoolwork, he says, many get to college with little sense of how to use the library for research. They may also be missing out on deeper kinds of learning and discovery. “The library is about delayed gratification,” says Mel Levine, a pediatrics professor quoted by Zaslow. “It’s about browsing through the shelves of biographies. ‘Do I want Jackie Robinson? Franklin Roosevelt? What will I do when I grow up?’ The library slows you down and makes you think.”

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Gary Spina grew up reading Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson, hunting squirrels, exploring the woods, and failing in school. "I never wanted to see the inside of a school again," he recalls. "I knew I wanted to experience things." So when his circuitous career path—including stints in the military, the police, and the merchant marine—delivered him back to a classroom to teach English, he understood his students' aversion to studying grammar. He tried to make it less painful by replacing the dry examples from the textbooks with sentences about his many adventures. Recently, he parlayed these into a book called The Mountain Man's Field Guide to Grammar. With words like "pemmican" in the glossary and sentence examples like "Dirty Doris spit tobacco juice," it's no Strunk and White's—and Spina likes it that way. "I thought, 'Let me try to make it fun,'" he says.

Posted by at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Perfection is an ideal, not a real-world goal. The politicians working on the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind may realize this, but that doesn't mean they're ready to lower the law's requirement that 100 percent of children reach proficiency in reading and math by 2014.

The reason: rhetoric.

"There is a zero percent chance that we will ever reach a 100 percent target," said Robert Linn, codirector of UCLA's National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing. "But because the title of the law is so rhetorically brilliant, politicians are afraid to change this completely unrealistic standard. They don't want to be accused of leaving some children behind."

Says Jack Dale, superintendent of schools in Fairfax County, Virginia: "How can you publicly state it's okay to have some children not meet standards? Politically, you're committing suicide if you say it."

Then again, some of the law's proponents say Americans don't want to lower the bar. "Are we going to rewrite the Declaration of Independence and say only 85 percent of men are created equal?" asked Republican Senator Lamar Alexander, a former U.S. secretary of education. "Most of our politics in America is about the disappointment of not meeting the high goals we set for ourselves."

Posted by Denise Kersten Wills at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Anyone who’s seen the film or stage version knows that The Fully Monty isn’t so much about seeing naked men as it is witnessing out-of-work guys finally find employment—in a strip show. But the opposite is true for Jason Brenner, a music teacher at Lemon Bay High School in Florida, who was told by school officials to either remove himself from the show’s nude scene or resign. Brenner plans to do the latter after he finishes the show’s run at a local theater March 18. School officials claim their decision is a moral, not an artistic, one. But the managing director at the Venice Little Theatre, where Monty has broken sales records, says of the supposedly offending scene: “You can see a bare bottom for about two seconds, and that’s really it. The rest of it is all suggestion and the sense of adventure.” A photo from the production suggests as much, but Brenner, perhaps emboldened by the box office, has made up his mind. “I am not going to stop myself from doing what I love to do,” he explains, “and I have a career path in mind to take and it’s definitely not teaching high school.” Before leaving Lemon Bay, however, he plans to honor a former commitment and serve as musical director for the high school’s production of a far less controversial show: Cats.

Posted by Rich Shea, Teacher Magazine at 3:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Remember that Houston merit-pay mess a couple of months ago?

It’s just gotten messier.

In January, under the largest merit-pay program of its kind, school officials doled out $14 million to almost 8,000 staffers. Exactly who got what became public record—and a public outcry—after a local newspaper printed names and dollar figures.

Perplexingly, some teachers of the year were not among the recipients, who got anywhere from $100 to more than $7,000. So then administrators gave out $1 million more to cover the hundreds of overlooked teachers.

Now comes word that 99 teachers will have to give some of the money back, or face legal action. Officials blame a haywire computer program for the glitch that paid out about $75,000 (in amounts of $63 to $2,800 per teacher) more than the district meant to disburse.

“It’s just another example of how poorly thought out and planned the whole program was, so it’s not surprising these kinds of mistakes are being made,” said Steve Antley, a middle school teacher who didn’t receive a bonus.

Hopefully whoever’s responsible for this mess isn’t in charge of the math curriculum.

Posted by Scott J. Cech, Teacher Magazine at 4:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You could argue that one thing worse than being attacked by a student is being told by administrators to keep quiet. But that may be happening in Baltimore, Maryland, where supposedly gang-affiliated middle-schoolers recently burst into two classrooms, cut the lights, and then pummeled the teachers. Although these and other attacks have been reported, the Baltimore Teachers Union claims that many similar incidents have not because administrators are seeking to avoid a school label of “persistently dangerous.” Pat Ferguson, chair of BTU’s school safety committee, says that, while 25 official complaints have been logged this year, an additional 50 calls have been made to the union’s anonymous hotline. “Those teachers,” Ferguson adds, “are afraid to give their name or even their school because they are afraid they are going to lose their job.”

Posted by Rich Shea, Teacher Magazine at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (24)

Sometimes education is uncomfortable. That's what a group of middle-schoolers in Anderson, Indiana, found out when each student was tagged with a randomly assigned black or white sticker representing race as part of a Black History Month exercise. The students wearing black stickers were segregated into separate classes and had to use the "Colored" water fountain, which only dispensed warm water. The simulation included sessions where teachers and volunteers acted out some of the social scenarios that would have been commonplace before the civil rights era. "This would be pretty bad day in and day out, " said one 7th grader, who had a black sticker. "We hope some will realize that people died for them to have the rights they do today," a school official said.

Posted by at 3:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)