Web Watch
Teacher’s look at education news from around the Web. This blog is no longer being updated, but you can continue to explore these issues on edweek.org by visiting our related topic pages: teaching profession.
Education
School on the Brink
For an entire year, Chicago Tribune education reporter Stephanie Banchero and photographer Heather Stone followed an 8th grade class at Sherman School of Excellence, a struggling school on the city’s South Side. The “failed” school was closed in June of 2006 and reopened three months later with an entirely new staff, according to NCLB regulations. Montie Apostolos, an uncompromising veteran with a record of raising reading scores and changing attitudes, was brought in to teach the 8th graders. Among her injunctions to the class: “Don’t blame Ms. Apostolos for your failures. I’m sorry your lives are hard, but that’s not an excuse to be lazy. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth either.” Not all teachers were as strong. Not all teachers would last the year.
Education
Inconsistency in ADHD Treatment
Are children with mental health illnesses like attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder being overtreated? No, according to a recent Washington Post article citing a mental health study that says most children who meet the criteria for ADHD do not receive medicine consistently enough. “There’s a perception that ADHD is overdiagnosed and overtreated, so we wanted to see if that was true among those who met the disease criteria,” says Tanya Froehlich, a doctor at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and lead author of the study.
Education
Dressing Teachers
Nashville’s 75,000 public school students must now adhere to a strict dress code. Collared shirts are mandatory; hoodies and jeans are no longer acceptable. But what about teachers? Nashville parent Rebecca Willocks thinks there’s a double standard. "I saw a teacher’s navel piercing last year and was surprised," she says. "Students can’t get away with that." Nashville’s school board doesn’t think teachers should either. They’ve suggested a teacher dress code, but some, including the union, think it’s excessive. Lisa Soronen, an attorney with the National School Boards Association in Alexandria, Va., says, "Having a dress code for everyone is kind of overkill when a simple conversation with a co-worker and administrator or chair might be appropriate..."
Education
Tech Ed Left Behind
Vocation programs in New York public high schools have sharply decreased over the past decade due to a lack of funding and an NCLB-driven curriculum. In 1992, 41 percent of the state’s public high school students completed at least one vocational course, compared with 25 percent last year. “We started raising standards and adding more requirements, and something had to fall off the plate,” Buffalo Schools Superintendent James A. Williams told the Buffalo News.
Education
Autism in the Classroom
NPR’s recent series on autism included a visit to the May Institute outside of Boston where specialized teachers work with children living with the disorder. A year’s tuition at May now runs $75,000 and parents have pushed hard for their school districts to foot the bill. Massachusetts is feeling the pinch. As the number of diagnosed cases rise—more than half a million children have been diagnosed nationally—superintendents are taking notice and preparing their teachers to work with autistic children in their classrooms. “It’s an unbelievable explosion of kids,” said Newton, Mass. superintendent Jeff Young. “It’s growing both in terms of number and severity.”
Education
Race Matters
California’s standardized test scores are in and the news isn’t good. The scores reveal that the performance gap between ethnic groups is more than just a question of wealth vs. poverty. On state math tests, white students who qualified for subsidized lunch scored two and eight percent higher, respectively, than their Latino and black peers who did not qualify for subsidized lunch. Scores on the standardized English tests were about equal for low-income white students and their non-poor Latino and black peers. “These are not just economic achievement gaps,” said state schools Superintendent Jack O’Connell. “They are racial achievement gaps, and we cannot excuse them.”
Education
Parent Involvement Unwelcome
Christmas comes early for vocal parents concerned about what’s happening in their children’s schools. The Washington Post is running a series that takes an in-depth look at “interesting cases in which parents feel school officials froze them out of the process of dealing with their children's teachers.”
Education
Certification Program Disappoints
The New York Teaching Fellows program was the subject of a tell-all article in The Village Voice last week. The fast-track certification program, founded in 2000, offers provisional certification, a subsidized master’s, and the opportunity to teach in the country’s biggest school system. This year 20,000 prospective teachers—among them many career changers—applied to the program, with roughly 2,400 earning a spot at the blackboard. Fellows comprise 20 percent of the fall's new hires, but half will most likely quit by their fifth year, according to Department of Education statistics.
Education
MySpace in My School
A new study says schools should rethink rules preventing students from using social networking Web sites and instead consider employing the sites as educational tools. The National School Boards Association released a report this week concluding that accounts of cyberbullying, cyberstalking, and unwelcome encounters through the Internet are more limited than is commonly assumed and that students often use social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook for educational purposes. The study, sponsored in part by MySpace owner News Corp., Microsoft, and Verizon, suggests that school districts explore ways to integrate social networking sites into schoolwork.
Education
Teachers Reunite for Launch
In 1984, when NASA announced they would send a teacher into space, 10,000 applied for the opportunity. New Hampshire teacher Christa McAuliffe was selected, but lost her life in the tragic 1986 Challenger explosion. Two decades later, teacher-turned-astronaut and McAulliffe’s alternate, Barbara Morgan gets her chance.
Education
This Can't Be Healthy
In Ohio and other states, an increasing number of school districts are requiring teachers to pay more for health coverage, angering underpaid teachers and generating talks of strikes. According to an article in Ohio's Akron Beacon Journal, several Ohio districts are scrambling to settle negotiations with teacher unions over higher health costs before the school year begins. According to the Ohio Education Association, Ohio's largest teacher union, some districts' additional medical costs are offsetting teacher raises, resulting in pay cuts. But, Renee Fambro, an Ohio School Board Association official, is unsympathetic. She says requiring teachers to cover up to 10 percent of their premiums is acceptable and comparable to the policies of other public and private employers. "I was shocked that [teachers] had the sort of coverage that they did," Fambro said. "There were still districts [where teachers]...paid nothing."
Education
Lending a Hand Makes Sense
According to a Washington Post article, research shows that educators who use hand gestures while teaching are more likely to convey their ideas to their students. And, students who make hand movements while thinking about new ideas have a better chance of retaining information. Researchers today are looking beyond the dated perception that the brain functions like a computer, and instead exploring the pathways that link the body and mind—and their findings are influencing education.
Education
Principal Pulls Rank, Teacher Quits
According to a New York Times article, Austin Lampros, a New York City math teacher, resigned from his teaching post at the High School of Arts and Technology in Manhattan this year after the school’s principal altered a student’s grade so she could graduate. Lampros told the Times that, although the student rarely attended class, failed to turn in homework assignments, and even missed the final exam, a school administrator gave her special treatment and a passing grade. When a representative from the teachers’ union complained, Lampros was permitted to fail the student. Using an override privilege granted by her contract, the principal reversed that student’s grade again. The article suggests that Lampros is one of many teachers in New York City who feels pressured by administrators to pass marginal students in order to boost declining graduation rates. “It’s almost as if you stick to your morals and your ethics, you’ll end up without a job,” he said.
Reading & Literacy
Reading Skills Pay Off
Developing adequate reading skills could have a lifelong pay-off. A study of 3,260 Medicare patients found that those without basic “health literacy,” or the ability to understand patient information and make decisions based on it, were more likely to die sooner than their more-literate counterparts. Even taking into account overall education and other social factors, the study, which took place over more than five years, concluded that inadequate reading skills were the highest factor in determining mortality rates. The authors of the study cited that education levels in general have long been considered important in determining lifespan. As for why schooling seems to be a factor, researchers say that more education tends to lead to better jobs, housing, food, and health care.