March 1997
Teacher Magazine, Vol. 08, Issue 06
Education
Bad Sports
In January, the promising basketball career of a Philadelphia high school student ended with a hastily thrown punch.
Education
Alternative Voices
While National Education Association President Bob Chase was unveiling his vision for a new union at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. (see "NEA Head Sets New Course," this issue), several little-known alternative teachers' groups had their own high profile platform on Capitol Hill.
Education
In The Spotlight
The National Center for Family Literacy has chosen Karen Klima-Thomas as its 1996 Toyota Family Literacy Teacher of the Year. An early-childhood education teacher at Lowell School in Mesa, Ariz., Klima-Thomas was cited for her contribution to Mesa's Family Tree Project, a literacy project that has served more than 170 families at seven elementary schools since 1990. As part of the award, Toyota will contribute $5,000 to the literacy program at Lowell on behalf of Klima-Thomas. She will also receive a free trip to the center's National Conference on Family Literacy in April 1997.
Education
NEA Head Sets New Course
In a speech as provocative as its promotional tag, "A New Approach to Teacher Unionism: It's Not Your Mother's NEA," the president of the National Education Association last month called for a "reinvention" of the giant union.
School & District Management
Do or Die
In San Francisco, teachers and principals at low-performing schools are given one chance to turn things around. If they fail, they're given the boot. Critics say the strategy scapegoats educators, but superintendent Bill Rojas says it's the only way to bring real change.
Education
What Works
In 1995, Douglas Kirby, one of the nation's leading experts on adolescent health and director of research at ETR Associates, a nonprofit education and research group, analyzed close to 50 studies on the effectiveness of school-based sex education curricula. He identified nine classroom strategies that can help reduce risky sexual behaviors among young people. Programs should:
Equity & Diversity
Books
- STEPPING OVER THE COLOR LINE: African-American Students in White Suburban Schools , by Amy Stuart Wells and Robert Crain. (Yale University Press, New Haven; $35.)
- BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION: The Challenge for Today's Schools , edited by Ellen Condliffe Lagemann and LaMar Miller. (Teachers College Press, New York; $17.95.)
- SILVER RIGHTS: The Story of the Carter Family's Brave Decision To Send Their Children to an All-White School and Claim Their Civil Rights , by Constance Curry. (Harcourt Brace, San Diego; $13.)
Education
For Your Students
Following is a list of contests, scholarships, and internships for students organized by application deadline. Asterisks (*) denote new entries.
Education
Should Race Matter?
The U.S. Supreme Court put the Clinton administration on the spot in January when it asked for its views on the much-debated case of a New Jersey school board that weighed race in a teacher-layoff decision.
Education
On The Web
Following is a list of World Wide Web sites that teachers and their students may find helpful.
Education
Texas Weighs Rating Teachers on Schoolwide Scores
Renee Dailey is, by all accounts, a superb teacher. In the first of her 20 years teaching Texas history, she won the teacher of excellence award in her Austin school district. She went on to win the district's teacher of the year award five times and recently received a fellowship to study at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
Education
Home Sweet School
The school board in Anchorage, Alaska, has approved a charter school that will primarily serve homeschooled students.
Education
Teaching Tools
Following is a list of free or inexpensive resources that teachers can order.
Student Well-Being
Breathing Lessons
The Baltimore schools are getting help from a local hospital to fight a near epidemic of asthma among the city's schoolchildren.
Education
Connections
Two of this month's features are like bookends on a century. A hundred years ago, more than 200,000 one-room schoolhouses like those depicted in the photo essay, "One Room With A View," dotted the American landscape. They reflected the needs of a rural society where the majority of the population lived on farms and children walked or rode horses to class each day. And they were probably adequate for the simpler needs of a simpler society. Youngsters were expected to learn to read (at a basic level) and write (not creatively), master store-clerk arithmetic, and memorize a few facts about history and geography--more than enough to succeed in an agrarian age. Schooling for most Americans ended with the 6th grade.
Adapt or Perish
Two of this month's features are like bookends on a century. A hundred years ago, more than 200,000 one-room schoolhouses like those depicted in the photo essay, "One Room With A View," dotted the American landscape. They reflected the needs of a rural society where the majority of the population lived on farms and children walked or rode horses to class each day. And they were probably adequate for the simpler needs of a simpler society. Youngsters were expected to learn to read (at a basic level) and write (not creatively), master store-clerk arithmetic, and memorize a few facts about history and geography--more than enough to succeed in an agrarian age. Schooling for most Americans ended with the 6th grade.
Education
Findings
It's one of the toughest questions in elementary education: Should low-achieving students be singled out for special programs designed to help them catch up? Or do such programs relegate children to the educational slow lane for years to come? Two researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore have concluded the latter. Sociologists Karl Alexander and Doris Entwisle studied 1st graders who were held back a year, placed in low reading groups, or referred to special education. Those students, they found, remained in lower educational tracks at a higher rate than their classmates throughout the elementary grades. The researchers caution that the study does not show that the educational practices harm students; they just don't help much. "It infers that some of these placements are long-lasting, so that people better watch out and not do them," Entwisle says. She and Alexander based their analysis on longitudinal data from the Beginning School Study, which has been following the progress of 790 students in 20 public schools in Baltimore since 1982. Some 22 percent were placed in the lowest reading group in 1st grade, and more than 16 percent were held back at the end of that year. The researchers found that almost three-fourths of the children who were placed in the lowest reading group ended up repeating at least one year in elementary school, and 35 percent were retained twice. Forty-four percent of children who repeated the 1st grade were retained again later, compared with only 6.5 percent of those who were promoted at the end of 1st grade. Henry Levin, a professor of education at Stanford University and the director of the Accelerated Schools Project, a reform network that seeks to bring at-risk children into the educational mainstream, says the findings are in line with other research. "You have kids who come to school and their functioning level, in terms of school-valued activities, is low," he says. "Schools tend to put these students in placements that slow things down, reduce challenges, and then--guess what?--it's a self-fulfilling prophecy." Alexander and Entwisle note that many factors in the students' lives--both in and out of school--account for their persistence in lower educational tracks. "We know because we have data from when these children began school that the ones who are held back in 1st grade have terrible problems to start with," Entwisle says. "And so, later on, when children who have been retained do not do well, all that deficit in performance cannot be attributed to the fact that they've been held back."
The Wrong Track
It's one of the toughest questions in elementary education: Should low-achieving students be singled out for special programs designed to help them catch up? Or do such programs relegate children to the educational slow lane for years to come? Two researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore have concluded the latter. Sociologists Karl Alexander and Doris Entwisle studied 1st graders who were held back a year, placed in low reading groups, or referred to special education. Those students, they found, remained in lower educational tracks at a higher rate than their classmates throughout the elementary grades. The researchers caution that the study does not show that the educational practices harm students; they just don't help much. "It infers that some of these placements are long-lasting, so that people better watch out and not do them," Entwisle says. She and Alexander based their analysis on longitudinal data from the Beginning School Study, which has been following the progress of 790 students in 20 public schools in Baltimore since 1982. Some 22 percent were placed in the lowest reading group in 1st grade, and more than 16 percent were held back at the end of that year. The researchers found that almost three-fourths of the children who were placed in the lowest reading group ended up repeating at least one year in elementary school, and 35 percent were retained twice. Forty-four percent of children who repeated the 1st grade were retained again later, compared with only 6.5 percent of those who were promoted at the end of 1st grade. Henry Levin, a professor of education at Stanford University and the director of the Accelerated Schools Project, a reform network that seeks to bring at-risk children into the educational mainstream, says the findings are in line with other research. "You have kids who come to school and their functioning level, in terms of school-valued activities, is low," he says. "Schools tend to put these students in placements that slow things down, reduce challenges, and then--guess what?--it's a self-fulfilling prophecy." Alexander and Entwisle note that many factors in the students' lives--both in and out of school--account for their persistence in lower educational tracks. "We know because we have data from when these children began school that the ones who are held back in 1st grade have terrible problems to start with," Entwisle says. "And so, later on, when children who have been retained do not do well, all that deficit in performance cannot be attributed to the fact that they've been held back."
Education
Letter to the Editor
Letters to the Editor
It did not surprise me to find that Indiana ranks below 43 other states in the percentage of secondary school English teachers with fewer than 80 students ("Quality Counts: School Climate.") I am a second-year teacher who sees 128 students daily in six classes. My teaching load requires that I make four separate class preparations. Unfortunately, this is the norm for most young English teachers in this state. As a result, I have stopped devoting large chunks of my after-school time to reading and grading essays and exams. If I can't get it done during the day or in the hour or two I stay after school, I don't do it. Of course, this leads to student complaints about not getting papers returned quickly. But this is the only way I can maintain my sanity and my personal life and avoid burnout. I am dedicated to my students and to becoming the best teacher I can, but the overwhelming paperwork from so many students exhausts me. Until school systems in Indiana wake up to this problem, our state will continue to lag behind in language arts test scores, and many of our best young teachers will leave the profession after only a few years.
By The Numbers
It did not surprise me to find that Indiana ranks below 43 other states in the percentage of secondary school English teachers with fewer than 80 students ("Quality Counts: School Climate.") I am a second-year teacher who sees 128 students daily in six classes. My teaching load requires that I make four separate class preparations. Unfortunately, this is the norm for most young English teachers in this state. As a result, I have stopped devoting large chunks of my after-school time to reading and grading essays and exams. If I can't get it done during the day or in the hour or two I stay after school, I don't do it. Of course, this leads to student complaints about not getting papers returned quickly. But this is the only way I can maintain my sanity and my personal life and avoid burnout. I am dedicated to my students and to becoming the best teacher I can, but the overwhelming paperwork from so many students exhausts me. Until school systems in Indiana wake up to this problem, our state will continue to lag behind in language arts test scores, and many of our best young teachers will leave the profession after only a few years.
Education
Opinion
Who's In Charge?
| The ebonics flap proves it: Educators should decide what's taught in the classroom, not politically minded school boards. |