National PTA's Sherri Wilson shares resources to engage families in minimizing summer learning loss.
Connected Community
Blog Entries
Our friends at ASCD's Whole Child Initiative just fired off an email newsletter describing the
astonishing success of Thomas Edison Elementary School in Port Chester, New York. (School success seems to be contagious in Port Chester, whose middle school has won national acclaim for similar strides in the past 10 years.)
Edison owes its achievements to an education approach that addresses the social, physical and academic needs of its largely poor student body. To quote ASCD's newsletter: ...
Rounding out Public School Insights' three-week celebration of Earth Day is our interview with Milken Award-winning educator Tamala Newsome, principal of the revolutionary Rosa Parks Elementary School in Portland, Oregon. The Rosa Parks School has garnered national attention for its eco-friendly building, its thoughtful incorporation of environmental science into the curriculum, and its integral place in the low-income Portland community it serves. ...
The National School Boards Association's Council of Urban Schools of Education (CUBE) has teamed up with
the National PTA on a new survey examining parents' perceptions of urban school climate: What We Think. The survey's results are generally encouraging: Parents believe their children's schools are safe; They report that they are actively involved in their children's schools; They trust and feel respected by teachers and administrators; and they believe their children capable of high academic achievement. ...
Just last week, the Forum for Education and Democracy issued an important report on the federal role in K-12 education: Democracy at Risk: The Need for a New Federal Policy in Education. With its obvious nod to Nation at Risk, the publication joins a long line of reports that raise the alarm over American students' declining standing in international assessments. Unlike many of those reports, however, Democracy at Risk strongly criticizes recent reform efforts' almost exclusive focus on "mandates and sanctions." ...
Documentary filmmaker Robin Smith has produced an award-winning film, Come Walk in my Shoes, that "follows the Honorable John Lewis on an emotional pilgrimage to the churches, parks and bridges where young people played a pivotal role in the struggle for equality and voting rights."
In observance of the 40th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination, I spoke with Smith about her film, its reception in middle and high schools around the country, and the importance of teaching American youth about the struggle for civil rights. At a time when we commonly describe American youth as disaffected and disengaged from their communities, Smith argues, the history of the civil rights movement offers a powerful reminder to young people that they can change the world. ...
New success stories keep coming in from districts across the country--Many thanks to Public School Insights readers who have taken time to submit news about what's working in their schools.
Many of the stories we have posted over the past two weeks focus on community connections.
Here's a sample: ...
An Exclusive Interview with Richard Simmons about His Campaign for P.E. in Schools
Tank top, striped shorts and all, Richard Simmons is becoming a force to be reckoned with in Washington's education policy debate. He has mounted a major campaign to get physical education into the schools and has caught the attention of key policymakers on Capitol Hill.
Amidst all this activity, he recently found time to talk me about his goals, the dire need for physical education and his frustration with the glacial pace of reform in Washington during an election year.
Richard told me about his advocacy for the FIT Kids Act, which would establish a framework for schools to closely look at the quality and quantity of PE they are providing, and to supply parents with that information to better understand the PE their kids are receiving. ...
Education Week reported a couple of months ago that a change to Medicaid reimbursement rules could cost districts Billions in the coming years. Currently, schools that provide health care services for Medicaid-enrolled children with disabilities can be reimbursed by Medicaid for transportation and administrative costs. But a Bush administration decision may well bring an end to all that.
Districts across the country are now bracing for the double impact of lost Medicaid reimbursements and a potentially "wrenching" fiscal crisis. (A very hasty Google search of news stories over the past few weeks turned up articles about the effect of Medicaid changes on schools in Florida, Arizona, Wisconsin and others.) ...
In my title, I paraphrase Sylvia Allegretto, an author of a grim new Economic Policy Institute report on the steady deterioration of teacher pay over recent decades.
Teachers, it seems, are among the only professionals who get shafted at both the best of times and the worst of times. Over the past decade, Allegretto and her co-authors find, the compensation gap separating teachers and similarly-educated professionals in other fields has grown by almost 11 percent. What's worse, the gap is especially large for experienced teachers: "The brunt... has fallen on senior teachers (45-54), whose pay deficit within their age group has grown by 18.0 percentage points among women (who comprise the vast majority of teachers) since 1996." ...
When it comes to public schools, beauty has too often been in the report card of the beholder.
Recent years have witnessed a surge in efforts to grade the nation's public schools. Groups such as Editorial Projects in Education (publishers of Education Week), the Fordham Foundation, and the U.S. Chamber of Congress issue separate and at times conflicting report cards grading states on the quality of their K-12 education systems. States maintain their own systems for grading individual districts and schools--and their grades often contradict federal designations of schools' Adequate Yearly Progress under No Child Left Behind. ...
SIGN UP
Sign up for our e-newsletter on public school success.
A VISION FOR GREAT SCHOOLS
On this website, educators, parents and policymakers from coast to coast are sharing what's already working in public schools--and sparking a national conversation about how to make it work for children in every school. Join the conversation!
