A new report by LFA and Grunwald Associates, with support from AT&T, examines how parents perceive the value of mobile devices, how they see their children using mobiles, and what they think of the possibilities for mobile learning.
Empowering Professionals
Blog Entries
Preparing General Ed Teachers to Succeed with Students with Disabilities
96% of students with disabilities spend at least part of their day in general education classrooms. But how prepared are general ed teachers to work with those students?
Not very. And that may be part of the reason why students with disabilities perform significantly worse than their peers – even students whose disabilities should not prevent them from reaching the same academic outcomes.*
Yesterday, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education** and the National Center for Learning Disabilities released a white paper that lays out a new vision for preparing general education teachers to improve outcomes for students with disabilities. It also offers recommendations to federal and state policymakers, as well as providers of teacher education, as to how to make that vision a reality.
I was fortunate enough to attend a briefing on the paper, and one major theme stuck out at me: We’ve got to move beyond this notion that some general ed teachers have – and that our education system in many ways reinforces – that it’s not their job to handle all the issues that students with disabilities bring.
The paper points out that while teachers often work with a wide range of students in the classroom, their teaching license typically limits them to work in an elementary or secondary school, and as a general ed, special education or ...
Members of Generation Y made up nearly 1 out of every 5 classroom teachers in America in 2008 - a proportion that more than doubled since 2004. As Baby Boomers retire, this proportion will only grow. And, contrary to popular concerns that Gen Yers will have multiple careers over their lifetime, surveys have shown that 56% of these teachers want to make it a lifelong career, while most of the rest want to stay in the education field.
Given their increasing importance in the education workforce, and in an era of uncertainty in education, with everything from class size to collective bargaining rights and teacher evaluation up for debate, it only makes sense we examine Gen Yers thoughts on the teaching profession. And in a recent report, that is just what the American Institutes of ...
It’s been more than a week since the U.S. Department of Education sponsored International Summit on the Teaching Profession took place in New York City. For those of us who were observers, the conversation was valuable but the extended time spent sitting and listening challenged our ability to absorb all that was being exchanged. However, a few themes kept resurfacing:
- In countries with high performing students as measured by the PISA tests, the teaching profession is held in high esteem and attracts the strongest students to its preparation programs.
- Conversely, those same countries support a highly selective process for identifying potential teachers and
...
Edweek recently featured a story on two cases coming before the Supreme Court next 
month that deal with proper protocols of police and school officials in questioning students. School officials are concerned that the court’s decision could put them in an untenable gatekeeping position between police and students. Thus, the National School Boards Association—an LFA member—has filed a court brief outlining concerns with the issues the case brings up that implicate administrators.
The first case—Camreta v. Greene—deals with an incident in 2003 when a state child protective services caseworker and a deputy sheriff in Oregon interviewed a 9-year-old girl at school about suspected sexual abuse by her father. The mother claims that after denying abuse for two hours the girl finally told investigators what they wanted to hear (though charges against the father were later dismissed), and that the interrogation violated the girl’s Fourth Amendment right to freedom from unreasonable seizure. A lower court ruled in favor of ...
Editor's note: Our guest blogger today is Earl C. Rickman III, president of the National School Boards Association (an LFA member) and president of the Board of Education of Mount Clemens Community School District in Michigan.
The recent Conference on Labor-Management Collaboration in Denver showed that when school boards, administrators, and teachers work as a team to improve student achievement, we can greatly strengthen the quality of education we provide to our students and our communities.
I was part of the 12-person delegation of school board leaders from NSBA and state school boards associations participating in the event. I was proud to also represent Michigan’s Mount Clemens Community School District Board of Education, where I serve as board president. My school district was one of the 150 school districts from across the country that participated in the conference.
This first-of-its-kind conference, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, brought national and local school leaders to hear from other superintendents, school boards, and teacher leaders who are working together to redefine the labor-management relationship in their communities, and it highlighted the successes some districts have achieved and ...
On Monday, Slate featured an excellent article by Richard Kahlenberg that focused on the 
problems with Michelle Rhee’s credo and his dismay at the continued media endorsement of her efforts. In critiquing Rhee, the article also provides cogent arguments dealing with anti-union fervor (a timely topic in light of current events in states like Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio) and how this can serve to push into the background the singly most problematic element the education industry deals with: disadvantaged prospects and likelihood for achievement among students, stemming from race and income inequalities
While Kahlenberg acknowledges that Rhee made some significant improvements to DC public schools—such as ensuring that students got textbooks on time and making efficient use of space by closing under-used schools—he asserts that contrary to popular claims, “she didn’t revolutionize education in DC.” ...
Continuing with the tenure conversation Cheryl Williams began earlier this week, I wanted to discuss a recent New York Times article that outlines current efforts by governors to eliminate tenure in their states.
Connecting poor student performance to teachers is clearly a general emphasis among many critics of public education, and it seems to be an especially potent issue now in politics, as evidenced in part by President Obama’s last two State of the Union address in which he discussed teacher assessments. Jumping on this bandwagon of blaming teachers, governors in Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Nevada, and New Jersey (and legislatures in other states) want to focus on removing perceived ineffective teachers through eliminating or imposing drastic reductions in tenure protections.
I imagine few would argue that current tenure systems are less than ideal, and there are legitimate reforms to tenure that would benefit all major actors involved. And as the article points out, both the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association are in favor of good reform (and the AFT practiced what they preach by endorsing a Colorado law last year that allows for the removal of tenured teachers found consistently ineffective). AFT also helped broker tenure and labor reforms in New Haven, Connecticut, and in Baltimore, Maryland, and the NEA was similarly instrumental in principal and teacher evaluation reforms in Hillsborough County, Florida.
So while there are no doubt thoughtful ways to reform tenure to allow for teacher dismissal based on effectiveness rather than simply seniority, these governors and state legislatures seem focused on quick-and-dirty bills that serve more to score political points than ...
President Barak Obama’s State of the Union address has drawn a mixed response from players in the education community. I imagine all appreciate the president’s focus on education as an important issue, and approve of his connecting it to broader American self-interest with talk of jobs and competitiveness in worldwide markets. Likewise, few would disagree with Obama’s emphasis on long-term investment in education, parental involvement in children's learning, the shared responsibility of schools and their communities, recruiting more science, technology, engineering, and mathematics teachers, and the need to overhaul No Child Left Behind. It’s also refreshing that he pointed out teachers are the most important school-based factor in a child’s success; he emphasized the greater importance of parents (and though research more specifically shows the influence of socio-economic status, these two categories are related). His talk of curbing the reach of the federal government was also encouraging to many, although his actual policy emphases related to Race to the Top and other competitive funding measures seem to counter this rhetoric.
Many are concerned with federal oversight of schools, as well as competitive allocation of funds. In a statement responding to the State of the Union Address, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten discussed the need to protect children from struggling segments of the population. Likewise, NEA President Dennis Van Roekel expressed his continued concern that “competitive grants such as ...
One strategy I’m using to get up-to-speed in my position as the new executive director at the Learning First Alliance (LFA) is to delve into the LFA member publications that land on my desk almost daily. It is true that each publication is a wealth of thoughtful articles that examine the challenges and rewards professional public educators across the nation deal with on a regular basis. I’m reminded that some of my favorite thought-leaders continue to seek new information, explore alternate approaches, and share their observations in ways that remind me that we know a good deal about how to make schooling better, we just lack the will or if not that, the systems thinking approach that could help us do what we know will make us better.
An example of that reality is the article authored by Linda Darling-Hammond, Professor of Education at Stanford University and supporter of teachers par excellent, in the Winter 2010-2011 issue of the American Educator, published by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Dr. Darling-Hammond’s article “Soaring Systems” looks at three nations’ public education system, each of whom started with very little and purposefully built highly productive and equitable systems in the space of only two to three decades. Before considering what those three countries, Finland, Singapore, and South Korea, did to ...
Over the past several years, many in the education industry have debated the significance of master’s degrees for teachers, and often also whether this higher degree warrants more pay. Many blogs have commented on this issue, including Education Week blogs, university blogs, and newspaper blogs.
The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE), a member of the Learning First Alliance, is also contributing to the conversation. Their website currently highlights the controversial issue of the relationship between teacher master’s degrees and student classroom success.
They note recent comments by Bill Gates and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan that little current evidence suggests a positive correlation between the two, and that therefore we should question the efficacy of master’s degrees and the validity of rewarding them monetarily. Two organizations - the Higher Education Consortium for Special Education and the Teacher Education Division of the Council for Exceptional Children - have responded by writing letters to these two influential public figures, pointing out an IES- supported 2010 study on special education teachers in Florida that found a positive correlation between advanced degrees and ...
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