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.
Equity
Blog Entries
Shortly after I wrote a blog post in late April about the data showing the effect of poverty on student academic achievement, I received an article from OnlineUniversities.com listing and describing the ten poorest high schools in the United States. The data sadly correlates the level of poverty and student achievement in a manner that is in line with the data Stanford University has gathered through years of research around contributing factors in student achievement. The surprise is that not all the ten poorest high schools are traditional public schools: one is a charter and one is a virtual high school. And they too have trouble helping students succeed, once again illustrating that school structure – charter, traditional or virtual – is not the determining factor in educating children to their highest potential. A sampling of the schools on the list— ...
On May 17, the Learning First Alliance (LFA) honored Jack Jennings, who founded (and recently retired from) the Center on Education Policy after a long and distinguished career on Capitol Hill, with our 2012 Education Visionary Award. In accepting the award, Jennings explained what he believes will bring about major improvement in education in the United States: A focus on curriculum, teacher quality, and funding.
What follows is an excerpt from his speech.
We are in a world where you can’t stand still. We are in a world where we have to improve. And unfortunately, national leaders are coming across in education as saying that things are okay, and I don’t think that is helpful. I think that it is much more helpful to say that American education must be better than it has been in the past for the sake of the kids, but also for the sake of the country.
But I also believe that we are on the wrong agenda today. We are on an agenda that is not going to get us very far. We need a new vision and we need a new agenda for education.
Let me tell you how I arrived at this. I wrote a paper…looking back on 50 years of school reform. We’ve had three major movements in school reform. The equity movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which brought about a lot of good, especially for kids with disabilities, for women, for ...
Studies show that the physical and mental health of students is inextricably linked to their academic success. Fourteen percent of students in school have asthma that impacts their daily living. One third of teen girls will become pregnant before age nineteen, and many of them will not complete high school successfully. Eleven percent of families are food insecure—their children do not get enough to eat and they may come to school hungry.
That is precisely why schools can and should create the conditions for optimal learning, including the basics of health services, from healthy meals to physical activity to health education that teaches life-long skills.
“Our members work with students every day whose health and school conditions impede their ability to learn. That’s why NEA members are taking the lead to advocate for school and learning conditions that result in a higher level of student engagement and fewer absences” said National Education Association (NEA) President Dennis Van Roekel at Health in Mind, hosted by ...
It seems the one thing we can all agree on when discussing how to improve public schooling for all our children is that we need data to guide our approach to personalizing teaching and learning in the classroom, so that we can ensure student success and support teacher effectiveness. Yet we persist in ignoring data that points to root causes that hamper the most talented school leaders in their work with children.
At a recent meeting on Capitol Hill, researcher Sean Reardon from the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE) shared data showing the only developed country in the world with a larger percentage of children living in poverty than the United States is Mexico. So the US is #2 in the developed world in children living in poverty (22 percent of our children live in poverty). Dr. Reardon also ...
A new study out of Kansas is adding to the pile of evidence that early childhood education not only has academic benefits for children (particularly disadvantaged youth), but economic benefits for society.
America’s Edge, a national nonprofit organization of business leaders whose members “work to strengthen businesses and the economy through proven investments in children,” has released a new report finding that in the short-term, for every $1 invested in early-learning programs in the state, a total of $1.68 is generated in spending. Early childhood education outperforms retail trade ($1.65), transportation ($1.63), construction ($1.59), wholesale trade ($1.51), and manufacturing ($1.46).
And remember, these are short-term benefits. Many other studies have documented the longer-term economic benefits of investing in early learning. Consider:
- An evaluation of Chicago Public Schools' federally funded Child Parent Centers (CPCs) finding that for every dollar invested in the preschool program, nearly $11 is projected to return to society over participants' lifetimes—the equivalent of an 18 percent annual return.
- A study showing that Georgia’s lottery-funded pre-kindergarten program was estimated to save the state $212.9 million over ...
While nationally we may be in the midst of an economic recovery, a new survey from the American Association of School Administrators (AASA) offers the latest evidence that the good news has not yet fully trickled down to state and local budgets – the budgets from which most education funding is drawn.
Nearly three-quarters – 71.2% – of respondents (school administrators from 48 states) report a cut in state/local revenues between the 2010 and 2011 school years, and more than half anticipate a decrease between the 2011 and 2012 school years and the 2012 and 2013 school years. More than three-quarters – 81.4% – describe their district as inadequately funded.
What does this mean for students?
- Larger classes – 40.3% of respondents increased class size in the 2010 school year, 54% did so in 2011, and 57.2% anticipate doing so in 2012
- Difficulty getting to school – 22.9% cut bus transportation routes and
...
More than 20% of U.S. households with children experienced food insecurity at some time during 2010. This means that at times, they were uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all their members. More than 40% of K-8 teachers say that children coming to school hungry is a serious problem at their school. It is shocking to think how many children go hungry in one of the wealthiest nations on earth.
There is certainly a moral argument to be made that as a society we should ensure children receive the food they need to grow and thrive. There are also practical arguments that can be made (for example, children who receive proper nutrition are less likely to become obese and suffer from related conditions such as ...
Editor’s Note: Our guest blogger today is Michael Ragan, Vice President of the Washington Education Association and Chair of the Washington Learning First Alliance.
January 5th, 2012, was a momentous day for public education in Washington State. That was the day the Washington Supreme Court unanimously upheld the McCleary trial court’s decision that the State is not fulfilling its constitutional duty to amply fund public education.
Article IX, section 1 of our constitution states that “It is the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders…” Without dissent, the Supreme Court declared in the written opinion that paramount duty means this mandate is the State’s first and highest priority, before any other; that ample provision means considerably more than adequate; that all children means no child is excluded; and that education means the basic knowledge and skills needed to compete in today’s economy and meaningfully participate in our democracy. The high court also completely rejected all of the State’s excuses, even the State’s claim that a financial crisis can justify education funding cuts. The State did not dispute any of the trial court findings on the importance of education to ...
A recent article in the Kappan, a publication of Phi Delta Kappa International, a member organization of the Learning First Alliance (LFA), chronicles the efforts of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to create and support passage of “model legislation” for states that advocates increasing what they refer to as “choice” and “scholarships” (read vouchers) in public schooling. Authors Julie Underwood and Julie F. Mead, both on faculty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, make a strong case that ALEC is behind the recent legislative efforts in Midwestern states to strip public employees of their bargaining rights and modify school funding provisions to allow greater shares of public funds to go to for-profit education provider; companies specifically mentioned are K-12 and Connections Academy.
I have a long-held belief that market forces as they relate to access to quality education have no place in American public schooling, and I believe that as long as we fund our public schools primarily with local tax dollars, local communities should have a strong say in how those school are operated. However, I do think there’s a role for the for-profit community in designing and ...
On February 13, 2012, President Obama released his FY2013 budget proposal. While many analysts believe the budget is dead on arrival in Congress, those in the education community are praising the president for recognizing the important role that education plays in our economy and our society.
In his budget, President Obama called for the U.S. Department of Education to receive a $1.7 billion (2.5 percent) increase in education spending over the current budget year – one of only two departments to receive an increase. Highlights from the budget impacting k-12 education include $30 billion for school modernization, $30 billion to help prevent teacher layoffs and improve teacher quality, money for competitive grant programs (including $850 million for Race to the Top, $150 million for Investing in Innovation [i3], and a new $5 billion competitive program aimed at attracting, preparing, and rewarding great teachers), and level funding for some formula programs, including Title I and Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
All Learning First Alliance members who have responded to the budget applaud the President’s investment in education or focus on education jobs. National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel, for example, praises the president’s commitment to students, saying that he “wants what every parent, student and the NEA want -- qualified, caring and committed adults in every school in America to provide the support and programs needed for students of all ages to succeed.”
However, while supporting the overall emphasis on education in the budget, some organizations had concerns with some aspects of it. One, shared by the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE), National School Boards Association (NSBA), and ...
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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!
