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.
Safe Great Places
Blog Entries
Consider a community in which people cannot own property. Where housing consists of trailers or old manufactured homes packed closely together, with options for food and shopping very limited. Where a large population of feral animals poses a consistent threat. With high crime rates, high alcoholism, high gang activity. Would you want to live – or teach – there?
Alchesay High School in Whiteriver, Arizona (part of the White Mountain Apache Reservation) is located in such a community. Prior to the arrival of Principal Roy Sandoval in the summer of 2010, the school had the lowest math scores in the state, a 47% graduation rate, and a large population of 18-20 year-old students with less than five credits. There were 291 on-campus drug and alcohol incidents in the 2009 school year (SY2009), and “bootleggers” were selling alcohol to students from land adjoining the campus. There was great rancor and mistrust between teachers and administrators. ...
Taxation is a hot-button political topic and everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. On Monday, as I waited to mail my tax returns, I took a minute to reflect on the importance of public funding in connection with the United States’ longstanding value of education. Thomas Jefferson, who would have been 269 on April 13, viewed knowledge as essential to a thriving democracy. Writing to William C. Jarvis in 1820, he explained the connection: "I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society, but the people themselves: and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their controul with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is, not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.” When it comes to the importance of education, I’m in agreement with Jefferson and I’m proud of the U.S. public education system. ...
Question: What is found throughout the school meal program that can be deadly dangerous?
If you answered food allergens, you would be right. Six percent of students have a food allergy and the big eight of food allergies (soy, eggs, milk, fish, wheat, shellfish, tree nuts, and peanuts) are found throughout school meal programs and family meals alike. It is very likely that a school will have one or more students whose life could be threatened by eating the wrong thing. Data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) 2006 School Health Policies and Programs Study indicate that approximately 88% of schools had one or more students with a food allergy. School employees need to know what to do to prevent life threatening reactions and families need to know that their children are being protected.
On Wednesday, February 22 NEA HIN participated in a School Nutrition Foundation webinar, entitled Teamwork is Key to Successful Food Allergy Management in Schools. Over ...
Last week I had the privilege of celebrating the work of the 2012 School Counselor of the Year, Nicole Pfleger, at an elegant gala event held at Union Station and sponsored by the American School Counselor Association (ASCA). Nicole is a school counselor at Nickajack Elementary in Georgia’s Cobb County Public Schools and a reminder of how important individual excellence, leadership and enthusiasm are to the success of our students, schools, and districts. Nicole is an impressive young woman with a talent for problem solving in the best interests of the students with whom she works. At Nickajack Elementary she works to create an environment where students are respectful, responsible, and able to work cooperatively with others. She established a school program called Rachel’s Challenge that focuses on creating a culture of compassion through acts of kindness and service projects. This school wide program includes a curriculum, class meetings, service projects, student recognition and a Kindness and Compassion Club.
Pfleger has developed a close working relationship with a community homeless shelter for women and children where some of her students live, helping ...
On January 14 and 15, "CNN Presents" aired coverage of Dr. Sanjay Gupta's visit to Southern Middle School in Reading, Pennsylvania. The episode looked at districts in several states, but Reading stood out as a district in dire straits. The video footage from Reading showed mold and mildew, leaking buildings, and rain pouring into a classroom.
The poor indoor environmental quality of this school and many more around the country has a devastating impact on the health and performance of the student and staff who study and work in these buildings every day. Poor indoor environmental quality is linked to asthma, respiratory illness, headaches, and other short and long term health problems. Asthma alone is one of the leading causes of absenteeism in the United States, causing many children to miss school or be tardy each day.
While schools in all communities are in need of some repair, as with many concerns in public education, it is students who live in low-income and minority communities who often suffer the most from ...
Have you checked out our collection of public school success stories lately?
Since December 2007, we at the Learning First Alliance have posted more than 150 stories about what is working in our public schools. Some come from our member and partner organizations. Others have been submitted by educators, parents and other community members proud of what is going on in their local public school.
Criteria for inclusion are relatively simple: A story must show that a public school or district (or even state) recognized a challenge, addressed it, and had some results. Often those results come in the form of standardized test scores, reduced dropout rates or increased graduation rates. Other times they recognize positive changes to student behavior, classroom grades, student health, or parental engagement.
In the spirit of the “best of” lists that tend to circulate this time of year, here are the top five of these stories from 2011*, as determined by you, our audience (as indicated by our trusty Google Analytics tracking system). Enjoy!
5. Cleveland Program to Close Achievement Gap Shows Proof of Success
A Cleveland Metropolitan School District program provides personal attention and assistance to low-achieving black eighth grade males who are deemed most likely to drop out of school.
4. Alabama’s Graduation Coaches
Thanks in part to an initiative showing the success of school-level “graduation coaches," Alabama is ...
Editor’s Note: Today's post is from our partners at the NEA Health Information Network (NEA HIN). Each month, we feature a new column on a topic related to school health. Through this effort, we hope to inform the public of important health issues that impact schools and offer educators and parents resources to address them.
This post was authored by Jamila Boddie, bNetS@vvy Program Coordinator at the NEA HIN.
Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, YouTube, Skype and Wordpress. These are terms that have become synonymous around schools, workplaces, homes and even your local supermarket. In a digital world, technology has created new ways for students to learn, teachers to teach, and information to be shared, all at the click of a mouse. However, with these new innovations comes a new challenge for educators and guardians to learn how to keep kids safe online.
Since its inception, bNetS@vvy has been helping tweens better understand the risks and benefits associated with the Internet and educating guardians and educators regarding the power of Internet use. Now bNetS@vvy’s is proud to announce their new and ...
In 2001, The Learning First Alliance wrote a report titled “Every Child Learning: Safe and Supportive Schools – A Summary,” which advocated for systemic approaches to supporting positive behavior in our nation’s schools. The Alliance argued for school-wide approaches to improving school climate, safety and discipline: “In a safe and supportive learning community, civility, order, and decorum are the norms and antisocial behaviors such as bullying and taunting are clearly unacceptable.” Ten years later, schools across the nation continually contend with the harsh and terrifying realities of bullying and the sad reality is that we still have a long way to go when it comes to ensuring a safe and supportive environment for our nation’s children. Fortunately, recent attention to the issue suggests that we are all beginning to take important steps in the right direction. ...
Fall’s arrival heralds the start of school and classroom teachers are excited to welcome back their students for another year of learning. At the same time, they are faced with the reality that students seem to know less than they did last spring. On average, all students lose ground and begin the year a month behind where they performed in the spring. One study suggests that two-thirds of the achievement gap for low-income students entering ninth grade can be attributed to summer learning loss. The gap is particularly pronounced in reading, where low-income students lose ground, as opposed to high-income students who maintain or gain ground.
The achievement gap is a widely recognized reality in American public education. It is troubling, persistent, and continues to elude remedy. When a potential solution arises, it is difficult to maintain realistic expectations, and that is exactly what must be done when it comes to summer learning programs. We can take heart that evidence from studies to evaluations shows the promise of such programs in reducing the achievement gap that separates low-income and minority youth from their more privileged peers. ...
Education news coming out of Texas lately seems to depict a large-scale comedy of errors. There are misplaced funding priorities (here, here and here) and hard-fought battles to include mainstream science curriculum. Texas is the lone (star) state to pull out of a significant education council that collaborates on state-directed (optional) common standards, and it does not ascribe to the trend to more specifically delineate student racial demographic information for data and research purposes. But at least the most recent debacle may provide a silver(ado) lining: according to Edweek, in explaining the need for the new Supportive School Discipline Initiative, Attorney General Eric Holder said that the numbers from a recent study finding that 60 percent of Texas school children are suspended or expelled between 7th grade and graduation “are a kind of wake up call,” and that “it’s obvious we can do better.”
In short, the initiative is a joint undertaking by the Departments of Justice and Education, and it targets curbing school discipline policies that push students into ...
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!
