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.
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Today’s guest post comes from the National PTA, a member of the Learning First Alliance. The largest volunteer child advocacy association in the nation, PTA reminds our country of its obligations to children and provides parents and families with a powerful voice to speak on behalf of every child. It also provides tools for parents to help their children be successful students.
So often we hear complaints from parents and teachers that the other is not doing their job. It is hard for teachers to understand the strengths and challenges of parents, and parents often feel like outsiders in the school world.
Breaking down barriers, fostering positive communication between teachers and parents, and having engaged families will lead to better outcomes for students. Research shows that family engagement promotes student success. Students with engaged parents are more likely to earn higher grades and pass their classes, attend school regularly and have better social skills, and go on to postsecondary education. When families, teachers and schools find ways to work together, student achievement improves, teacher morale rises, communication increases, and family, school, and community connections multiply.
Parents want what is best for their children, and teachers do too. The more teachers and parents talk to each other, work with one another and remember that the child is the focus, the more successful that child will be. And we can all use some help on how to make that happen. Here are some tips that can help parents foster a positive relationship with their child's teacher.
- Find time to share your experiences with school and how that has shaped your perception about parent teacher relationships. Talk about ...
It was recently announced that Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg is donating $100 million to help improve Newark’s long-troubled public schools. Those funds will be matched by donations raised by the city, which is also raising $50 million for another youth effort. In other words, Newark’s children will have a lot more money available to them over the next few years.
As part of this agreement, Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie will cede some control over Newark Public Schools (currently state-run) to Democratic Newark Mayor Cory Booker. Together, they will select a new superintendent, and Mayor Booker will have freedom to redesign the system (though the governor retains formal authority over it).
This partnership is great news in some respects--a Democrat and a Republican overcoming political conflicts, joining forces for the sake of the children. Hopefully it is the first of many such unions across the country.
But I do have some concerns with this set-up. First, we must question the wisdom of short-term infusions of private funds into public schools. While $100 million--or even $250 million--is a lot of money, it won't last forever. What happens when the money runs out?
And second, what is the role of philanthropy in school reform? Some argue, as NYC Chancellor Joel Klein puts it, that while private philanthropy will never be a large part of a system's budget, it is money that can be used for research and development and for ...
Have you checked out NBC’s Education Nation’s mission statement? A little birdie recently passed on some interesting information about it...
The statement claims “Sixty-eight percent of our eighth-graders can’t read at grade level.” But where did that number come from?
The source was not immediately apparent. But having some knowledge of education (and a helpful source), I assumed it came from NAEP--the National Assessment of Educational Progress. So I went to their website to check out the reading scores.
NAEP actually found that 32% of eighth graders performed at or above the proficient level in 2009, the most recent data available. That means, of course, that 68% of eighth graders did not. The problem? Scoring “proficient” on the reading NAEP has no relationship with whether or not a student can read at grade-level.
NAEP defines proficient as “representing solid academic performance for each grade assessed. Students reaching this level have demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter, including subject-matter knowledge, application of ...
If not, consider joining a live chat for Education Nation’s Teacher Town Hall. It will be held Sunday, September 26, at 12pm Eastern/9am Pacific. And during this event, NBC’s Brian Williams will talk with teachers on-air and online about issues facing educators and education. Just remember--you must register to participate.
For those who do not know, NBC News’ Education Nation is a week-long event, starting Sunday, that will examine and redefine education in America. It “seeks to engage the public, through thoughtful dialogue, in pursuit of the shared goal of providing every American with an opportunity to pursue the best education in the world.” Believing that we have allowed our students to fall behind, that our workforce is largely unprepared for today’s marketplace and that we face stiff competition from abroad, NBC hopes to provide quality news and information to the public to help us decide: Is it time to reinvent American as an Education Nation?
This event will feature in-depth conversations about improving education in American, including the Teacher Town Hall (which, by the way, will be aired live on MSNBC, educationnation.com, scholastic.com and msnbc.com). For the entire week, “NBC Nightly News,” “Today,” “Meet the Press,” “Your Business,” MSNBC, CNBC, Telemundo, msnbc.com and ...
Each year the Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools provides an in-depth look at how Americans perceive public schools. This year’s poll probed the public on a wide range of hot education issues. How hot? Think the federal role in public education, school and teacher quality, teacher salaries and evaluation, student learning and rewards and the importance of college.
The results, released to the public yesterday, provide food for thought for educators and policymakers on all sides (and in the middle) of the ideological debates often dominating the education media. It is well worth a read.
One overarching conclusion, drawn by a panelist at the release event: The American public is not necessarily having the same conversation as policymakers when it comes to education.
Highlights of what Americans think:
- The state is responsible for education, not the federal government. It is responsible for funding schools, setting standards, deciding what should be taught and holding schools accountable.
- Improving teacher quality should be the top national education priority. Not developing demanding education standards. Not creating better assessments for students. And not ...
Welcome back to school!
While you educators are at various stages of the back-to-school process--you may have been getting to know students for weeks now, or met students yesterday, or be setting up your classroom or office--we know that many of you are preparing back-to-school presentations, columns, and other communications. So we wanted to remind you that we have sample language available for use in back-to-school communications. Feel free to steal our words. Take them all, or take only a few. Whatever your needs dictate.
This language outlines an emerging vision for 21st century public schools, a vision that is already taking shape in schools from coast to coast. It reaffirms the ...
Could the LA Times' decision to publish teachers' value-added scores have a chilling effect on school research? That question came to me as I read about a case in Arizona. Arizona officials are seeking the names of teachers and schools that took part in a study of the state's policies on teaching English, even though those teachers and schools were promised that their names would remain confidential. Needless to say, many in the research community are none too pleased.
The UCLA study found that the state's ESL policies were doing more harm than good. The state isolates English language learners so they can study only English for several hours every day. UCLA researchers found that this practice does not narrow learning gaps but does raise the specter of segregation. State Chief Tom Horne argues that he cannot rebut those findings without full access to the data used in the survey.
His opponents counter that schools will never again open the doors to researchers if they feel their anonymity is at risk. Researchers (like many reporters, I might add) will often go to great ...
A few weeks ago, we wrote about the promise of school-based health centers (SBHCs). We also heard from Linda Gann, an official in Colorado’s Montrose County School District RE-1J who helped spearhead efforts to open two of these centers in her district. She told us about how her district came to embrace SBHCs as part of a broad strategy to address the needs of its growing Hispanic community and her experience planning and implementing these centers. Today Nurse Practitioner Jennifer Danielson tells us more, giving us a look at the day to day work that happens at her clinic.
Public School Insights: Tell me about school-based health clinics.
Danielson: One of the biggest keys to understanding school-based health clinics is that they are all different. There are some similarities, but a district or a school can tailor a clinic to meet its needs.
For example, our clinic works differently from others in that a lot of clinics have an enrollment form that parents sign at the beginning of the year. If their children go to the school nurse at any point, they get funneled back to a nurse practitioner or a physician's assistant. Sometimes the clinic calls the parents and sometimes it does not. Kids are essentially pre-consented to get care throughout the school year.
At our clinic, we talk to the parent for every visit. So while we are physically on a school campus, we function in a lot of ways like any small medical clinic or doctor's office. Everything is by appointment, though we do accept some walk-ins if we are available. And a parent is either present or part of the visit over the phone every time we see the kids. Kids never come see me without their parents wanting them to be seen and ...
Should we turn a blind eye to the excesses of PR campaigns that advance a cause we support? Should we tolerate overstatements and hype, as long as they are in the service of something we believe in? Not if the dubious means undermine the noble ends. I worry that some recent PR campaigns launched by combatants in today's school reform wars may allow the means to swamp the ends.
A recent commentator on school reform took a different view. He praised aggressive campaigns and likened the school reform movements they support to past movements for civil rights.
Movements, whether Martin Luther King's exposure of segregation as morally illegitimate, or Gandhi's exposure of the immorality of 'British Rule," are actually the proper political culmination of good ideas, brought about by the impatience with the slow movement of the chattering class.
I'm not sure the analogy really works. Laws enforcing segregation were wrong, full stop. The moral thing to do was clear: Strike them down. School reform, by contrast, doesn't often present such clear choices. So we should be careful not to draw parallels that lump critics of one school reform or another together with those who opposed the movement to end segregation.
History also reminds us that not all movements are created equal. Some movements that are fueled by true outrage and conviction can run off the rails and pervert their original aims when the need to advance The Cause overpowers all tolerance for nuance or doubt. Such movements can begin with a noble vision, but they often end by merely replacing one ...
I'm getting more and more worried about the heated rhetoric of debates on school reform. This rhetoric is fueling a war without winners. Here's why:
The rhetoric of reform is killing the public school brand.
Too often, the rhetoric suggests that all public schools are schools of desperate measures, schools of last resort. The failing urban school has come to represent every public school. Some say public schools are impervious to reform. Others say they have capitulated to reform and become test prep factories. Public schools are battle grounds for ideologues of all stripes who attack them for straying from ideological visions of what is Good and Holy.
The message to parents of means? Get your kids out.
The rhetoric of reform is shrinking our vision for education.
The language of "high expectations" rings hollow when we consider just how little we expect of some reform models. The tests we use to measure our progress focus mostly on low-level skills. Subjects like world language are disappearing from the curriculum. Those who say tests don't measure everything that matters are sometimes derided as "touchy feely."
But visions that inspire us are by nature touchy feely. They push us to think well beyond our current impoverished measures. (Today, Jay Mathews praised a set of high schools that ...
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