Carol’s Summary:

Colorado, where I live, along with 32 other states have passed a “core standards” curriculum. I agree with the core standards, but I don’t believe that teaching the standards alone will bring global success for American students. Starting with core standards is admirable, but other aspects of learning, which are equally as important to academic development, include emotional and social development. Students need core standards tied to practical, real life applications. Teachers who captivate the hearts and minds of students with provocative, engaging questions will prepare students to challenge themselves and learn to love learning. Students who understand that learning goes beyond the classroom and seek interesting experiences as well as role models will come to class with much more to say and contribute more than students who expect to sit and learn core subjects in class and then go home and spend countless hours on the internet or watching TV.

American students will be competitive with their counterparts around the world when they have core standards as a foundation for learning, while expanding that foundation to include experiences which intimidate and challenge them. In short, we need to teach today’s students to make a difference in their own lives, their communities and the world as a whole. The core standards is a baby step in that direction.

Article: Board adopts national standards: Narrow, controversial vote adopts national education standards in Colo.
By: Peter Marcus

The Colorado Board of Education yesterday narrowly backed adopting controversial national education standards in language arts and math despite pleas from dozens of citizens not to back the proposal.

Critics say the board’s 4-3 decision to adopt the Common Core Standards will erode local control over education, setting the stage for a national curriculum. Critics also do not believe it was necessary for the board to back the national standards in an effort to better position the state to secure $175 million in federal education grant money.
To read full article: www.thedenverdailynews.com

CAROL’S SUMMARY:
Social media may help us solve one of the biggest problems facing higher education: student engagement, as featured in today’s article from Ecampus News. Technology experts and other people from business and academia, convened in five cities across the globe (New York City, San Francisco, London, Sao Paulo, and Toronto) for Social Media Week to discuss “how media sites like Facebook and Twitter are shaping global culture.” During a Feb. 6 session called “The Future of Social Media in Higher Education,” a panel explored the following topics:

o How colleges can use social networking to communicate with traditional and nontraditional students,
o What impact the new Apple iPad might have on student-faculty communication, and
o Why Blackboard is not meeting some students’ social media needs.

For all its merits, nationwide studies reveal that some education officials have been reluctant to embrace social networking because of safety and security issues. The article cites a recent survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project that nine out of 10 American teens use some form of web-based social networking, and 34 percent of parents are aware of the inherent security risks of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, and teen sexting has become a big concern among educators and parents alike.

With 1 out of 4 students dropping out of college, it’s high time we learn how to use this powerful medium to engage and retain all types of learners and create a more qualified workforce.

How can we increase incentives for professors to innovate ways for engaging students using social media?

What can we do to address security and cyber-abuse issues to help diminish the apprehension some instructors have about social networking?

How can the U.S. lead the world by effectively using technology to enhance learning across all disciplines?

ARTICLE
Ecampus News
by Dennis Carter

Keeping college students and their professors connected through social media outlets could be key in boosting graduation rates, education technology experts said during a panel discussion at Social Media Week in New York.
Social Media Week ran through the first week of February in five cities worldwide—New York City, San Francisco, London, Sao Paulo, and Toronto—and authorities from the business world, academia, and other fields discussed how social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are shaping global culture.
During a Feb. 6 session called “The Future of Social Media in Higher Education,” a five-person panel explored how colleges can use social networking to communicate with traditional and nontraditional students, what impact the new Apple iPad might have on student-faculty communication, and why Blackboard is not meeting some students’ social media needs.

To view the entire article visit
http://bit.ly/9umZjE

CAROL’S SUMMARY:
Leadership can be a vexing topic for me because while many people can manage, few people are inspiring enough to be leaders. I’ve seen that leadership skills are what propel principals to create better schools, teachers better classrooms and counselors better advocates for student success. Emotional intelligence has become a vital part of how today’s leaders meet the significant challenges they face. Being courageous enough to challenge a broken situation with several alternatives, champion a student who is letting themselves off the hook on their abilities, or call forth a colleague who can be performing optimally but is choosing mediocrity is the beginning of courageous conversations which change outcomes.

Small, liberal-arts colleges are facing hard times in today’s economy, and G.T. Smith is trying to change that through leadership and genuine relationships. In the Chronicle of Higher Education article below, Mr. Smith states “The underlying thing for me is relationships—hardly anything important happens that doesn’t have to do with relationships. It’s getting to know people, being interested in them. … Life is built on genuine relationships, where trust and integrity are without question. When that is there, there are no limits.” Mr. Smith’s role model for fostering a sense of community to improve failing small, liberal-arts colleges is Howard Lowry, the College of Wooster’s seventh president where Mr. Smith attended as a student. Mr. Lowry wrote an essay for The Atlantic Monthly in 1966 defending the liberal-arts college in response to W. Allen Wallis’s article predicting the coming irrelevancy of small colleges unless they conformed into university-like institutions. Mr. Lowry’s essay argued that small colleges give students “the capacity to survive change” during “a time when colleges are trying to prepare students for careers 10 years away that do not now exist.”

How can today’s colleges and universities appeal to incoming freshmen’s need for belonging?

How can higher education foster a sense of community with high schools?

How can you be courageous as a leader in the role you play to challenge the status quo and bring about positive change?

ARTICLE:
November 15, 2009
Chronicle of Higher Education

By Scott Carlson
Elkins, W.Va.
Most people here know G.T. Smith simply as “Buck,” a grandfatherly figure who strolls around the wooded campus of Davis & Elkins College picking up bits of litter and chatting up students, professors, and groundskeepers by name.
But in higher education, Mr. Smith is known as a turnaround artist, a man with the talent and disposition to take a failing college and transform it into a winner. Here, at 74 years old, taking no salary, he is trying to save a tiny, debt-ridden college in one of the poorest states in the country. His strategy is so simple and earnest, it may sound naïve to the jaded.

To view the entire article visit
http://chronicle.com/article/Turnaround-President-Makes-the/49138/

CAROL’ SUMMARY:
The author of today’s article, Renee Moore, who teaches English to high school and college students in the Mississippi Delta, highlights the iniquities of our country’s education system similar to Jonathon Kozul’s book published in 2005, The Shame of the Nation, in which Kozol documents his visits to approximately 60 schools, in 30 school districts, across 11 states. Some of these schools are in the South Bronx, where he got to know their principals, their teachers and many of their students. His book is dedicated to a teacher from one of these schools.

The chief academic authority on this issue, whom Kozol interviews and quotes, is Gary Orfield of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, who has been as persistent in documenting the scale of segregation, and attacking its presumed educational effects, as Kozol has been in describing it. According to Orfield and his colleagues, writing in 2004, and quoted by Kozol, “American public schools are now 12 years into the process of continuous resegregation. . . . During the 1990’s, the proportion of black students in majority white schools has decreased . . . to a level lower than in any year since 1968.” He expresses outrage at inequities in expenditure, pointing out that New York City in 2002-3 spent $11,627 on the education of each child, while Manhasset (a nearby suburb) spent $22,311, Great Neck $19,705 and so on. There are comparable disparities in other metropolitan areas.

According to a study by Emory University sociologist Dennis Condron, “Racial segregation in the schools is fueling the learning disparity between young black and white children, while out-of-school factors are more important to the growth of social class gaps,” published in the October issue of the American Sociological Review. His research indicated that regardless of social class, black students are less often taught by certified teachers than are white students, and black students are far more likely than white students to attend predominantly minority schools, high-poverty schools and schools located in disadvantaged neighborhoods. “De facto segregation remains high these days, with important implications for education,” Condron said in an interview for the Science Daily (Oct. 2, 2009). “When it comes to both housing and schools, race trumps class as the central axis upon which blacks and whites are segregated. Real solutions to the black-white achievement gap lie far beyond schools and require changes to society more broadly.” A specialist in educational disparities, Condron is currently analyzing data on more than 80 countries to research the impact of economic inequality on countries’ average achievement levels. Here are questions to consider:

How can school districts be considered “good” when certain segments of their student population regularly and consistently perform poorly? And what can these districts do to alleviate such disparities in achievement?

How can parents get involved at their children’s schools to help foster community responsibility?

ARTICLE:
Teacher Magazine
October 16, 2009
Published: October 14, 2009
Reaping What We’ve Sown: How Schools Fail Low-Income Parents
By Renee Moore

Teacher Leaders Network Recently, I’ve been seeing more comments from people who argue that poverty causes people (specifically parents) not to value education. The latest opinion outburst has been prompted in part by the recent story of a young honor student in Chicago being beaten to death (unfortunately, not the only such case, but one of the most dramatic and publicized).

Some of these comments are coming from frustrated educators and others who think we are wasting our time trying to improve poorly performing schools in high-poverty communities because so many, if not most of the parents whose children attend these schools, “just don’t care.”

After 20 years of teaching in one of the poorest regions of the country, I respectfully disagree. Parents who do not love their children or don’t want the best for them─frightful as that is─are still the exception.

To view this entire article visit www.teachermagazine.org