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--- Wednesday --- December 3, 1997 --- Vol. 1 --- No. 25 ---
NATIONAL EDUCATION GOALS PANEL
NEGP Weekly
The Update on America's National Education Goals
www.negp.gov
__________ __________
TEACHING SCIENCE | SPOTLIGHT |
The Council for Basic | |
Education recently released a | "RAISING THE STANDARD" |
monograph on "Teaching | |
Science." The pamphlet | Newspapers headlines |
"introduces new ideas about | trumpet the coming of |
teaching science in the K-12 | rigorous, academic |
classroom." | standards for students |
Articles included in | nationwide. Reports herald |
"Teaching Science" are: | standards as the savior of |
"Teaching to the Test;" "Prize- | public education. Mean- |
winning Third Graders;" "Going | while, many teachers, prin- |
for the Gold in Physics";" and | cipals and parents remain |
"Standards in the Classroom." | befuddled. How does a |
Besides discussions of | community join the stand- |
classroom innovation, the | ards crusade? Where does a |
pamphlet also includes an | school begin? Are there |
article on the Smithsonian | any schools and communities |
Institution's efforts to | that have successfully |
promote science education among | engaged in development of |
young children. The museum has | standards to improve |
produced a series of science | student achievement? |
kits for students in grades 1- | |
6. It also operates a Web site | The answers to these |
for teachers that contains | questions and more can be |
lesson plans and other | found in a state-of-the-art |
materials. | action guide, "Raising the |
(http://educate.si.edu) | Standard," a project of the |
For a copy of "Teaching | Coalition for Goals 2000. |
Science," contact CBE at 1319 F | The book and accompanying |
Street NW; Suite 900; | CD-ROM features five |
Washington, D.C. 20004-1152; | communities and their |
202/347-4171; e-mail: info@c- | journeys to reform public |
b-e.org; Web site: www.c-b- | schools. (#1) |
e.org |_____________________________|
============== QUOTE OF THE DAY ==============
"It makes it impossible to teach in most cases. ... It's a circus
... tragic."
Stanley Naj, a French teacher at Baltimore's Northern High
School, where the principal ordered a mass suspension of 1,200
disruptive students. (#5)
_______________________________________________________________
| (c) by the Education Policy Network, Inc. |
| 1255 22nd Street NW; Washington, D.C. 20010; 202/724-0124 |
| EPN, Inc. hereby authorizes further reproduction and |
| distribution with proper acknowledgement. |
| Publisher: Barbara A. Pape |
|_______________________________________________________________|
============== TABLE OF CONTENTS ==============
GOAL THREE: STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AND CITIZENSHIP
STANDARD SETTING: A community action guide. (#1)
READING RESEARCH: How we learn to read. (#2)
GOAL FIVE: MATHEMATICS AND SCIENCE
NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS: May yet draft science standards. (#3)
FOR THE BIRDS: Cornell's classroom FeederWatch program. (#4)
GOAL SEVEN: SAFE, DISCIPLINED AND DRUG-FREE SCHOOLS
"A CRY FOR HELP:" Mass suspension in Baltimore school. (#5)
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===== GOAL THREE: STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AND CITIZENSHIP =====
*1 STANDARD SETTING: A COMMUNITY ACTION GUIDE
Communities, schools, businesses and parents prepared to
embrace new, more rigorous standards for their students now have
a guidebook they can refer to for getting the process started and
keeping it on track. The Coalition for Goals 2000, with funding
from the Walton Family Foundation, has developed "Raising the
Standard," a book and companion CD-ROM that "stresses local
ownership and the implementation of standards," writes the
Coalition's StandardsWork project.
Five school districts are featured in the book, co-authored
by Denis Doyle and Susan Pimentel. They are:
Charlotte, N.C.
Beaufort, S.C.
Guilford, Me.
Red Clay, Del.
Murfreesboro, Tenn.
The book stresses that the communities and their efforts to
reform their schools are based in the real world. "Indeed, what
distinguishes them and makes them 'extraordinary' is their
willingness to run risks for reasons peculiar to them," writes
the book.
For example, a high school principal and some teachers in
Guilford, Maine, a working-class community, decided they had had
enough of dumbed-down courses. Together and with the help of the
community, they developed a more difficult curriculum, including
math, science and English courses as well as foreign languages
and the arts. School improvement efforts now are directed at
elementary and middle schools.
Eight steps are described in the action guide for schools
and communities to take to "raise the standard:"
Step 1: Seizing the Moment: Building Public Demand for
Standards and Reform
Step 2: No Guts, No Glory: ORganizing Around High
Academic Standards
Step 3: Taking Stock: Conducting An Education Inventory
Step 4: Free the SChool, Free the Teacher, Free the
Student: Reorganizing for Change and Building
Staff Capacity
Step 5: Testing 1,2,3: Hold Students Accountable
Step 6: Holding Your Feet to Fire: School and District
Accountability
Step 7: No More Excuses: Developing New Partnerships
Step 8: There is No Finish Line: Course Correction,
Continuous Improvement
First-person accounts on efforts to implement standards-
based reform at the grassroots level are peppered throughout the
book. For example, one sub-section, titled "In Charlotte: Two
Principals Speak," presents the views and experiences of Addie
Moore, principal, Pinewood Elementary School and Fred Slade,
principal of Reedy Creek Elementary School.
A new evaluation system was put into effect at Pinewood
Elementary School, where student achievement was low. Moore
comments: "The new evaluation system, with student achievement
as its centerpiece, was a wake-up call that I needed to do some
changing. It made me ask, 'How flexible am I? Am I listening
enough? What kind of support do I need?' It wasn't just about
what the system had to do anymore. The evaluation system got me
and my staff focused on the right stuff."
According to the book, Pinewood moved from a school not
achieving its goals to one that reached 95 out of 100 benchmarks
in two years time. Moore: "I established a strong instructional
monitoring system, which gets me into classrooms every single day
for hours at a time. Don't look for me between the hours of 9
a.m. and 11 a.m. That's when I observe teachers, no excuse. In
conjunction with this effort, we began to closely track
individual student progress at Pinewood and meet regularly in
teams to discuss, by name, any student not making the grade. ...
We didn't stop there. ... Regular progress reports to parents
became a top priority. Attendance was attacked with a vengeance.
..."
The book encompasses the work of a multitude of reform
groups, including New American Schools, the Education Trust and
New Standards, Charter Schools in Action. For more information,
readers using the CD-ROM are directed in the book to "click" on
to detailed summaries of relevant material or to various Web
sites.
According to Leslye Arscht, director of the Coalition for
Goals 2000, the book "helps people see the scope of the
undertaking and anticipates what is needed to address their
community's unique needs." "It is not a one-size-fits-all
model," she added.
"Raising Standards" is available for $29.95 for a single
copy of the book and CD-ROM, with $3.00 for handling. Discounts
are available for multiple copies. For more information, see the
Coalition's Web site, which will have information on the book
next week, at www.goalline.org. Or call the Coalition at
202/835-2000.
*2 READING RESEARCH: HOW WE LEARN TO READ
G. Reid Lyon has been leading a network of National
Institutes of Health researchers for the past 15 years as they
study how children learn to read (Burka, Montgomery County
JOURNAL, 11/25). His work as chief of NIH's child development
and behavior branch may have "unlocked the secrets of how the
human brain turns symbols on a page into words that explain the
world to a child," writes the paper.
According to Lyon, reading failure reflects "not only an
educational problem, but a significant public health problem as
well." His group has designed an inexpensive diagnostic test for
kindergarten students that predicts with 92% accuracy who will
have difficulty learning to read, reports the paper.
NIH's $15 test determines which children will have trouble
reading by pinpointing whether the child has "phoneme awareness,"
or sound recognition. Lyon asserts that children must first have
phoneme awareness and "understand how to connect any of those 44
sounds with the 26 symbols that compose the alphabet," writes the
paper. This process is phonics.
However, the child also must be able to "construct meaning
form print and read fluently so the context is not lost by the
time words are sounded out," writes the paper.
Lyon recommends that schools use a reading program that
incorporates phoneme awareness, phonics and whole language. He
claims that adult arguments over whole language versus phonics
instruction misses the point. "For many children, whole language
isn't appropriate at early strategies but is quite useful in
later stages," said Lyon.
Teachers must not only be steeped in how to help a child
develop phoneme awareness, phonics and fluency, but also be able
to determine which method a child needs at a certain time in his
or her development of reading skills, according to Lyon.
===== GOAL FIVE: MATHEMATICS AND SCIENCE =====
*3 NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS: MAY YET HELP DRAFT SCIENCE STANDARDS
Three Nobel Prize-winning scientists volunteered to help
draft Calif.'s science standards for primary and secondary
classrooms. They initially were turned down by the California
Commission for the Establishment of Academic Content and
Performance Standards; but commission members are now
reconsidering the offer (Colvin, L.A. TIMES, 11/26).
The commission earlier this month awarded a contract for
$178,000 to scientists and educators from Cal State San
Bernardino, reports the paper. However, the Nobel winners in
conjunction with more than 30 other scientists and classroom
teachers from across the nation protested the award on technical
grounds.
According to the paper, the two groups interested in
developing science standards for Calif. represent "competing
approaches to science education." The Nobel group claims the San
Bernardino consortium, in an attempt to reach a broader range of
students, promotes a watered-down curriculum. The San Bernardino
group counters that their agenda is not less rigorous, but
instead presents material in a way that makes it easier to grasp,
"especially for the vast majority of students who do not plan to
pursue careers in science," writes the paper.
Commission staff plan to reopen the selection process. "We
will ask the commissioners to consider rejecting all bids and
reopen [the process]," said Scott Hill, the commission's
executive director.
The three Nobel Prize-winners who volunteered their services
include: Glenn Seaborg, Dudley Hershbach and Henry Taube.
Seaborg, a former chancellor at U of California at Berkeley, was
co-chair of the panel that wrote "A Nation at Risk," notes the
paper.
*4 FOR THE BIRDS: CORNELL'S CLASSROOM FEEDER WATCH PROGRAM
Cornell U's Lab of Ornithology has developed Classroom
Feeder-Watch, a bird education and research project for
elementary and middle school students (Bonney, BIRDSCOPE, Cornell
Lab of Ornithology, Summer 1997). Sixty teachers nationwide
received the curriculum during the 1996-1997 school year to field
test in their classrooms.
BIRDSCOPE reports that each class received a curriculum
package, which is "keyed" to the National Science Standards.
Each kit includes four start-up activities, fifteen explorations,
two year-end activities and several assessments. The project
also provides classes with a Web site for registration and data
submission and retrieval, software for analyzing data and a
software and computer-use guide, writes the newsletter.
Throughout the project, students and teachers can
communicate with scientists at the Lab using e-mail and a
computer listserv.
According to the newsletter, each class completed all the
activities, which included hanging bird feeders outside their
classroom windows, learning bird biology and identification,
counting birds at their feeders using the FeederWatch procedures
and sending their data to the lab for analysis. Classrooms also
produced their own newsletters and "sent in selections for
inclusion in the national project newsletter, 'Classroom
Birdscope,'" writes the newsletter.
Project FeederWatch staff are evaluating the project. They
have posted a questionnaire for teachers online, monitored
comments made through e-mail and the listserve, conducted
telephone interviews with participating teachers, visited
classrooms, and tested students before and after participating in
the Classroom FeederWatch program.
The project, in conjunction with the National Audubon
Society, is developing a new Web site that will "collect, store
and analyze data from all of the Lab's and the National Audubon
Society's citizen-science projects," writes the newsletter.
This school year, the project is underway in about 175
schools in 38 states.
For more information, visit the FeederWatch site at
www.tc.cornell.edu/Birds/.
===== GOAL SEVEN: SAFE, DISCIPLINED AND DRUG-FREE SCHOOLS =====
*5 "A CRY FOR HELP:" MASS SUSPENSION FOR ONE BALTIMORE SCHOOL
Alice Morgan Brown, principal of the notorious Northern High
School in Baltimore, was fed up with student anarchy. After more
than two-thirds of the student body refused to go tho their
homerooms to get report cards, Brown suspended 1,200 students.
This "extraordinary disciplinary action" came after the
students had been directed three times over the school's public-
address system to return to their classrooms (Valentine, WASH
POST, 11/27). According to the paper, before issuing her mass
suspension, Brown encountered a group of students at the school's
front doors chanting, "Hell no, we won't go."
Brown portrayed her two-day mass suspension, which she
rescinded after one day, as a "cry for help." The school has
been in a state of turmoil for some time, with 15 students
arrested by school police on assault charges in September and
October, writes the paper. Teachers were the targets of three of
the assaults, according to the paper. "It's chaotic; it's
ongoing every day," remarked Stanley Naj, a French teacher at
Northern. "It makes it impossible to teach in most cases. ...
It's a circus ... tragic."
City denizens are divided over Brown's action -- some herald
her as a hero who "drew the line in an out-of-control school,"
while others say she acted rashly. The district's interim chief
executive, Robert Schiller, "suggested that the incident could
have been handled in some different but unspecified way," writes
the paper. However, it is unlikely that Brown will be
reprimanded for her action since so many city leaders and civic
activists support her move, according to the POST.
Brown was assigned two years ago to Northern to serve as a
trouble-shooter.
THE NATIONAL EDUCATION GOALS
* GOAL 1: READY TO LEARN
All children in America will start school ready to learn.
* GOAL 2: SCHOOL COMPLETION
The high school graduation rate will increase to at least
90 percent.
* GOAL 3: STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AND CITIZENSHIP
All students will leave grades 4, 8, and 12 having
demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter including
English, mathematics, science, foreign languages, civics and
government, economics, arts, history, and geography, and every
school in America will ensure that all students learn to use
their minds well, so they may be prepared for responsible
citizenship, further learning, and productive employment in our
Nation's modern economy.
* GOAL 4: TEACHER EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
The Nation's teaching force will have access to programs for
the continued improvement of their professional skills and the
opportunity to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to
instruct and prepare all American students for the next century.
* GOAL 5: MATHEMATICS AND SCIENCE
United States students will be first in the world in
mathematics and science achievement.
* GOAL 6: ADULT LITERACY AND LIFELONG LEARNING
Every adult American will be literate and will possess the
knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global economy and
exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
* GOAL 7: SAFE, DISCIPLINED, & ALCOHOL- AND DRUG-FREE SCHOOLS
Every school in the United States will be free of drugs,
violence, and the unauthorized presence of firearms and alcohol
and will offer a disciplined environment conducive to learning.
* GOAL 8: PARENTAL PARTICIPATION
Every school will promote partnerships that will increase
parental involvement and participation in promoting the social,
emotional, and academic growth of children.
_______________________________________________________________
| National Education Goals Panel |
| 1255 22nd Street NW; Suite 502; Washington, D.C. 20037 |
| 202/632-0957 (Fax); e-mail: negp@goalline.org |
| Web site: www.negp.gov |
|_______________________________________________________________|
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