News from NEW: For parents,
it's not the economy, stupid. It's values, values, and values. Parents
fear they are losing the battle to instill absolutely essential
values in their children, according to the latest survey conducted
by the Public Agenda, a New York-based citizen education and research
organization. Parents are more concerned with protecting their child
from negative social influences than about paying the bills. Their
worries included teaching their children to succeed in school, to
be well behaved with good values, to develop self-control, and to
maintain good eating habits.
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CONTENTS
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COMMUNITIES
- REALITY
CLASSROOM: Creative Teacher Gives Students Life-Lesson in Civics
- ABOUT
FACE: More Miami-Dade Voucher Students Return to Public Schools
STATES
- CLOSING
GAPS IN MINNESOTA: Education Leaders Devise New Plan
- SMALLER
CLASSES: New Jersey Offers More School-Within-School Academies
THE NATION
- CENTERING
ON SCIENCE AND MATH: NSF Awards Aim to Beef Up Instruction
RESEARCH AND EDUCATION
PRACTICE
- EDUCATION
AT A GLANCE: International Group Releases Annual Report
- DARE
TO CHANGE: Anti-Drug Program Morphs Into a Possible Winner
WEEKLY FEATURE
- ELECTION
EXTRA: Voters Show Support for Public Education in Ballot Measures
COMMUNITIES
- REALITY
CLASSROOM: Chris Makris, a Concord, N.H., high school teacher,
decided to give his students a chance to play a role in history, rather
than simply writing about it. Makris' assignment: Students could volunteer
for 10 hours for a political campaign or party, keeping a diary, and
writing a paper about what they learned on the campaign trail. More
than 30 students signed up to answer phones, wave signs, canvass neighborhoods
and stuff envelopes for Democrats or Republicans. The students met local
and national politicians and viewed the inner workings of a campaign.
''It looks like chaos, but you pick up on how they're organized and
you see how much goes into it,'' said Austin Mullins, a student volunteer.
(AP/Foster's
Daily Democrat (Dover), 11/4)
http://www4.fosters.com/news2002/nov_02/nov04_02/news/reg_nh1104k.asp
- ABOUT
FACE: More than one in four Miami-Dade County voucher students
have returned to public schools since August, part of what is being
called a dramatic turnaround statewide. Under Gov. Jeb Bush's Opportunity
Scholarships program, the state pays for students from low-performing
schools to attend private ones. It is the nation's only statewide voucher
program. Several reasons were mentioned for the return of students.
The reasons included transportation difficulties, a lack of familiar
faces, a more demanding curriculum, firmer discipline standards, and
culture shock experienced from the typically low-income students who
transfer into a school with students from a higher socioeconomic group.
''The private schools were not the panacea they had expected,'' said
Mercedes Toural, associate superintendent for education in Miami-Dade.
(Miami
Herald, 11/3)
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/4430976.htm
STATES
- CLOSING
GAPS IN MINNESOTA: Education leaders in the state of a thousand
lakes are hammering out ways to change the way they judge students and
schools. Although Minnesota frequently is cited as a high-performing
state, averages can be deceiving. Minnesota Department of Education
officials plan to use the new Elementary and Secondary Education Act
to improve education for students who are minority, disadvantaged, and/or
learning to speak English. Look for an expansion of the Minnesota Comprehensive
Assessment to cover all grades-three to eight-and a new requirement
for testing the math and reading skills if ninth graders. Other changes
are still being debated and subject to state funding.
(Pioneer Press, 11/3)
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/living/education/4424729.htm
- SMALLER
CLASSES: Small
classes and personal attention are the reasons many New Jersey students
opt for the school-within-school academies sprouting up across the state.
New Jersey's governor and state Department of Education are supporting
the concept at the high school level. One goal is to encourage businesses
to help schools in develop industry-related programs. Partnerships already
have developed between high schools and Verizon, Commerce Bank, and
Pfizer. While admissions policies vary, typically students must apply
to and qualify for the academy programs. The Atlantic City Press is
running a series of articles on the changing role of high schools in
New Jersey.
(Atlantic City Press, 11/4)
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/education/1104021ACADEMY.html
THE
NATION
- CENTERING
ON SCIENCE AND MATH: The National Science Foundation will invest
in five new Centers for Learning and Teaching. The goal is to create
quality professional development programs for teachers and research
how students learn. The new centers, which include locations in Washington,
D.C., Missouri and Georgia, will receive an estimated $10 million each
over the next five years. The K-12 centers are expected to counter the
expected impact of mass retirements of teachers and higher education
faculty. The centers also will aim to build a body of research, especially
in emerging and interdisciplinary mathematics and science topics; and
help reduce the high proportion of teaching professionals who are teaching
out of field.
http://www.ehr.nsf.gov/esie/programs/clt/clt.asp
RESEARCH
AND EDUCATION PRACTICE
- EDUCATION
AT A GLANCE:Teachers in the United States spend more hours in front
of their classes than their counterparts in other developed countries.
Yet, on average U.S. students fare no better than classmates in the
other countries. Those were among the education trends and findings
from 32 industrialized nations in an annual report by the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Reg Weaver, president
of the National Education Association (NEA), said time in front of the
class is not the only ingredient in student progress. ''You cannot just
have face time without having the opportunity to plan what you're going
to do.'' Weaver added that the key to helping low-income children succeed
is providing better facilities, smaller classes, and better technology.
Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution said that the more rigorous
core curriculum of other countries makes it less likely that students
will complete high school without taking college-preparatory courses.
(AP/USA Today, 10/30)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2002-10-30-students-average_x.htm
- DARE
TO CHANGE: A revamped anti-drug program shows promising results,
say researchers from the Institute for Health and Social Policy at the
University of Akron in Ohio. The Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE)
program was created by Los Angeles police officers in 1983 and targeted
fifth graders for the anti-drug message. About 80 percent of public
schools use DARE as an anti-drug program. Recent reviews of the program
found it to be ineffective. However, the new DARE curriculum focuses
not only on fifth-grade students, but also on students in seventh and
ninth grades. Teachers also help instruct and teach anti-drug lessons.
The current study, financed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is
tracking students in Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Newark, New Orleans,
and St. Louis.
(AP/Cleveland Plain Dealer, 10/29)
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/news/103588782782180.xml
WEEKLY
FEATURE
- ELECTION
EXTRA: Voters nationwide showed their support for public education
by approving initiatives that called for new spending on school programs,
despite hard economic times faced by most states. Florida voters backed
smaller class size and topnotch preschools, while Colorado voters just
said no to a ban on bilingual education that would have required all
students to be placed in English-only classes after a year of native
language instruction.
Reg Weaver, the president of the National Education Association (NEA),
praised the results of the education initiatives, which opponents have
said would be too costly.
"People are saying, find the money,'' Weaver said. ''If it's important,
they'll find it, just like they did with the tax cut, homeland security
and the airline industry."
Here are results on key education-related ballot measures:
Arkansas
voted against the removal of sales taxes on food and medicine, which
in turn would have reduced revenue for the state's public schools.
Arizona voted to dedicate a portion of sales taxes and public land revenues
for public education.
California voted yes for a historic $13.5 billion school-construction
bond (Proposition 47) and voted with Hollywood's own kindergarten cop,
Arnold Schwarzenegger, to increase state grants for before-and after-school
programs by $400 million (Proposition 49).
Colorado voted against a ban on bilingual education programs that would
have required all students to be placed in English-only classes after
a year of native language instruction.
Florida voted to offer voluntary, universal, high quality pre-kindergarten
classes for all four-year-olds (Amendment 8); to reduce public school
class sizes (Amendment 9); and to create a new governing structure for
higher education (Amendment 11).
(The New York Times, 11/07)
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/07/politics/campaigns/07BALL.html
http://www.ballotwatch.org/2002POSTReport.pdf
--
Barbara Pape, Editor
California:
More Students Are Earning Their Diplomas
More and more students are completing high school in California.
The public high school completion rate in
California
has improved by 6 percent since 1991. This increase is one of the best
in the country.
(NCES, Dropout Rates in the United States: 2000. November 2001)
http://www.nea.org/goodnews/ca01.html
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