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Two articles on education/learning.
Here and here.
Reinventing High School
The achievement gap between rich and poor students is narrowing in some states, thanks to the added resources and better instruction that are a result of the No Child Left Behind Act. But that good news is largely limited to the early grades. Progress is stalled in high schools, where more states are slipping behind than are making progress, and American teenagers have lost ground when compared with their peers in other industrialized nations. The United States, which once led the world in high school graduation rates, has plummeted to 17th - well behind France, Germany and Japan.
The American high school is a big part of the problem. Developed a century ago, the standard factory-style high school was conceived as a combination holding area and sorting device that would send roughly one-fifth of its students on to college while moving the rest directly into low-skill jobs. It has no tools to rescue the students who arrive unable to read at grade level but are in need of the academic grounding that will qualify them for 21st-century employment.
New York City recently embarked on a plan to develop a range of smaller schools, some of them aimed at the thousands of students whose literacy skills are so poor that they have failed the first year of high school three times. The plan is to pull these students up to the academic standard while providing some of them with work experiences. The National Governors Association has begun a high school initiative that calls for remedial services and partial tuition reimbursement for students who complete community college courses that lead to technical or industrial job certifications. The White House, rushing to get ahead of the parade, recently announced a high school project of its own. And other school districts are tinkering with gimmicks like cash bonuses for good grades.
The emerging consensus is that the traditional high school needs to be remade into something that is both more flexible and more rigorous. But the rigor has to come first. Many states are still setting the bar for reading performance abysmally low in the primary grades, paving the way for failure when children move on to high school. State education departments have fudged vital statistics on graduation rates, as well as the teacher qualification data they have reported to the federal government in ostensible compliance with No Child Left Behind.
The federal Education Department failed to push the states toward doing better under the disastrous leadership of its departing secretary, Rod Paige. No matter how hard localities try, the best-designed high schools in the world will still fail unless the states and the federal government finally bite the bullet on teacher training. That means doing what it takes to remake the teacher corps, even if it means withholding federal dollars from diploma mills pretending to be colleges of education, forcing out unqualified teachers and changing the age-old practice of funneling the least-prepared teachers into the weakest schools.
And a third.
Bloomberg to Give Staten Island a Package of Elite School Plans
By ELISSA GOOTMAN
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced a package of education plans for Staten Island yesterday, including a proposal to turn one of its high schools into the city's seventh elite, specialized school with a citywide admissions test and to create gifted and talented programs in seven schools for younger children.
The mayor also promised the borough a special school for children with Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism, and a new small high school, scheduled to open in September on the College of Staten Island campus.
Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, who accompanied Mr. Bloomberg at Staten Island Technical High School yesterday, said the four programs were "part of a much larger effort, which is to take the strengths in Staten Island and build on them."
"Let's make Staten Island a model for the entire nation," he said.
The plans are likely to appeal to voters on Staten Island, a Republican stronghold that is considered essential to Mr. Bloomberg in the coming mayoral race. That fact was not lost on some of the mayor's critics.
"I think it's important to expand gifted and talented programs to underserved areas, but I just chuckled when I saw that that's the first underserved area they decided to expand it to," said Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers. "It would be good if every year was an election year, because this is clearly an important political constituency to the mayor."
One of the mayor's opponents in the Republican primary, former City Councilman Thomas V. Ognibene, said of the announcement, "I do think it's about the fact that up until this point the mayor thought all of those Republican and moderate and conservative voters had no alternative."
There are currently no gifted programs on Staten Island. It is not yet clear what the new ones will look like, but it seems that they will differ significantly from some of the most prominent gifted programs in the city, in which children who score well on certain tests spend all or most of their days in special classes.
Michelle Fratti, the superintendent of Region 7, which includes Staten Island, said staff members at the seven schools - Public Schools 22, 31, 41, 48, 53 and 54, and Intermediate School 27 - were still planning the programs, which may take place weekly, daily, after school or on weekends. The programs could range from, say, after-school writing sessions for certain third graders to weekly science programs for all a school's fifth graders.
Mr. Bloomberg said one program would focus on the performing arts, while others might focus on math, science or social studies, saying, "You raise the bar and people work up to the bar; you lower the bar and they work down."
Mr. Klein, however, was quick to point out that the Staten Island programs would not be the template for gifted programs elsewhere.
"There is no single model," he said.
Mr. Bloomberg also announced the formation of a task force to look into whether Staten Island Tech, in New Dorp, should join the six elite high schools that base admissions on a special, standardized high school test. Those schools include Stuyvesant and Bronx High School of Science. Staten Island is the only borough without one.
Staten Island Tech is already competitive: students must meet a cutoff score based on a combination of standardized tests and school grades, and this year, officials said, 2,000 students applied for 220 seats.
The school for children with Asperger's syndrome will open in September at a location still to be determined, Mr. Bloomberg said, with two kindergarten classes, each with eight general education students and four with Asperger's syndrome. It will eventually grow to include students through the fifth grade.
Reinventing High School
The achievement gap between rich and poor students is narrowing in some states, thanks to the added resources and better instruction that are a result of the No Child Left Behind Act. But that good news is largely limited to the early grades. Progress is stalled in high schools, where more states are slipping behind than are making progress, and American teenagers have lost ground when compared with their peers in other industrialized nations. The United States, which once led the world in high school graduation rates, has plummeted to 17th - well behind France, Germany and Japan.
The American high school is a big part of the problem. Developed a century ago, the standard factory-style high school was conceived as a combination holding area and sorting device that would send roughly one-fifth of its students on to college while moving the rest directly into low-skill jobs. It has no tools to rescue the students who arrive unable to read at grade level but are in need of the academic grounding that will qualify them for 21st-century employment.
New York City recently embarked on a plan to develop a range of smaller schools, some of them aimed at the thousands of students whose literacy skills are so poor that they have failed the first year of high school three times. The plan is to pull these students up to the academic standard while providing some of them with work experiences. The National Governors Association has begun a high school initiative that calls for remedial services and partial tuition reimbursement for students who complete community college courses that lead to technical or industrial job certifications. The White House, rushing to get ahead of the parade, recently announced a high school project of its own. And other school districts are tinkering with gimmicks like cash bonuses for good grades.
The emerging consensus is that the traditional high school needs to be remade into something that is both more flexible and more rigorous. But the rigor has to come first. Many states are still setting the bar for reading performance abysmally low in the primary grades, paving the way for failure when children move on to high school. State education departments have fudged vital statistics on graduation rates, as well as the teacher qualification data they have reported to the federal government in ostensible compliance with No Child Left Behind.
The federal Education Department failed to push the states toward doing better under the disastrous leadership of its departing secretary, Rod Paige. No matter how hard localities try, the best-designed high schools in the world will still fail unless the states and the federal government finally bite the bullet on teacher training. That means doing what it takes to remake the teacher corps, even if it means withholding federal dollars from diploma mills pretending to be colleges of education, forcing out unqualified teachers and changing the age-old practice of funneling the least-prepared teachers into the weakest schools.
And a third.
Bloomberg to Give Staten Island a Package of Elite School Plans
By ELISSA GOOTMAN
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced a package of education plans for Staten Island yesterday, including a proposal to turn one of its high schools into the city's seventh elite, specialized school with a citywide admissions test and to create gifted and talented programs in seven schools for younger children.
The mayor also promised the borough a special school for children with Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism, and a new small high school, scheduled to open in September on the College of Staten Island campus.
Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, who accompanied Mr. Bloomberg at Staten Island Technical High School yesterday, said the four programs were "part of a much larger effort, which is to take the strengths in Staten Island and build on them."
"Let's make Staten Island a model for the entire nation," he said.
The plans are likely to appeal to voters on Staten Island, a Republican stronghold that is considered essential to Mr. Bloomberg in the coming mayoral race. That fact was not lost on some of the mayor's critics.
"I think it's important to expand gifted and talented programs to underserved areas, but I just chuckled when I saw that that's the first underserved area they decided to expand it to," said Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers. "It would be good if every year was an election year, because this is clearly an important political constituency to the mayor."
One of the mayor's opponents in the Republican primary, former City Councilman Thomas V. Ognibene, said of the announcement, "I do think it's about the fact that up until this point the mayor thought all of those Republican and moderate and conservative voters had no alternative."
There are currently no gifted programs on Staten Island. It is not yet clear what the new ones will look like, but it seems that they will differ significantly from some of the most prominent gifted programs in the city, in which children who score well on certain tests spend all or most of their days in special classes.
Michelle Fratti, the superintendent of Region 7, which includes Staten Island, said staff members at the seven schools - Public Schools 22, 31, 41, 48, 53 and 54, and Intermediate School 27 - were still planning the programs, which may take place weekly, daily, after school or on weekends. The programs could range from, say, after-school writing sessions for certain third graders to weekly science programs for all a school's fifth graders.
Mr. Bloomberg said one program would focus on the performing arts, while others might focus on math, science or social studies, saying, "You raise the bar and people work up to the bar; you lower the bar and they work down."
Mr. Klein, however, was quick to point out that the Staten Island programs would not be the template for gifted programs elsewhere.
"There is no single model," he said.
Mr. Bloomberg also announced the formation of a task force to look into whether Staten Island Tech, in New Dorp, should join the six elite high schools that base admissions on a special, standardized high school test. Those schools include Stuyvesant and Bronx High School of Science. Staten Island is the only borough without one.
Staten Island Tech is already competitive: students must meet a cutoff score based on a combination of standardized tests and school grades, and this year, officials said, 2,000 students applied for 220 seats.
The school for children with Asperger's syndrome will open in September at a location still to be determined, Mr. Bloomberg said, with two kindergarten classes, each with eight general education students and four with Asperger's syndrome. It will eventually grow to include students through the fifth grade.