Monthly Archive for August, 2006

As hosted by Thespis Journal, this week’s Carnival of Education has a theatrical theme. In “The History Boys” category, A History Teacher explains Wikipedia to his students and teaches them to consider the source of information.

Next week, send carnival entries to Scott Elliott of Get on the Bus at scemel-(at)-aol.com.

California’s “English learners” — so-called because they’re not completely fluent in English — are learning, writes Peter Schrag, a long-time Sacramento Bee columnist. Schrag finds a lot of good in the state’s 2006 STAR scores, which the bilingual lobby claims show the need for “to create yet another segregated program for English learners.”

Students reclassified as fluent in English outscore English-only students in English and math proficiency, he writes. Yet many master English but never leave “English learner” status.

. . . 14 percent of English learners (EL) are proficient or above in English (25 percent in math). Meanwhile, there’s been a sharp rise in passing scores on CELDT, the California English Language Development Test, one of the criteria that help determine whether an English learner is ready for reclassification.

. . . The problem, according to state officials, is that for both financial and ideological reasons, districts are not reclassifying students nearly fast enough: Currently, fewer than 10 percent of English learners are redesignated each year, in large part because there’s extra state and federal money for English learners and immigrant students.

Keeping academically successful students in the English learner category also helps local districts meet state and federal formulas for progress by all subgroups of students and protects bilingual programs and the jobs of teachers and bureaucrats in those fields.

The number of English Learners who score at advanced or “early advanced” levels on the English fluency test has doubled in five years; nearly half now test at that level. Students are learning English.

Ninety percent of Massachusetts charter schools are performing as well or better than schools their students otherwise would attend, concludes a new study by the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment for the state Department of Education.

Researchers compared MCAS results in English and math between individual charter schools and their comparison sending districts and examined student growth over time for individual students enrolled in charter schools.

Education Commissioner David P. Driscoll said questions about charter school effectiveness have been answered, “Our next steps will be to determine exactly what charter schools are doing differently and how their successes can benefit the traditional public schools.”

Significant performances differences were “much more likely to favor the charter school,” the study fund. At least 30 percent of charters performed much better than their comparison school district; 10 percent of charters performed worse than the comparison district in math, fewer than 10 percent in English. Black, Hispanic and low-income students were more likely to do significantly better when enrolled in charter schools.

In addition to comparing 2001 to 2005 test results, researchers analyzed “changes in individual student test scores for continuously enrolled students over time.” Nearly all the schools making above-average gains in student scores over time were charter schools.

In Chicago, another study shows charter schools outperforming nearby district-run schools.

Chicago Public Schools released Tuesday its performance report of the system’s 25 charters — 16 elementaries, eight high schools and one K-12 school–in the 2004-05 school year.

. . . The report concluded that charter students citywide scored higher on tests, attended school more often and changed schools less often than their peers in neighboring schools.

. . . For the 20 charters reporting results on state exams in 2005, all outperformed comparison schools in the percentage of pupils meeting standards. However, only 13 charter schools received high rankings on their budget and finances. All eight charter high schools reported higher graduation rates than neighboring schools’.

Michael Goldstein, founder of the very successful MATCH charter school in Boston, wonders if the New York Times, which loves anti-charter studies, will report on these pro-charter studies.

Today’s children can’t explore the World Beyond The Front Yard, says a Washington Post story

. . . . to drive around America’s suburbs is to see tidy but empty blocks, devoid of the kickball, hide-and-seek and aimless wanderings of earlier generations. For many parents, the thought of allowing their children out unaccompanied invokes spasms of horror and even accusations of child neglect.

Despite parents’ fears, the number of children abducted by strangers is very low and not on the increase. Roger Hart, director of the Children’s Environments Research Group at the City University of New York says:

“In a more globalized world, people feel generally less secure about place, because the world becomes more and more anonymous as it becomes more mobile,” he said. “It feeds on itself, and if you watch more and more television, you have more sense of these dangers. And there’s less and less engagement with community. Outside has become more dangerous, because there’s no longer multiple eyes on everything.”

One couple quoted in the story planted a vegetable garden in their front yard and built a porch to encourage neighbors to stop by for a chat.

Older kids can get out of the house, but not out of sight, reports NPR. Parents are using technology to track their teenagers. The story features a stepdad who let his stepdaughter have a car, despite her record of drinking and lying, but slipped a tracking device in the car.

. . . more and more teens will have to get used to the idea of “Big Mother” looking over kids’ shoulders. With GPS technology getting cheaper, smaller and better, most any cell phone can be a tracking device for just a few extra dollars a month. A black box, like the one made by Alltrack that’s in Jessica’s car, costs a few hundred dollars, plus a monthly fee. But, it also gives parents a way to retaliate in real time.

For example, says Alltrack’s Mark Allbaugh, when a teen driver is speeding, parents can remotely flash the car’s light or honk the horn, until the teen slows down.

There’s more to come.

“I think, over time, parents will feel if they don’t have this, they’re not being good parents,” says Jim Katz, Director of the Rutgers University Center for Mobile Communication Studies. He says that soon, tiny cameras — like the ones in most new cell phones — will enable parents to literally watch over their kids 24 hours a day, seven days a week– and even eavesdrop on their conversations.

Big Mother is watching you.

Even as ACT scores are rising, SATs are declining: Students taking the new, longer test posted the largest drop in scores in 31 years. College Board, which runs the SATs, blamed the decline on more students taking the test only once.

Fatigue wasn’t to blame, the College Board insisted, even though this year’s class was the first to take a new version of the exam which added an essay. It now takes an average of three hours and 45 minutes to complete the test, not counting breaks.

Combined scores fell seven points to a 1021 average. Boys lost more points than girls, who outscored boys on the new writing section by 11 points.

The new exam eliminates analogies and includes higher-level math.

The results come two weeks after it was announced the class of 2006 had posted the biggest score increase in 20 years on the rival ACT exam. The ACT, which is also accepted by almost all colleges that require standardized tests, is generally more focused on material covered in high school classes than the SAT, which is more of a measure of general ability.

More students are taking both the ACT and the SAT to see which one maximizes their score.