The New York Times (10/27, A21, Hu) reports that Pelham Memorial High School in Westchester County is “redefining traditional notions of a college-preparatory education and allowing students to pursue specialized interests that once were relegated to after-school clubs and weekend hobbies.” Students can now take guitar lessons, “enact military battles, and…build solar-powered cars — all during school hours, and for credit.” Several “other high-performing school districts have [also] begun to expand their course catalogs with electives.” For instance, “in New Jersey, Ridgewood High School is bringing back woodworking and adding global economics, 3-D animation and seven other electives over the next two years to encourage students to cultivate interests beyond traditional subjects and to demonstrate the depth and seriousness of study that appeal to colleges.” According to Richard A. Flanary, senior director of an administrators’ union, “much of the demand for electives comes from parents and students who see them as a way to round out transcripts for entrance to elite colleges.”

The things that teachers say (and don’t say) have important consequences for the literate lives of their students. In Choice Words , Peter Johnston uses dozens of examples of words and phrases to illustrate how “instructional talk” shapes intellectual development. 120 pp/$12.

The Chicago Tribune (10/20, Malone) reports, “The percent of 17-year-olds who do not read for pleasure has doubled in the past 20 years, according to a recent study by the National Endowment for the Arts. Just 43 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds said they read literature in 2002, continuing a decline that began two decades earlier.” Meanwhile, “the drop in how much teens read outside of class has spurred changes in what they read inside it, teachers say.” For example, “many educators pair old novels with newer books or media” to keep students’ attention. Bookstore operator Becky Anderson has also joined the effort. Anderson’s bookshop “brings contemporary authors to schools and coordinates reading clubs in Naperville schools. In one of the programs, elementary age students read and react to manuscripts being considered by publisher HarperCollins.” Anderson said she hopes the program “will cultivate a love of reading before the teen years.”

AP (10/16, Hunter) reports, “Smaller school buses will have to be equipped with lap-and-shoulder seat belts for the first time under a government rule drafted following the deaths of four Alabama students on a school bus that nose-dived off an overpass.” The law, which takes effect in 2011, will require that seat belts be installed only “in new buses weighing five tons or less.” Additionally, “larger buses…will have higher seat backs under the new policy. … The design change is supposed to keep older, heavier students from being thrown over the seats in a collision.” According to U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, “she stopped short of requiring seat belts for larger buses because that could limit the number of children that can squeeze into seats, forcing some children to travel in ways that aren’t as safe as school buses.”

        “Public Citizen, a highway safety advocacy group, said the new rules don’t go far enough,” Bloomberg News (10/15, Keane) noted. In a statement, Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook said, “‘Our enthusiasm for those improvements is tempered’ by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration’s ‘inability to resolve the question of whether seat belts should be installed in large school buses.’”

        While government officials did encourage “a combination of lap and shoulder belts on large school buses, [they] did not require it,” in part because they said that “the cost of seat belts should not be imposed on school districts when school buses are already, for the most part, very safe,” noted ABC News (10/15, Barrett, Stark).

(Change of Venue from the Schedule)

The Lake House

Friday – October 17, 2008

Happy Hour Prices

 Starting at 3:00pm

Visit with old friends and meet new ones!

 Outdoor seating available – weather permitting!

Don’t forget to visit our website:www.asburyparkea.net and Sign in

Education Week (10/13, Sawchuck) reported that last week, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings “turned her attention to teacher quality in an Oct. 8 roundtable discussion with about a dozen performance-pay experts at the Department of Education’s headquarters.” The purpose of the meeting “was to gain feedback on the federal role in supporting performance pay,” but “much of the conversation focused on issues that are typically decided locally.” One of the issues discussed was how to structure performance-pay “programs to bridge traditional salary schedules, which base teachers’ pay on a combination of their experience and the credentials they hold, with schedules that differentiate pay based on student outcomes.” Spellings pointed out that “federal officials ‘have not played a role in salary structures, and some…do not want to play a role’ in altering those structures.” Nevertheless, “she expressed a desire to keep the ball moving on performance pay after she leaves office.”

California’s Orange County Register (10/8, Leal) reported, “Hundreds of students, parents, teachers, and principals ditched cars and school buses [Wednesday] morning and slid into their sneakers and other comfortable shoes to pound the pavement” for the third annual International Walk to School Day. The nationwide event was meant to “promote children’s health, environmental awareness, and a sense of community.” The Register noted that for the walk, “local businesses donated bottled water for the kids and coffee for the grown-ups, while police officers joined in the walks to encourage safety and awareness along the roads.” More than 10 local elementary schools participated, including the Pacific Drive School in Fullerton, which “was chosen by the Orange County Department of Education and Federal Express as the featured campus in the county.” Maryland’s Gazette (10/8, Arias), Florida’s Daily News (10/9, Lewis), and Iowa ABC affiliate WQAD-TV (10/9) reported on local International Walk To School Day events.

Some California students express concerns about walking to school. The Los Angeles Times (10/9, Barboza) reports, “Students at thousands of schools nationwide walked en masse to school Wednesday in events timed for International Walk to School Day, meant to encourage physical fitness and to reduce carbon emissions.” Meanwhile, students “in poor, urban communities…where most students are not driven or bused to school but go by foot, the annual event served as a forum for long-held concerns that the journey can be a treacherous one.” At Garfield Elementary School in Santa Ana, Calif., “fifth-graders accompanied by teachers, and public health officials traced their steps to and from school” for 45 minutes on Wednesday to complete “surveys about their walk to school.

Education Week (10/6, Ash) reports that in November, “dozens of legislative referendums, citizen initiatives, and proposed state constitutional amendments affecting education” will be “on the ballot in at least 15 states, according to an overview by the National Conference of State Legislatures.” For instance, “six states — Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Missouri, and Oregon” — are proposing referendums “that would either create new revenue sources for public schools or alter the flow of gambling-related money earmarked for education.” Meanwhile, Oregon voters will decide on “performance-based raises for teachers and limits on the amount of time non-English-speakers could be taught in their native languages.” Both measures are seen as being widely opposed by educators. Education Week noted that, because “citizen initiatives typically require months of signature-gathering, and legislature-driven measures often are passed early in the year, items reflecting the current economic crisis” will be “notably absent from next month’s ballot.”

Janet Allen’s Tools for Teaching Content Literacy is a plan book-sized flipchart—a ready reference for content reading & writing instruction. The tabbed pages give teachers the what, why, and how of 33 strategies, with classroom illustrations & reproducibles.

New accountability regulations threaten school staff and programs
Local leaders need to be aware of new regulations instituted by the N.J. Department of Education (NJDOE) this summer. The regulations guide actions of the new executive county superintendents and restrict budgetary flexibility at the local school district level starting in 2009-10. This advisory summarizes information on the fiscal accountability regulations which have been issued to date, what NJEA

——————————————————————————–

Watch Classroom Close-up, NJ at a new time Classroom Close-up, NJ, NJEA’s award-winning show featuring members and students, airs on NJN Public Television every Monday at 7 p.m. and every Saturday at 9 a.m. Watch the current episode online.

——————————————————————————–

Attend Fall Focus for Leadership meetings

NJEA annually holds Fall Focus for Leadership meetings in each county for local and county leaders. NJEA officers provide insight into important educational and association issues. Each local association president should attend with members of his or her leadership team.
——————————————————————————–

Join the Committee of 1000
NJEA takes pride in its ability to organize its members to participate in grassroots politics. The Legislature makes decisions that affect our schools, our students, our communities, and our profession. Committee of 1000 members will contact only NJEA members by making phone calls, distributing campaign literature, organizing other NJEA members, and simply helping NJEA members get out the vote. You and your members can volunteer at njea.org.

——————————————————————————–

Elect pro-public education candidates NJEA’s 125-member political action committee voted to endorse Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for president and Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) in his bid for re-election to the U.S. Senate. In addition, NJEA has endorsed ten candidates for Congressional seats. They include two Republicans and eight Democrats.

Study links early-grade attendance to student performance.
Education Week (9/30, Jacobson) reported that “improving early-grades attendance can help schools meet their achievement goals under the federal No Child Left Behind Act,” according to a report from the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP). The report “found that more than 11 percent of kindergartners and close to 9 percent of 1st graders are chronically absent,” with even higher rates “in schools serving poor children.” The study also found, among other things, that “children who are chronically absent in kindergarten have the lowest performance in reading, mathematics, and general knowledge in 1st grade.” Education Week noted that although the study “does not focus on students beyond elementary school, evidence gleaned from other research suggests that high school dropouts are more likely than graduates to be chronically absent as early as 1st grade.” The NCCP report recommends “expanding high-quality preschool programs, saying they ‘play an invaluable role in reducing chronic absence by orienting families to school norms and helping families make regular school attendance part of their daily routine.’”

In the Classroom
Science program focuses on outdoor learning.
Massachusetts’s Gloucester Daily Times (10/1, L’Ecuyer) reports on the Science Day program at Rockport Elementary School, which was “designed to infuse more science into the building by getting students and teachers outside.” With help from Boston University’s Sargent Center for Outdoor Education, and funding from the Rockport Education Foundation, the school designed “areas where students could learn to use a compass, make observations in both New England forest and aquatic environments, collect data on air temperature and rainfall amounts, and input that data into a computer.” Principal Shawn Maguire, “who added science centers at various locations inside the school almost immediately upon arriving in the district last year, said Science Day was the first event of a pilot ‘scientist-in-residence’ program.” Maguire noted that most of the activities involved were designed to utilize “math, writing and reading skills.”

In a commentary for Education Week (9/30), Karen S.