The annual Asbury Park 4th of JUly Parade is this Sunday. It starts on Cookman Ave., goes down Main Street, and ends at the beach. The APEA will be marching in the parade and giving out water bottles. If you have some time, join in the fun and help us out by giving away these great water bottles to the residents of Asbury Park.

Study Shows New And Veteran Teachers Use Technology Equally. eSchool News (6/30) reports that a study conducted by Walden University’s Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership found “newer teachers aren’t any more likely to use technology in their lessons than veteran teachers, and a lack of access to technology does not appear to be the main reason why teachers do not use it.”

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In the Classroom
Federal Grant Provides Chicago Teaches With Cultural Awareness Training. The Chicago Tribune (6/30, Pevtzow) reports that a cultural awareness program funded by a federal grant allowed 24 Chicago Public Schools teacher to “take a whirlwind tour of multicultural Chicago, listening intently as members of different ethnic groups talked of their history, language and culture through the lens of their own experience.”

On the Job
Virginia Making Strides In Reducing Racial Achievement Gap. The Fredericksburg (VA) Free Lance-Star (6/30, Sampson) reports the Southern Regional Education Board released a study showing “Virginia’s public school students are making some progress in closing wide racial gaps in academic performance, and the state compares well to southern states on other measures, including high school and college graduation rates.” However, the same study found “the achievement gap for students with disabilities has increased in recent years and the state’s academic standards for eighth-graders appear low and potentially could leave students unprepared for the next grade level.” Also, the report found “Virginia’s public four-year colleges and universities reported that two-thirds of students who entered as first-time, full-time freshmen in 2002 graduated within six years from the institution they first attended” compared to 53% regionally.

NEA Turns To Congress To Address Concerns About NCLB Unfunded Mandates. Education Week (6/10) reports, “Fresh from a snub by the US Supreme Court, the National Education Association is turning to Congress to address its concerns that the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) — in the form of the 8-year-old No Child Left Behind Act — is an unfunded mandate.” Congress may consider the issue with “other questions in considering the renewal of the ESEA,” according to “Martha Derthink…who has written about court challenges to NCLB.” When considering ESEA reauthorization, said NEA’s general counsel, Alice O’Brien, “lawmakers ‘need to think through that issue very clearly, and NEA will encourage them to do so.” Meanwhile, the Obama “Administration, which earlier this year unveiled a blueprint for renewing the ESEA, has indicated it doesn’t agree with the [NEA's] arguments.”

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In the Classroom
Distance Learning Network Brings Lessons From NASA To Fifth-Graders. The St. Petersburg Times (6/10, Ritchie) reports that recently, students in Juretta Carr’s science classes at Moton Elementary School in Brooksville, Florida, “took advantage of special equipment and a distance learning network…to bring Damon Talley, the Digital Learning Network coordinator at NASA, to the classroom.” The fifth-graders “talked and interacted with Talley just as if he were right in the room with them.” He demonstrated several science experiments for them “for about 45 minutes…asking students what they thought would happen.” Talley’s “lesson reinforced what the students had learned in class and was so new and interesting that everyone was engaged,” the St.

Common Core State Standards Released For Math, English. The New York Times (6/3, Dillon) reports, “The nation’s governors and state school chiefs released on Wednesday a new set of academic standards, their final recommendations for what students should master in English and math as they move from the primary grades through high school graduation.” According to the Times, “The new standards were written by English and math experts convened last year by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers” and “are laid out in two documents: Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, and Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science and Technical Subjects.”

The AP (6/3, Turner) reports that under the new standards, “third-graders should understand subject-verb agreement, fifth-graders need to know about metaphors and similes and seventh-graders must understand how to calculate surface area.” States that opt-in “are supposed to use the standards as a base on which to build their curricula and testing, but they can make their benchmarks tougher than Common Core.” The AP (6/3) adds in a separate story that Wisconsin state superintendent Tony Evers “immediately adopted” the standards.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (6/3, Torres) reports, “Georgia is poised to become one of the first states to heed a call Wednesday by states’ governors and school leaders to voluntarily adopt common national standards in English, language arts and mathematics.” The standards “have the support from a who’s who of education experts and organizations, including the College Board, the National School Boards Association, the National Education Association, the National Parent-Teacher Association and the State Higher Education Executive Officers.”

The Washington Post (6/3, Anderson), Wall Street Journal (6/3, Banchero) and Christian Science Monitor (6/3, Paulson) also cover this story.

Number Of High-Poverty Schools On The Rise, Federal Report Finds. The AP (5/28, Armario) reports that according to the 2010 Condition of Education study released by the US Department of Education, “the percentage of public schools where more than three quarters of students are eligible for free or reduced price lunch – a key indicator of poverty – has increased in the past decade.” The report rleased Thursday also said that children at high-poverty “schools are less likely to attend college or be taught by teachers with advanced degrees.”

The Christian Science Monitor (5/28, Khadaroo) notes that “economic segregation is on the rise in American schools.” According to Richard Kahlenberg of The Century Foundation, “a public policy research group in Washington,” the “separation of rich and poor is the fountainhead of inequality.” He said that high-poverty schools “get worse teachers … are more chaotic … [have] lower levels of parental involvement … and lower expectations than at middle-class schools — all of which translate into lower levels of achievement.” But, the Monitor points out, “cities aren’t the only places facing this challenge.” While 40 “percent of urban elementary schools have high poverty rates…13 percent of suburban and 10 percent of rural elementary schools do as well.”

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