School-of-Thought

Despite statewide legislative failures, this week the Watertown School Board approved a local plan to offer preschool for 4 year olds.

The plan calls for the development of two daily sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, running Monday through Thursday, with Fridays set aside for teacher home-visits.

Scheduled to begin this fall, the program targets children who are currently not enrolled in preschool and meet low income guidelines.

Education recommendations for presumptive Republican pres. candidate John McCain, from Eduflack:

1.  National standards benefit the nation.  Such standards don’t mean we are denying local control.  They empower our local districts to remain competitive in their state, across the nation, and throughout the world.  National standards, both for students and teachers, are the only way today’s students can succeed in tomorrow’s global economy.

2. Invest in education R&D.  We all understand the value of investing in medical or technology R&D.  Now is the time to invest in research focused on improving our schools and educational quality in our classrooms.  Such investment is key to triggering true innovation at the state or national level, leading to improved economies, better jobs, and better lives.

3. Respect the practitioners.  It is easy for some to say our schools have failed because our teachers have failed.  If any Republican wants to engender change in our schools, they need to respect the teachers delivering the curriculum.  They are on the front lines.  Without their support, reform will fall flat, destined for a garbage heap of good but failed ideas.

4. Don’t fear additional spending.  NCLB scared off many a Republican, particularly with increased federal education spending.  The feds are still only responsible for about 8 cents of every dollar spent on public K-12 education.  Additional funding is good for the system, as long as we are spending it on research-proven instruction and improvements we know will boost student achievement.

5. Focus on what works.  For decades, our schools have been bombarded with the latest in snakeoils and silver bullets.  Today’s educators want to see what works in schools like theirs, with kids lke theirs.  NCLB is all about replicable school reforms.  Now is the time to spotlight what is going right in your hometown or your home state, and use it as the model for why we need to continue federal education reforms.  Many of today’s improvements are directly tied to NCLB efforts.  Take credit for it.”

Read the full post here.

Comments?

I came across this thoughtful reflection from Carolyn Foote, a librarian from Texas. Carolyn writies about an article in the Economist “about how people now are much more nomadic in thier use of spaces” due to things like “Wi-fi, mobility, and portability.”   This allows people the increased ability “to connect whenever they go in nooks and crannies” and other indoor and outdoor spaces.

The discussion from Carolyn’s perspective of a librarian is how the design of librarry and school spaces can facilitate learning and take advantage of the “nomadic” use of space.

The concept is fascinating to think about from the perspective of a school board member — because part of our duties of course include the construction of school buildings.

Perhaps equally important as the design of new space is how current space is used. At this week’s school board meeting we heard from teachers and administrators involved with development of the new alternative education plan for the middle school and high school. A component of the plan is to create warm and unique learning environments in each building.

Due to our 1:1 laptop program we already have wireless internet set up — students can connect via laptop anywhere in the high school. It will be interesting to see what these new alternative ed spaces will end up looking like.  I’m imagining it’s going to be different than the traditional desks-in-a-straight-row type classroom.

Great article over at the Educational Leadership site that ties into our high school and district-wide changes discussed at last night’s school board meeting.  The article is titled “Perspectives/The High School Scene.  Here’s an exerp:

. . . a wealth of new choices needs to be developed because the typical high school culture is not working for so many. Our kids, whether they are participating in activities to the hilt, just sitting quietly, or dropping out of school, are telling us something about the high school experience. It’s time to look at the whole picture and make some positive changes.

What we heard last night at the board meeting was discussion on changes implemented this year, and for plans to implement further changes next year.  Discussed was development of a  new alternative education programs at WHS and WMS, credit recovery on-line coursework, student Personal Learning Plans, development of a new team at the middle school to focus solely on alternative education, and implementation of a preschool program to adress high-risk children that currently fall though the cracks.  As Mr. Butts told the board, “we need to do whatever it takes to get all our hight school students to graduate.”  I like his out-of-the box thinking.

So far the drop-out numbers look pretty good.  Year to date, we’ve seen a reduction of about 40% in the drop out rate compared to last year.  We still have a little while to go unitl graduation, but YTD, the number look very positive.

I’ve been doing a little house cleaning lately. The blog was getting a little too congested for my taste so I’ve been moving some things around, trying to organize. I’ve cleaned up the side bars a good bit — moved the links of all my favorite edublogs, must-read books and papers to pages that can now be access by clicking on a tab up in the header section. I’ve opened up the pull-down list of categories so now that all can be seen on the left side bar for anyone wanting easy access, and I left my education resource links on the right side bar since I use them so often when researching educational issues.

In the upper right corner I also added a few options to subscribe to the feed, either through RRS or through your email. So now, if you prefer, my posts can come directly to you via email.

Let me know what you think. Does the reorganization make it easier or more difficult to find things? Is the site ok to navigate, or is it too dense? Drop me a note!

Been doing some traveling lately — out to Ohio and back to see my second daughter graduate from college. Dad is proud as can be — she graduated Summa Cum Laude and will be doing ministry work with the poor in Washington DC next year through an organization called A Simple House.

A few days ago I wrote about a question posed by Scott Mcleod. He asked if “smart people are leaving teaching.” Based on his data, it would sure seem like they are. Here are my thoughts:

First, if a smart person values money more than they value the sense of purpose, passion and pride they receive from being a teacher, they would have to be a pretty dumb person to stay in teaching. Fortunately, most teachers in my experience go into the profession because of their love of teaching and making a difference in the world. That being said, love of teaching doesn’t pay the bills . . .

The critics say teachers make enough, especially for only working 9 months a year. But the trends of our best and brightest teachers leaving the profession, and the less-than-stellar academic achievements of our young people compared to other countries in the world, makes me think that as a society we need to re-evaluate the inherent value these people bring to the table and pay them what they are worth.

In our school district about 85-86% of the money we receive goes to pay teacher salaries. We run a lean ship. Each year the legislature evaluates the amount of money school districts in our state will receive. If the legislature provides us with a 3% increase, essentially that’s the maximum we can pass along to our teachers. If we provided them more than we received, for example a 4% increase, it wouldn’t be too long before we were broke.

How do we keep smart teachers teaching? Hell, pay ‘em more, respect ‘em more, show our appreciation more . . . but also, keep ‘em accountable. Hire teachers with potential – spend money on grooming and developing and training them to simply be the best. Set the bar high and demand excellence.

Our goal as a society should be to create a working force of highly motivated and appropriately compensated professional educators that will transform our country’s educational system to second-to-none in the world.

Agree or disagree, let me know!

From Law School Blog:

What happens when a state passes a law requiring the consolidation of certain school districts, and a ballot initiative later passes that repeals the law, but not before a state committee carries out the first phase of the consolidations? As you might guess, litigation ensues. A decision last week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, in St. Louis, concludes that voters who challenged that first round of consolidations on various grounds don’t have a case.

This news report about a high school special ed student turned basketball hero is a great story.

miracle

A host of bloggers from around the world have taken up the 31 Day Comment Challenge to work on becoming better blog citizens.

One of the goals of the 31 Day Comment Challenge is to improve commenting skills and draw more people into blog conversations. To get a better picture of blog commenting skills and strategies, bloggers were asked to answer the following questions:

• How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week?
• Do you track your blog comments? How? What do you do with your tracking?
• Do you tend to comment at the same blogs or do you try to comment on at least one new blog per week?

I think this is a great exercise to become a better blogger and I’ll be responding to the questions later today.

For now, a few comments. Since I started blogging a few months ago, I’ve confined my reading to the blogs listed on my sidebar (currently 11 teacher blogs and 28 educational policy blogs) as well as a few others set up in my aggregator relating to some other areas of interest, like South Dakota politics, photography, and church. I add a few now-and-then, and prune a few back occasionally.

The reality for me is that I only have a finite amount of time each day to read and comment. That being said, I know I can go a long way on becoming a better commenter.

As a start, here’s a handful of the edupolicy blogs I’m following — the blogs that I plan to do a better job commenting on — and a summary of the site or blogger:

Eduwonk

Andrew Rotherham is co-founder and co-director of Education Sector, an independent national education policy think tank. Rotherham, who Washingtonian Magazine describes as being “at the forefront of U.S. education policy,” is also a member of the Virginia Board of Education.

American School Board Journal (ASBJ)

Education magazine published monthly by the National School Boards Association.

Associated School Boards of South Dakota

All the local in-state juicy stuff relating to education. This is an everything-goes no-holds-barred blogsite.

Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD)

A nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that represents superintendents, principals, teachers, professors of education, and school board members.

Core Knowledge

Discussion about core knowledge in education.

Education Week’s NCLB II

Education Week reporter writes on K-12 issues primarily relating to No Child Left Behind.

More to come later —