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| | LATEST NEWS FOR PRINCIPALS |
District Administration Magazine
Students living in states with an antibullying law that includes at least one U.S. Department of Education-recommended legislative component had lower reported bullying and cyberbullying rates compared to students living in states without such legal provisions, according to recent research. The study, published in JAMA Pediatrics in 2015, examined data from 25 states to evaluate the effectiveness of anti-bullying legislation on reducing students' risk of being bullied in school and online. The DOE recommended a framework for anti-bullying laws in 2010, composed of 16 components divided into the following categories: definitions of policy, district policy development and review, mandated procedures, and strategies for communication, training and legal support.
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USA Today
A state-by-state audit of the nation's only database for tracking teacher misconduct is being ordered in the wake of a USA Today network investigation that found thousands of missing names in the listing of troublesome educators. Education agencies in every state voluntarily report to a privately run database operated by the nonprofit National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification when they take a disciplinary action against a teacher for anything from minor infractions to serious cases of physical or sexual abuse.
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By: Debra Josephson Abrams
 Idioms are the keys that unlock the doors to a language's vast landscape — a landscape otherwise circumscribed by users' language limitations. Native users take idioms for granted, using them frequently. To non-native users, idioms are fascinating enigmas not easily translated into their own language. This activity uses pictures to create a visual representation of idioms, allowing non-native users easy access to understanding, remembering and correctly using idioms.
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Meet the Complete Testing System. Advantage is everything you need for scanning, analysis & reporting in one convenient bundle. Experience the benefits of our most popular scanner, answer sheets, and easy-to-use reporting software, packaged together. Learn more!
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eSchool News
Popular mobile devices may come and go, but the iPad has remained a hit in the K-12 classroom. But even though they're in schools, our work with teachers has led us to understand that while many of them would like to use iPads meaningfully in their classrooms, they can't because of time, access and training.
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EdTech Magazine
Love it or hate it, big data is changing K-12 education. Collecting and analyzing student data — including grades, attendance, disciplinary issues and test scores — gives schools and districts new, valuable insights into student performance and behavior. For example, after my colleagues in Washington helped Spokane Public Schools set up a virtualized data warehouse, the district began using an in-house data analytics system to determine predictors of dropping out and to monitor at-risk students. As a result, graduation rates improved by nearly 8 percent over a three-year period.
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Choose from sponsors offering funding for Custom apparel, donations, and create your own Pear page in minutes.
Click here for more information.
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Psychology Today (commentary)
Whether he knew it or not, Sam Levin started a little movement when he was a freshman in high school. When he complained to his mom that he and his classmates hated school, she responded with, "Why don't you just make your own school?" So he did. As a freshman, Sam took a small step. According to an article from Time, Sam launched "a school-wide garden that was solely cared for by students; some woke up early on Saturdays to work with the plants."
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Education Next
On the weekend before the Fourth of July 1966, the U.S. Office of Education quietly released a 737-page report that summarized one of the most comprehensive studies of American education ever conducted. Encompassing some 3,000 schools, nearly 600,000 students, and thousands of teachers, and produced by a team led by Johns Hopkins University sociologist James S. Coleman, "Equality of Educational Opportunity" was met with a palpable silence. Indeed, the timing of the release relied on one of the oldest tricks in the public relations playbook — announcing unfavorable results on a major holiday, when neither the American public nor the news media are paying much attention.
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Edutopia (commentary)
Ben Johnson, a contributor for Edutopia, writes: "Many of us would agree that teaching to the test has become an offensive phrase. I propose that teaching to the test may not be such a bad thing, as long as we are doing it in the right way and for the right reasons. An apt reason to teach to the test is so that your students can be successful in demonstrating their knowledge and skills. I am referring to designing instruction that directly builds knowledge and skills found on an end-of-unit test, or assessment. That assessment may be a project, an essay, or a lab experiment — some way to evaluate if the students can apply the knowledge and skills they have learned."
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eSchool News
It's no secret that being able to access enterprise applications and other types of software online — in a 24/7/365 environment — beats having to install, maintain, and upgrade individual applications across multiple desktops and laptops. Especially when maintaining software at school, classroom, teacher and individual student levels is such an arduous task. Software-as-a-Service or "cloud computing" has helped districts and schools streamline their applications while at the same time introducing new challenges to the mix — such as online privacy and security concerns.
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"The Fundamental 5 improves instruction. The power of these practices will transform classrooms and schools," E. Don Brown, NASSP past president. Order now at Amazon.com
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THE Journal
While 9 in 10 parents say they would encourage their kids to pursue a career in STEM, what they really mean is a career in engineering. What they definitely don't want is a child who decides to pursue STEM teaching. A new survey by Harris Poll of 644 parents of children under 18 living in the household found that only 9 percent said they would encourage their kids to become teachers of science, technology, engineering or math.
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The Atlantic
As districts in certain parts of the country battle staffing shortages and schools nationwide seek to overcome a general sense of dissatisfaction among faculty, several states are considering proposals to pay their public-school teachers more money. The average public-school teacher salary in the United States in the 2012-2013 academic year was $56,000, versus roughly $69,000 for nurses and $83,000 for programmers. Experts say raising that threshold could help improve the profession's lackluster reputation and encourage more high-achieving college students to pursue the career — especially in less-than-desirable schools and districts.
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Choose from 87 digital, conceptual K-8 science units, with STEM, in grade-level bands, to meet evolving standards. Email for free sample and details: rseela@seelascience.com MORE
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The Hechinger Report
It seems a waste. Millions of educational apps, millions of lesson plans available online, millions of laptops in the hands of students. Yet only a small segment of teachers nationwide find ways to infuse technology into their lessons. "There's a real hunger out there, about how do I get better at my craft?" said Jeff Liberty, the senior director of teacher development initiatives at BetterLesson, which trains teachers to use technology in class. "But there aren't clear mechanisms for that to occur in a dependable way."
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eSchool News
A Georgia Education Department leader was fired recently for implying on Facebook that students in his state can't perform as well as their peers in Finland because of their skin color. Incidents like this across the country have sparked a conversation about how education leaders should conduct themselves on social media. "Social media has just brought to the forefront what people were able to keep secret in their homes until now," said Todd Nesloney, principal at Webb Elementary in Navasota, Texas.
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Transform your recess transitions from chaos to cooperation. Get tools and techniques to reduce conflicts and keep your students active on the playground. www.playworks.org
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| | FEDERAL ADVOCACY AND POLICY |
Education Week
The White House and U.S. Department of Education announced two initiatives designed to raise awareness about and combat chronic absenteeism in schools. The Success Mentors Initiative, which will be under the administration's My Brother's Keeper umbrella, will focus on using school personnel to work closely with students in schools to monitor their attendance, provide support, and connect them to other educational resources. And the Absences Add Up public relations campaign will try to highlight the issue for parents, particularly for those with children in elementary and middle schools.
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The Washington Post
The Senate education committee plans to consider President Obama's nominee for education secretary at a confirmation hearing at 2 p.m. on Feb. 25. John King Jr. has been serving as acting secretary of education since his predecessor, Arne Duncan, stepped down at the end of 2015. It had initially appeared that Obama would not formally nominate King, forgoing the confirmation process. But White House officials said they were encouraged by the bipartisan support that King has received so far.
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NPR
Tens of thousands of Tennessee students steadied their clammy, test-day hands over a keyboard several days ago. And, for many, nothing happened. It was the state's first time giving standardized exams on computers, but the rollout couldn't have gone much worse. In lots of places, the testing platform slowed to a crawl or appeared to shut down entirely. Within hours, Tennessee scrapped online testing for the year. The move comes after schools spent millions of dollars to buy additional PCs and to improve their Wi-Fi networks. The failure wasn't entirely surprising. Tennessee had already managed several bumpy trial runs. There was the time the state asked students to try to break the system, and boy did they. State officials later said the resulting server overload led to a complete re-engineering.
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The New York Times
How white is too white? At the Academy of Arts and Letters, a small K-8 school in Brooklyn founded in 2006 to educate a community of "diverse individuals," that question is being put to the test. The school — along with six others in New York City — is part of a new Education Department initiative aimed at maintaining a racial and socioeconomic balance at schools in fast-gentrifying neighborhoods. For the first time the department is allowing a group of principals to set aside a percentage of seats for low-income families, English language learners or students engaged with the child welfare system as a means of creating greater diversity within their schools.
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NAESP
Rick DuFour frequently laments that our schools are data rich and information poor. How does a principal manage people and use data to inform practice to ensure accountability to student achievement? In this webinar, our goal is to have principals describe how they manage these three key components; people, data, and processes with the end goal in mind of school improvement. The webinar takes place Tuesday, Feb. 23, 4–5 p.m. ET.
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NAESP
The National Association of Elementary School Principals in partnership with VINCI Education is pleased to announce the Digital Leader of Early Learning Award. This award is in honor of Leonardo da Vinci, a scholar, inventor and innovator who embodied the type of renaissance thinking we all wish to inspire in our children. We are looking for NAESP members who have embraced such thinking in their schools with innovative educational technology practices that support the early learner. Our aim is to showcase your leadership in technology and Pre-K-3 early learning programs so that it can be recognized and shared with colleagues.
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| Students will enjoy reading all 5 books in the Cornbread Series (appropriate for 3rd - 5th).
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| Students will enjoy reading all 5 books in the Cornbread Series (appropriate for 3rd - 5th).
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7701 Las Colinas Ridge, Ste. 800, Irving, TX 75063
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