This message was sent to ##Email##
|
|
|
|
|
| | LATEST NEWS FOR PRINCIPALS |
The Hechinger Report
An unprecedented drop in scores on a tough and highly regarded test known as the Nation's Report Card could create more trouble for the controversial standards known as Common Core, a set of English and math guidelines on the books in 44 states and the District of Columbia. Both math and reading scores declined for first time since the National Assessment of Educational Progress took its current form in 1998, according to data released by the National Assessment Governing Board on Wednesday, and Common Core watchers say the many critics of the standards could use the dip as ammunition in their war against the Common Core.
READ MORE
Education Week
Schools are facing growing challenges from so-called "ephemeral messaging" apps, which allow users to send mobile-to-mobile content that disappears without a record after it has been read by the intended recipient. Take Snapchat, which a growing number of teachers cite as a cause of classroom disruption. Some districts are moving to block student access to the popular app, which now claims more than 100 million users worldwide. And even more vexing may be the use of such new technologies by school administrators.
READ MORE
U.S. News & World Report
Students, parents and teachers have long lamented the hours that kids spend taking standardized tests, especially since the introduction of the Common Core academic standards. But just how much time each year is it? A. Between 10-15 hours. B. Between 20-25 hours. C. Between 30-35 hours. The correct answer is "B," according to a comprehensive study of 66 of the nation's big-city school districts by the Council of the Great City Schools. It said testing amounts to about 2.3 percent of classroom time for the average eighth-grader in public school. Between pre-K and 12th grade, students took about 112 mandatory standardized exams.
READ MORE
The Conversation (commentary)
Mark Lorch and Joel Mills, contributors for The Conversation, write: "Children should be playing more computer games in school. That idea might enrage you if you think kids today already spend too much time staring at screens or if you are already sick of your offspring’s incessant prattling about fighting zombies and the like. But hear me out. Specifically, I think more children should be playing the online game Minecraft. Minecraft is like a digital version of Lego in which players can construct everything from simple houses to intricate fantasy cathedrals and even complex machines such as mechanical computers. There is no intrinsic aim to the game. Like all good ways of sparking a child's imagination, it requires them to set their own goals."
READ MORE
MindShift
When Martha Youman was starting out as a second-grade teacher, every Friday she would stay late after school to make what she called "seat work" for her 30 students — packets to help differentiate instruction for the three levels of learners in her classroom. "My high-level [students] would get lots of reading passages with reading comprehension questions," she said. "My medium level would get the same thing, but shorter. And my students at the low level would get things like coloring pages, connect the dots — just things to keep them busy so they wouldn't act out."
READ MORE
Advertisement
Science Weekly Magazine
Science Weekly Magazine
READ MORE
|
Education Week
It's no secret that gifted and honors classes are often whiter and wealthier than their schools as a whole. At every stage of students' educational careers, the pipeline to academically advanced study narrows for many low-income and minority students. Research suggests years of little biases add up, shaping who gets identified for gifted education and advanced courses and how many hoops they jump through to do so. And with politicians and policymakers increasingly focused on promoting rigorous, "college-ready" coursework, those leaks can leave thousands of the most promising students behind.
READ MORE
Deseret News
Most eighth-graders are not proficient in geography, a new report by the U.S. Government Accounting Office finds, with just 24 percent of eighth-graders "proficient" in geography in the 2014 National Assessment of Educational Progress scores. NAEP testing is a statistical sample only at selected school, and no one school is judged by the results, which means schools are not motivated to teach to the NAEP test. NAEP is widely seen as the gold standard of U.S. educational assessment.
READ MORE
The Huffington Post
Bad news for America's schools: Student achievement in math and reading is on the decline, according to National Assessment of Education Progress scores. The National Assessment of Education Progress, or NAEP — called the Nation's Report Card — is an exam given to fourth-grade and eighth-grade students throughout the country by the National Center for Education Statistics, a branch of the U.S. Department of Education. While students' scores have increased overall since the 1990s, results released Wednesday show a slight decline between 2013 and 2015.
READ MORE
Education Week
Are you sure you belong here? There is perhaps no more critical question for a disadvantaged student entering an advanced class, none more likely to rattle in the back of even the most gifted student's brain. And when coming from a teacher or student, it's also just one example of a "microaggression," an incident of everyday discrimination that students encounter that may contribute to lower performance and disengagement. But educators and researchers are fighting back, with efforts to both curb microaggressions and buffer students against them and help them cope.
READ MORE
|
Promoted by
|
|
|
|
 |
PsychCentral
New researcher suggests that lean, active kids score higher on cognitive tests than either their lean, inactive peers or overweight, inactive children. Investigators from the Georgia Prevention Institute at the Medical College of Georgia believe the findings show that weight and physical activity levels are both factors in a child's ability to acquire and use knowledge. "The question this paper asks that has not been asked before is whether it is just fitness that influences children's cognition," said Dr. Catherine Davis. "What we found is weight and physical activity both matter." The study, published in the journal Pediatric Exercise Science, provides some of the first evidence that weight, independent of physical activity, is a factor.
READ MORE
The Atlantic
On Saturday, President Barack Obama posted a high-profile video message to Facebook in which he called on schools to reduce the amount of standardized testing taking place in classrooms. Critics of overtesting generally support the proposal, which reinforces what seems to have been the U.S. education system's gradual, uneven, and often tacit withdrawal from aggressive, assessment-based accountability. In many ways, the plan amounts to the White House's long-anticipated, albeit anti-climactic, response to what's become a particularly fraught era in public education.
READ MORE
 |
|
Graceland University is ranked #5 in the country for Online Masters of Education programs by US News and World Report. We have a 98% graduation rate and 97% would recommend our program to a friend. We have 4 programs to meet the needs of practically any teacher.
Apply Now
|
|
Education Next
When Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, standardized testing in public schools became the law of the land. The ambitious legislation identified test-based accountability as the key to improving schools and, by extension, the long-term prospects of American schoolchildren. Thirteen years later, the debate over the federal mandate still simmers. According to the 2015 EdNext poll, about two-thirds of K-12 parents support annual testing requirements, yet a vocal minority want the ability to have their children "opt out" of such tests. Teachers themselves are divided on the issue of high-stakes testing.
READ MORE
TIME
One in 14 American children has a parent who has spent time in jail or is currently behind bars, according to a report released by Child Trends, a Maryland-based research center. The study, which sought to examine "both the prevalence of parental incarceration and child outcomes associated with it," concluded that an unexpectedly high number of children in the U.S. — more than 5 million — have seen a parent who lived with them go to jail. The study posits that a parent's incarceration has a deleterious impact on his or her child's mental and physical health, yielding, among other things, behavioral issues and substandard academic performance.
READ MORE
|
Promoted by
|
|
|
|
 |
MindShift
Marcy Rosner started her career as a college counselor, but decided to switch to teaching when she realized her favorite part of the job was working with students. She lives in Oakland and teaches U.S. and world history to 10th-graders at a nearby charter school. Now in her fourth year as a teacher, she appreciates how much she didn't understand about the work.
READ MORE
THE Journal
The New Media Consortium's 2014 Horizon Report K-12 Edition noted that although digital textbooks have become a mainstay in higher education, they have been slower to infiltrate K-12. The report's authors added, however, that the "financial and educational benefits of digital learning materials will eventually outweigh the outdated paper textbook dependence in K-12 education, and gradual adoption of digital textbooks is expected."
READ MORE
 |
|
Discover the revolutionary system of daily teacher actions that are transforming 1000's
of classrooms across
the nation. Order now on Amazon.com
|
|
Inquisitr
Delaying kindergarten enrollment for one year shows significant mental health benefits for children, according to a recent study. Researchers found that a one-year delay in enrolling a child in kindergarten dramatically reduces inattention and hyperactivity at age seven. Researchers found that children who were held back from kindergarten for as little as one year showed a 73 percent reduction in inattentiveness and hyperactivity compared to children sent the year earlier, according to this new study on kindergarten and mental health.
READ MORE
| | FEDERAL ADVOCACY AND POLICY |
Edeucation Week
Attention members of Congress: You've come really far on reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Please finish the job so schools don't have to live under the very outdated and pretty much universally despised No Child Left Behind Act (aka the current version of ESEA) for yet another school year. That's the message ten big-name education organizations representing teachers, school administrators, principals and state officials are taking to Facebook, Twitter, Politico and other media through a weeklong digital ad campaign.
READ MORE
Education Week
After years of success in statehouses from Florida to Nevada, supporters of educational choice might have seen this year's push to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as a way to bolster K-12 choice options at the federal level. What they got instead has failed to excite them — to the point where some would prefer to gamble on the election of a Republican president who could promote school choice more aggressively, rather than accepting the deal on the table.
READ MORE
|
Missed last week's issue? See which articles your colleagues read most.
|
|
Don't be left behind. Click here to see what else you missed.
|
Scholastic Administration Magazine
César E. Chávez Multicultural Academic Center in Chicago has a perennial problem. Every year, students begin their first day of kindergarten at the South Side school significantly behind in academic development in comparison to their peers in other schools. Staff members are charged with getting them on track by third grade, a goal that requires an average of one-and-a-half years of growth for each school year. That's difficult, particularly because many of these students confront other challenges as well. Nearly all of Chávez's students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, 80 percent speak Spanish, 13 percent have IEPs, and the rate of fluctuation in the student population due to frequent family moves is 14 percent.
READ MORE
NAESP
Today NAESP joined other leading school-based education groups representing educators to continue to prod congressional leaders to finish the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Lawmakers have made significant progress in a comprehensive renewal of the nation’s largest federal education policy, reaching several legislative hurdles this year. While both the House and Senate have passed bills, the reauthorization process is stalled awaiting action on final negotiations between lawmakers and eventually the White House.
READ MORE
NAESP
Between assisting their teachers, managing bus schedules and meeting with parents, it's not often that principals are able to stop and be recognized for all that they do. That's why it was a privilege for NAESP to host the 2015 National Distinguished Principals Awards program, held Oct. 15-16 in Washington, D.C. The awards program provided an opportunity for the best and brightest principals from across the country to share their wisdom and celebrate each other's successes.
READ MORE
|
|
|
 |
|
ZipKrooz™ brings zip line-like adventure to the playground in an exciting, inclusive and safe way!
|
 |
|
| Math Problem solving contests for teams of up to 35 students in grades 4 through 8.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
7701 Las Colinas Ridge, Ste. 800, Irving, TX 75063
|
