ODYSSEYWARE

New York has made unheard of gains in reading and math test scores so much so doubters are raising questions:

The improvements were so substantial that several education experts expressed skepticism, noting that large gains were posted even by cities like Buffalo, whose schools have struggled for years. They also said the statewide results were not in line with the relatively static performance of New York students in the most recent years on federal tests known as the nation’s report card.

At the very least, being that the DOE has reviewed NY’s testing program, the nation should take notice.

Interesting story.

As Congress dithers away time with NCLB re-writes and reauthorization debates, schools are continuing to educate the best they can as evidenced by HBO’s documentary on Douglas High School in Baltimore, Maryland.  If this set of clips is any indication, this special will be a much watch.

With gas prices inching ever closer to the $5.00 mark, daily tasks will continue to eschew their cars in favor of more economic and environmentally friendly alternatives.  Education is no different.

According to Deb Gearhart, director of Troy University’s eCampus program, online enrollments have grown from 10,550 last summer to 13,985 this summer, a 43 percent jump. Gearhart said online enrollments had been growing for the past few years, but the recent year-to-year jump was substantial.

Online courses are a modernized version of correspondence courses that, thanks to technology, allow for more student-teacher interaction and quicker feedback.

That’s not all.  Chief among online curriculum’s benefits is the ability for student’s to be empowered and wrap education around their lives, not the other way around.  The gas crisis, if you can call it that, is a great example of adverse situations occurring in a student’s educational setting forcing them to adapt and continue learning in a setting most comfortable for them.  Think teen pregnancy, bullies at school, even the bird flu epidemic.

By now this story has received a great deal of media attention, however, it is worth noting that the attention that has been placed on whether better access to contraceptives might have saved these girls from getting pregnant:

Gloucester’s elected school committee plans to vote later this summer on whether to provide contraceptives. But that won’t do much to solve the issue of teens wanting to get pregnant. Says rising junior Kacia Lowe, who is a classmate of the pactmakers’: “No one’s offered them a better option.” And better options may be a tall order in a city so uncertain of its future.

Our friends in southeast Asia have been experimenting with online curriculum for quite some time now. In fact, Vietnam takes nearly all classes online. It is with that understanding that this story is all the more interesting:

Under the Rudd Government’s plans for a digital education revolution, every student in Years 9-12 will have access to their own computer by 2012. Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard said the report only served to highlight Coalition inaction on technology in schools. Ms Gillard said the Government’s funding commitments to ICT included $32million for online curriculum tools and resources and, together with state and territory governments, another $11.25million to be spent on professional development for teachers.

What is remarkable about this story is not that computers are being debated as a proper tool in the classroom but rather how significant their role in education should be.

A report on national attitudes to Information and Communications Technology learning undertaken by the University of New England, the Australian Council for Computers in Education and the Australian Curriculum Studies Association has found widespread resistance to ICT learning in schools.

Teachers were unwilling to be involved in projects because they saw ICT use as more work, peripheral to the main game in schools, avoidable, not guaranteeing improved learning outcomes and outside their experience and expertise.

Students are already inundated with virtual reality and 3D worlds for their entertainment and education.  As digital natives stories like these are old news for today’s student.

“Think of Second Life as a world, an extension of the physical Earth, and a place where you will find a thriving educational community,” said Peggy Sheehy, a teacher in New York state who has become a Second Life evangelist…

As education becomes more portable and students push upward upon educators for curriculum that is relevant to their learning style, stories like these will become commonplace.

According to a recent study by the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) kids are more likely to perpetrate cyber-bullying than be the victims.

McQuade defines middle school as seventh through ninth grades. Of that group, 45 percent admit to committing cyber crime, while only 39 percent report being victimized.

Although alarmingly high, it is hard to gauge the methodology of this study.  The findings are based, it appears, entirely upon the opinions of students of whether they are bullying or if they are the recipient of bullying.  The disparity between the two in raises separate questions as well.

Yesterday’s LA Times had this letter from a public school teacher of 23 years:

Can we at least talk about the real problem, the state budget, for a moment? Because California is one of the largest economies in the world, it’s a crime that the state ranks among the lowest in per-pupil spending and has such large teacher-student ratios. It would make sense to give a much greater financial priority to public education. What we don’t spend on now, we will have to spend much more on later. Incarceration, healthcare and welfare already cost our society too much.

But the US spending on education has increased rapidly throughout the years without any commensurate gain.  Nations that spend far less than us have better scores internationally as well.

Most people would be shocked if they understood just how very little teachers, parents and students were respected, especially in the inner city. It’s a bloated bureaucracy far from the classroom that directs ill-conceived and failed reforms.

No disagreement here, however, I would note that increasing the bureaucracy is hardly a way to limit its negative effects.

The well-funded movement to privatize education is in full swing with folks like The Times touting its agenda. The goal to privatize the last big enchilada of public money will leave us all much poorer in spirit and pocketbook. The goal has been to portray public education as a failure (particularly in the inner cities) and then to promote 100% charter schools as the answer. Far from being saviors, charters in fact drain public money. Clearly they represent a real danger to the historic democratic value that is public education.

This is a dangerous statement that needs heavy qualification.  Charters have anything but hurt public schools, in many examples, they have actually improved the ability for parents to choose a school for their children and allow great competition and, yes, the fall out for schools that have not performed adequately as determined by parents.  This should not be seen as a threat but rather an opportunity for further improving education in this country and allowing teachers to do what they do best: teach.

David Brooks of the New York Times asks some poignant questions regarding candidate Obama’s plan for reforming education.  Although he is right to note Obama has been more clear than the McCain camp on what he would do if elected, questions still remain.

In that Colorado speech, he opened with a compelling indictment of America’s school systems. Then he argued that the single most important factor in shaping student achievement is the quality of the teachers. This seemed to direct him in the reformist camp’s direction, which has made them happy.

But when you look at the actual proposals Obama offers, he’s doesn’t really address the core issues. He’s for the vast panoply of pre-K and after-school programs that most of us are for. But the crucial issues are: What do you do with teachers and administrators who are failing? How rigorously do you enforce accountability? Obama doesn’t engage the thorny, substantive matters that separate the two camps.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear that Obama would, and apparently has in his State Senate career, some semblance of school choice, however, that appears to have faded as the Democratic primary trudged on.  Time will tell where his evolution will end, though it is politically difficult to be against charter schools as they have strong backers in both parties.