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Draft Competencies and Skills for Elementary Education K-6 and Prekindergarten/Primary PK-3 Teacher Certification Examinations
The Department of Education has issued the following memorandum regarding the Draft Competencies and Skills for Elementary Education K-6 and Prekindergarten/Primary PK-3 Teacher Certification Examinations. The memorandum may be viewed at http://info.fldoe.org/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-5369/dps-2009-063.pdf
Universal Design for Learning: Policy Challenges and Recommendations
The following Project Forum document was recently prepared under Federal Cooperative Agreement H326F050001: Universal Design for Learning: Policy Challenges and Recommendations available at http://www.projectforum.org/docs/UDL-PolicyChallengesandRecommendations.pdf. This policy forum proceedings document provides an introduction that includes federal education regulatory language for universal design for learning (UDL). It summarizes panel presentations from the higher education, state-level, local-level and national-level perspectives. Throughout the panel and during the subsequent group discussions, several suggestions and proposed strategies to improve policy to impact implementation of UDL were given by participants, which are summarized in this report.
How to Address Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom
This Edutopia article provides excellent tips and resources for putting the multiple intelligences theory into practice. Tailoring classroom activities to individual students’ needs, interests, and strengths makes. Whether you’re interested in starting an MI-themed school or incorporating some of the MI philosophy into classroom activities, here are a few tips and resources that work at Enota Multiple Intelligences Academy, in Gainesville, Georgia. Read more of this article at
http://www.edutopia.org/multiple-intelligences-immersion-enota-how-to.
Financial Assistance Available through EduPrograms
EduPrograms was formed in 2001 to help educational workforce employees obtain Home loans
Do Schools Cross the Line in Physically Restraining Students?
Whether and how to physically restrain difficult students is a growing controversy in Massachusetts, and will be the subject of a hearing before the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor and a report from the Government Accountability Office, according to The Boston Globe. All are part of a national debate over whether school personnel are too quick to restrain students they deem unruly, resulting in physical or psychological injury, and whether certain devices, such as a Rifton chair that is designed to help students sit still, are ever appropriate. Critics say schools have failed to properly train teachers, leaving them ill-equipped to handle the growing number of children who physically act out or are in emotional distress. Staffing shortages from budget cuts are compounding the problem. Advocates also worry that special education students will be especially susceptible to discipline, and question the integrity of a system, such as that in Massachusetts, that relies on self-reporting as a form of monitoring. “This has become an increasing problem in schools, particularly as schools cut back on teachers,” said Richard Robison, executive director of the Federation for Children with Special Needs. “Teachers get frustrated and can’t deal with everything. What happens is teachers revert to using restraints illegally or inappropriately.”
Read more at http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2009/05/04/restraining_of_students_questioned/.
New Curriculum to Address Behavior
In an article in The Wall Street Journal, Sue Shellenbarger describes the “Tools of the Mind” curriculum, which, along with other new teaching programs, is positively impacting behavior issues in preschool children. According to Shellenbarger, the rise in problem behaviors in small children has been variously attributed to: pressure on teachers to stress math and reading over emotional skills; family instability; a decline in playtime; heavy use of child care; and a rise in learning problems like attention-deficit disorder. These new programs give children more time for dramatic or pretend play, and build lessons in self-control into the school day. Playtimes incorporate training in “executive function,” or the mental ability to control impulses and focus on new information. “It’s the kind of play you and I engaged in during the summer, when you’d play the same thing for a month,” says Deborah Leong, psychology professor at Metropolitan State College, Denver, and co-creator of the “Tools of the Mind” curriculum. Today, Leong points out, few parents open their doors in the summer to let children rove around the neighborhood. The Tools curriculum is in use in about 400 mainstream and Head Start classrooms in seven states, and 400 more teachers will be trained this year. Read more at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123914405198998725.html.
What Works Clearinghouse Practice Guide, “Assisting Students Struggling with Mathematics: Response to Intervention for Elementary and Middle Schools”
The National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance has released a new What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) practice guide, “Assisting Students Struggling with Mathematics: Response to Intervention (RtI) for Elementary and Middle Schools.” This guide provides eight specific recommendations intended to help teachers, principals, and school administrators use Response to Intervention (RtI) to identify students who need assistance in mathematics, and to address the needs of these students through focused interventions. The guide also describes how to carry out each recommendation, including how to address potential roadblocks in implementing them. Read this new practice guide at http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/publications/practiceguides/#rti_math_pg.
In Search of a Replacement for “Accountability”
In an opinion piece on the Inside Higher Ed blog, teacher-researchers Linda Adler-Kasner and Susanmarie Harrington take exception to the widespread use of the term “accountability” when discussing students, teachers, and the process of education. They prefer instead to discuss reform in terms of “responsibility” and “visibility,” which they feel better represent contemporary assessment efforts in education. To their minds, “accountability” implies that left unchecked, human beings will inevitably work in their own interest, and therefore “actors must provide evidence that they understand and have taken into consideration the interests of others in addition to their own.” Accountability tends to be levied from individuals or organizations in times of failure, thereby suggesting that “processes by which people or entities are ‘made accountable’ can be completed quickly and ‘errors’ remedied.” Finally, accountability concentrates power in one place — those who oversee it — and removes power from those in the trenches. Accountability is about proving rather than improving, the authors write, and is associated “with corruption, mismanagement, and ineptitude. Unless we believe that those are the right shoes for us to fill — and we don’t think that they are — we would do well to invoke other language, other stories, in our discussions.”
Read more of this article at http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/04/23/adler.
President Honors Ex-Detective as Teacher of the Year
“As a police officer, so many of the kids, you get involved with them when it’s too late,” honoree Anthony Mullen said. “With teaching, you get to spend a lot more time with these at-risk students and prevent them from either going to jail or harming other people, turning into something productive instead of destructive.”
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-04-30-teacher-year_N.htm
Young, Gifted, and Black, But Not in a Special Program
A new article in the May/June issue of Principal Magazine states that while federal civil rights efforts have improved educational opportunities for formerly excluded and marginalized students, work remains to ensure that gifted children from all backgrounds are given a high-quality education and encouraged to reach their potential. Recent focus has centered on culturally and linguistically diverse students who have been disproportionately placed in special education, but authors Kathleen King, Elizabeth Kozleski, and Kimberly Lansdowne say disproportionate representation of students of color in gifted classes is equally striking. As an example, they cite California, where black students made up 7.4 percent of the total school population. Blacks make up 22 percent of students categorized as emotionally disturbed, but only 4.1 percent of those considered gifted and talented. By contrast, white students — 28.5 percent of California enrollment — make up 41.7 percent of gifted and talented enrollment. The authors offer suggestions to principals for combating this nationwide issue, and recommend that government mandates for children with disabilities should be matched with provisions for gifted education. Read more of this article at http://www.naesp.org/resources/2/Principal/2009/M-J_p16.pdf.
