Reading is So 20th Century

In our Nov. 20 issue of Tuesday Tidbits, we blogged about the fate of some school libraries, and the push by some parents and librarians to reclaim them. Now, coincidentally, comes a study indicating that U.S. student reading skills are stagnating or declining in comparison to their international peers.

Test results on the Progress in International Reading Literacy showed that U.S. fourth-graders are losing ground compared to other kids around the world. The test, which was administered last year, indicated that students scored at the same levels as they did in 2001, the last time the test was given. Students in 10 countries and three Canadian provinces scored higher than U.S. students. In 2001, only three countries were ahead of the U.S.

According to the Associated Press, the results also showed:

• Among jurisdictions that took the test in 2001 and 2006, scores improved in Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Italy, Russia, Singapore, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia.
  
  
• Average test scores declined in England, Lithuania, Morocco, the Netherlands, Romania and Sweden. England, the Netherlands and Sweden were the top three performers in 2001. Sweden still outperformed the United States this time, but average scores in England and the Netherlands were not measurably different from the U.S. average.
  
  
• Girls scored higher than boys in the United States and all other countries except for Luxembourg and Spain, where the boy-girl scores were the same.
  
  
• The average U.S. score was above the average score in 22 countries or jurisdictions and about the same as the score in 12 others. The U.S. average fell toward the high end of a level called "intermediate." At that level, a student can identify central events, plot sequences and relevant story details in texts. The student also can make straightforward inferences from what is read and begin to make connections across parts of the text.

Tracy Warner, the editorial page editor for The Wenatchee World, wrote this interesting piece ("Reading we mostly don't") about what the scores might say about our students and our culture in America. In it, he references a telling analysis of reading habits completed by the National Endowment for the Arts. "To Read or Not To Read" looked at 40 studies on the reading habits and skills of children, teens and adults. Among their key findings:

• Americans are reading less - teens and young adults read less often and for shorter amounts of time compared with other age groups and with Americans of previous years.
• Americans are reading less well – reading scores continue to worsen, especially among teenagers and young males. By contrast, the average reading score of 9-year-olds has improved.
• The declines in reading have civic, social, and economic implications – Advanced readers accrue personal, professional, and social advantages. Deficient readers run higher risks of failure in all three areas.

What do you think about the results? Are students in your schools less interested in reading for pleasure these days?

Coming Soon to NBC: Law & Order - TPU

That would be the Teacher Performance Unit in New York City.

Check out this recent story in The New York Times on a new task force compiled by NYC Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein. There are two groups, really: the Teacher Performance Unit comprised of five lawyers and a second team consultants that includes former principals. The mission of the TPU will be to remove tenured teachers for "ineffective performance" Klein told the Times.

The plan will reportedly cost $1 million a year to implement.

National Assistant Principals' Task Force

Assistant Principals will soon have their own task force through the National Association of Secondary School Principals. Earlier this month, NASSP appointed 15 members to its National Task Force on Assistant Principalship for Middle Level and High Schools. The group will examine the role of the assistant principal and challenges these practitioners face in today's middle and high schools. According to NASSP's Web site, the goals of the task force are to:

• Improve professional development for assistant principals.
• Deliver programs and resources to inform the day-to-day work of assistant principals as they manage the business of the school.
• Connect those day-to-day tasks to instructionally focused whole school collaborative leadership.

You can view a complete list of the new panelists, including full contact information for each, on the NASSP Web site.

Tuesday Tidbits - Nov. 27, 2007

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, here are a few "leftovers" to share with you in today's Tuesday Tidbits:

• NAESP is partnering with the White House Commission on Remembrance to host an official countdown to Memorial Day 2008. The event, Old Glory's Journey of Remembrance, will take place over the course of 23 Mondays between Dec. 7 of this year and Memorial Day 2008. The official Web site is still under construction (www.remember.gov), but here's the gist of the celebration:
  

On Dec. 7, a flag will fly on board the USS Arizona. On Monday, Dec. 17, that same flag will fly at a ceremony in Dutch Harbor, AK. The flag will then travel throughout the country, stopping at battlefields, memorials, and national cemeteries. At each of these stops, a ceremony will be held at 10 a.m. on a Monday morning.

The Commission is looking for 10 to 20 local school children, between third grade and sixth grade, who can attend the ceremony and help sing the National Anthem and a song, How Proud Are We, written especially for The Commission.

• Each year, AWSP tracks the movement of principals and assistant principals between positions in Washington state. In 2007, there were 670 principal and AP job changes in our state. Most of the changes (254) took place at the elementary level; there were 212 high school position changes and 162 at the middle level. About half (319) were advertised on the AWSP Web site. Need a point of reference? Last year, there were 605 changes (255 elementary, 131 middle and 195 high school). And in 2000, there were only 499 total job changes (205 elementary, 123 middle and 152 high school).
  
  
• The Washington State Supreme Court has held that surveillance video of students in public schools or in public school transit vehicles is public information. The case stems from a fight between two elementary school students in the Kelso School District. The students got into a tussle on a school bus which had security cameras on board. One of the parents of the students involved in the fight requested a copy of the tape, but was denied access by the district, which said it was part of the students' records. Said Justice Susan Owens in writing the majority opinion:
  

  Here, the surveillance camera serves as a means of maintaining security and safety on the school buses. The videotape from the surveillance camera differs significantly from the type of record the schools maintain in students' personal files.

Hey Mikey! He Likes It!

So much for the theory that kids won't eat healthy school lunches.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota found that school lunch sales don't decline when the daily fare includes healthy choices. Another bonus: healthy school lunches don't necessarily cost more to serve, either.

The study, which appears in the December issue of the Review of Agricultural Economics, analyzed five years of data for 330 Minnesota public school districts. It looked at compliance with federal standards for calories, nutrients and fats.

What has your school or district done to improve the nutritional value of school meals? Has it worked?

Dropout Factory Update

Oak Harbor High School has been removed from the now famous list of "Dropout Factories" generated by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. The national study compared the number of high school students entering with those graduating three years later.

Oak Harbor H.S. should not have been included in the original list according to the university. In a letter, Robert Balfanz, a Johns Hopkins University researcher, said:

"Oak Harbor High School does not currently meet the criteria for 'fitting the profile' of a dropout factory and should not be characterized as such."

According to a note in today's Everett Herald, students at Oak Harbor are not counted by year class, but rather, students advance based on credits and course grades earned.

Tuesday Tidbits - Nov. 20, 2007

In today's Tuesday Tidbits, we're cleaning out the inbox to make room for all those Thanksgiving leftovers we'll return to next week. Savor and enjoy!

• Recess, Then Lunch: At least three elementary schools in the Vancouver, Wash. area have flipped recess and lunch, allowing students to play first, eat second. The theory is that students have better appetites, make better meal choices, have fewer playground disputes and trips to the nurses office as a result. Read more on recess first here.
  
• What About Books?: Public school librarians are banding together to ensure school libraries don't go the way of chalkboards with a grassroots campaign. According to an article in The Seattle Times, budget cuts in the Spokane Public Schools reduced 10 librarians to half-time and other school libraries around the state are also looking for creative ways to bring students and staff back into the stacks. (Quick! Somebody call Nancy Pearl!)
• Customer Service: Here's a great customer service tip sheet for schools and district compiled by school PR leader Brian Woodland, APR, from Peel District School Board in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. Think twice before someone in your front office says, "that's our policy..."
• There's Two Os in Proof: A printing error has invalidated U.S. students' reading scores on the Program for International Student Assessment or PISA exam. The test in reading, science and mathematics is administered every three years to evaluate the progress of 15-year-olds around the world. Apparently, directions sending students "to the opposite page" were blurred during the printing process, and the printing company changed the order of the pages, which interrupted the question flow. As the Washington Post reported, questions about two essays about graffiti instructed students to look at the "opposite page" when the essays appeared on the previous page.

All-Day K Too Much, Too Soon?

Does universal preschool and all-day kindergarten really pay long-term benefits for the state's youngest citizens?

That's the question researchers at the conservative Washington Policy Center set out to answer in their recent review of research on universal preschool and all-day kindergarten. According to WPC scholar Liv Finne, research on the topic suggests there is a "dosage effect," meaning there's a limit to the amount of institutionalized care young children can handle without "suffering harm to their social and mental development."

Finne looked at studies conducted by other researchers at Berkeley and Stanford on the effects of children enrolled in "institutionalized care" for 15 to 30 hours, as well as research conducted by the RAND Corporation. All of the studies suggested that "too many hours in structured care tends to undermine a child’s natural curiosity and turn him or her against the entire school experience," Finne writes.

In Washington state, early learning has been the subject of increased policy debate, particularly in light of the report issued by Gov. Gregoire's Washington Learns. As Finne notes in conclusion:

Policymakers should avoid using a blanket universal preschool or all-day kindergarten programs to provide free childcare to middle and upper-income families, while neglecting the social and educational support that low-income families need most.

Providing training and skills to parents of at-risk children, to help them develop close, nurturing relationships with their children is a wiser policy. This approach is more beneficial to more children in the long run and is the most likely to prepare them for a lifetime of learning.

What do you think? Does all-day K make a difference in the lives of your students?

State of Education Address

State Superintendent Dr. Terry Bergeson delivered her annual "State of Education" address this morning at the Washington State School Directors' Association annual conference in Seattle. You can read the full text of the speech here. TVW will also replay the speech and stream it online.

Handling the Holidays

With Thanksgiving just around the corner --and seasonal advertisements bombarding us from everywhere -- we're officially in the grips of the holiday season. Throw in winter break disruptions and weather delays, and schools can lose focus quickly this time of year. This can either mean headaches or holiday cheer, depending on how it's handled.

Our question today is: How do you handle holiday issues at your school and still maintain cultural sensitivities about Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and other observances?

Creativity Matters

Eric Liu is onto something.

"We are in the midst of a failure of imagination in public schools," said Liu, the former speechwriter for President Clinton and current member of the State Board of Education.

On Oct. 30, Liu gathered together more than 150 teachers, principals, superintendents, business leaders, legislators and philanthropists for "Creativity Matters: Teaching Creativity/Transforming Education," a summit was designed to address the value of creativity in public education. As he noted in the day's opening remarks, "Play, discovery, exploration are at the very heart of what it means to be an educator." Unfortunately, Liu asserted, many schools are depleting the very areas that may inspire student learning at a time when there is so much pressure to improve.

The day long session, held at the Broadway Center for the Performing Arts in Tacoma, was an offshoot of Washington Learns, Gov. Gregoire's education task force. For the next 12 months, Liu and colleagues will wage a campaign to support an infusion of creativity in schools. AWSP's Gary Kipp is a member of the steering committee for the event and future initiatives. Said Liu of the effort:

"A lot of things can get outsourced to other places at a cheaper cost... but a state and people's capacity for creativity cannot. Creativity matters because it is at the heart of what we are as a community...Creativity is no some magic fairy dust that is sprinkled around to some and not others. It can be reduced down to a set of habits that can be taught in the way we teach, in the way we lead."

These five habits of mind are:

1. Observing intently - Creativity begins with observing intently and deeply noticing.
   
2. Taking risks - Reckoning with the possibility of failure.
   
3. Persisting - Developing the capacity for resilience
4. Recognizing patterns
5. Making connections
   

You can read the case Liu and others have made for creativity in schools here. Also, it's worth noting that Liu's group has partnered with the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. Until recently, only New York public schools have been eligible for the Center's Imagination Award for teaching practices that encourage imaginative thinking across the curriculum. As a result of this partnership, middle and high schools in Washington state will also be eligible for the award.