Texas State Board of Education members are debating whether or not a Mexican-American elective social studies course has a place on the state’s official curriculum list. Over 50 organizations have urged the Board to include such a course in the elective list for high school students, that also includes classes like floral design and Web gaming.
Board Republicans are hesitant to approve such a move, saying that individual school districts already have the authority to teach such classes if they want. Some have even gone so far as to say that the move will inject “leftist ideals” into classrooms. Opponents also say that adding the course to the official state elective list could end up costing the state “millions,” according to Lady Theresa Thombs, an unsuccessful Republican candidate for the Board.
In Texas, people of Hispanic descent make up 51 percent of the population. More than 30 people testified in favor of the course addition at a Board meeting on Tuesday, including Tony Diaz, a member of MAS Texas and director of intercultural initiatives at Lone Star College in Harris County. Diaz pointed out that the Board adding the class is about more than giving permission to school districts to teach the class — but is also about leading the way when it comes to saying that Mexican-American heritage is something worth putting on the official curriculum.
The Board was scheduled to vote on the measure on Wednesday, but managed to avoid the vote, so the answer as to whether or not it will end up on the official elective list remains in the air.
The Brookings Institution reports that education quality and levels in developing countries are approximately 100 years behind developed countries. This global gap in education shows that in the world’s poorest nations, the average levels of attainment are at levels achieved in developed countries in the early 20th century.
The good news is that in the past 50 years, the belief that schooling is a necessity has spread across the globe (thanks in part to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights) and now 90 percent of primay school-aged children are enrolled.
Enrolling and progressing are very different things though, as we know just looking at American schools. Getting children into a classroom and seated at a desk is just the start. When it comes to what is actually being learned in these developing nations, the gap is wide, to put it mildly. According to the Brookings Institute, at the current rate of educational attainment, it will take 1.6 billion people more than 85 years to catch up to the current educational level in developed countries.
So then the question becomes: What will this gap look like in another 85 years? How can we successfully narrow it?
Educational attainment is not just a manifestation of what happens in the classrooms, of course. It is much more involved than that. Addressing issues like eradicating child hunger, providing clean water, and expanding access to healthcare worldwide will all help educational levels rise, along with quality of life. Developed countries should care about these issues not just because they are issues of humanity, but because they all impact the global economy too.
Where do you expect the global education gap will rest in another 50 years? 85 years? 100+ years?
Sixty-four percent of the respondents felt that the internet had a positive impact on education and 53 percent said the same for personal relationships. When asked the same thing about the internet’s influence on politics and morality, however, only 36% and 29% had a favorable view, respectively. When you look at the way the internet is utilized in America and other developed nations, I’d say these observations align. There are good and bad aspects — but the potential for increased access to education is great.
I’ve said before that I feel technology can be a great equalizer in P-20 classrooms and this survey adds an international element to that stance. The internet allows access to information in ways that were not even dreamed of a few decades ago. Using internet technology to improve educational access on a worldwide scale is so important to elevating the global economy and knowledge base. Imagine the collaboration that will be possible worldwide between this generation of students because of internet access?
While the internet was considered somewhat of a luxury when it first emerged, I think it is vital that all corners of the world gain access in the coming decade. The internet should not be something elite countries have access to; it should be an educational right for all people. Through this mass adoption, knowledge collaborations will continue to grow and it will benefit all of us as world citizens.
More children are living in poverty conditions in the U.S. than official numbers present, according to a new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The Measuring Access to Opportunity in the United States Report uses the Supplemental Poverty Measure, a standard first implemented by the U.S. Census in 2011 that measures the impact of important social programs like SNAP and the Earned Income Tax Credit on true poverty rates. It also accounts for rising costs and other changes that affect a family’s budget. Unlike the federal “poverty level” standard, the SPM takes geographical costs of living into account.
According to SPM measurements, without such social assistance programs, the child poverty rate would almost double — from 18 percent now to 33 percent. Not surprisingly, children of color are more likely to live in poverty than their white peers. The report found that both Latino and African-American children have a 29 percent rate based on the SPM, while white children sit at just 10 percent nationally.
A few other findings from the report include:
California has the highest child poverty rate, using the SPM, followed by Arizona and Nevada.
States with some of the largest child populations, like Florida, New York and Texas, have among the highest child poverty rates using the SPM. Poverty rates among southeastern states are also higher than the national average.
The lowest rates are in the upper Midwest and northern New England.
So what do these findings mean for the children in our K-12 schools? Correlating a child’s poverty rate to success in life (and in school), The Annie E. Casey Foundation suggests the following steps:
More support of quality early childhood education opportunities.
Expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit so families can keep more of their earnings.
More access to programs like SNAP and child care and housing subsidies.
Better job training and childcare support for parents.
I’ve long believed that educational assistance is the biggest step towards breaking the cycle of poverty for all children, especially minorities. When we look at our future generations, the key to eradicating poverty lies in the opportunities we provide kids in our K-12 schools, and the assistance we give their families to raise their quality of life.
Being a kindergartner today is very different from being a kindergartner 20 years ago. In fact it is more like first grade.
Researchers have demonstrated that five-year-olds are spending more time engaged in teacher-led academic learning activities than play-based learning opportunities that facilitate child-initiated investigations and foster social development among peers.
As a former kindergarten teacher, a father of three girls who’ve recently gone through kindergarten, and as researcher and teacher-educator in early childhood education, I have had kindergarten as a part of my adult life for almost 20 years.
As a parent, I have seen how student-led projects, sensory tables (that include sand or water) and dramatic play areas have been replaced with teacher-led instructional time, writing centers and sight words lists that children need to memorize. And as a researcher, I found, along with my colleague Yi Chin Lan, that early childhood teachers expect children to have academic knowledge, social skills and the ability to control themselves when they enter kindergarten.
So, why does this matter?
All work, and almost no play
First, let’s look at what kindergarten looks like today.
As part of my ongoing research, I have been conducting interviews with a range of kindergarten stakeholders – children, teachers, parents – about what they think kindergarten is and what it should be. During the interviews, I share a 23-minute film that I made last spring about a typical day in a public school kindergarten classroom.
The classroom I filmed had 22 kindergartners and one teacher. They were together for almost the entire school day. During that time, they engaged in about 15 different academic activities, which included decoding word drills, practicing sight words, reading to themselves and then to a buddy, counting up to 100 by 1’s, 5’s and 10’s, practicing simple addition, counting money, completing science activities about living things and writing in journals on multiple occasions. Recess did not occur until last hour of the day, and that too for about 15 minutes.
For children between the ages of five and six, this is tremendous amount of work. Teachers too are under pressure to cover the material.
When I asked the teacher, who I interviewed for the short film, why she covered so much material in a few hours, she stated,
There’s pressure on me and the kids to perform at a higher level academically.
So even though the teacher admitted that the workload on kindergartners was an awful lot, she also said she was unable to do anything about changing it.
She was required to assess her students continuously, not only for her own instruction, but also for multiple assessments such as quarterly report cards, school-based reading assessments, district-based literacy and math assessments, as well as state-mandated literacy assessments.
In turn, when I asked the kindergartners what they were learning, their replies reflected two things: one, they were learning to follow rules; two, learning was for the sake of getting to the next grade and eventually to find a job. Almost all of them said to me that they wanted more time to play. One boy said:
Research has consistently shown classrooms that offer children the opportunities to engage in play-based and child-centered learning activities help childrengrow academically, sociallyandemotionally. Furthermore, recess in particular helps children restore their attention for learning in the classroom.
Giving children a chance to play and engage in hands-on learning activities helps them internalize new information as well as compare and contrast what they’re learning with what they already know. It also provides them with the chance to interact with their peers in a more natural setting and to solve problems on their own. Lastly, it allows kindergartners to make sense of their emotional experiences in and out of school.
So children asking for more time to play are not trying to get out of work. They know they have to work in school. Rather, they’re asking for a chance to recharge as well as be themselves.
As another kindergarten boy in my study told me,
We learn about stuff we need to learn, because if we don’t learn stuff, then we don’t know anything.
Learning by exploring
So what can we do to help kindergartners?
I am not advocating for the elimination of academics in kindergarten. All of the stakeholders I’ve talked with up to this point, even the children, know and recognize that kindergartners need to learn academic skills so that they can succeed in school.
However, it is the free exploration that is missing. As a kindergarten teacher I filmed noted,
Free and exploratory learning has been replaced with sit, focus, learn, get it done and maybe you can have time to play later.
Policymakers, schools systems and schools need to recognize that the standards and tests they mandate have altered the kindergarten classroom in significant ways. Families need to be more proactive as well. They can help their children’s teachers by being their advocates for a more balanced approach to instruction.
Kindergartners deserve learning experiences in school that nurtures their development as well as their desire to learn and interact with others. Doing so will assist them in seeing school as a place that will help them and their friends be better people.
According to a new Gallup-Lumina Foundation poll, many Americans feel that college is no longer affordable. Just 17 percent of white Americans polled believe that “education beyond high school is affordable to anyone in this country who needs it” and only 19 percent of black people polled believe the same.
Hispanics are far more optimistic in their view of college affordability. By way of the Gallup poll, more than 50 percent of Hispanics polled responded that college is affordable to those who live in America.
Separated into three categories of white, black, and Hispanic, the gulf between how Hispanics feel about the cost of higher education compared to whites and blacks is staggering. That may mesh with how some view the outlook and direction of the country.
But this study also mentions the rising cost of tuition and the copious amount of debt that students are saddled with upon exiting college. According to Gallup, tuition at a “public four-year college has increased by more than 250% over the past three decades.”
That’s likely why many students carry an average of $30,000 in student loan debt and why some in the federal government want to extinguish student loan debt when filing for bankruptcy.
This new study is another in a long line that show just how un-affordable higher education has become for some. With the rising cost of tuition and student fees, many students are being priced out of the ability to attain a college degree.
The cost is also turning off some students as they are afraid of amassing thousands of dollars in debt and ruining their financial future. If anything, this shows just how dire the situation has become and why the federal government needs to act on fixing the problem.
Despite receiving an award for HBCU ‘Female President of the Year,’ Elmira Mangum is facing stiff criticism from the school’s board of trustees.
According to Tallahassee.com, Rufus Montgomery who serves as chairman of the board of trustees, wants Mangum placed on a 90-day probation plan.
“And while some board members talked about moving forward and having faith in Mangum’s leadership, trustees chairman Rufus Montgomery pushed members of the Special Committee on Presidential Evaluation to place Mangum on a performance improvement plan “and hold her accountable.” He suggested a 90-day plan.”
Good thing for Mangum that Montgomery doesn’t make the final decision. The board rejected his plan and decided to go another route.
But the problems between the board and Mangum stem from the board’s assertion that Mangum is failing to meet expectations in her role as president. Magnum, obviously, believes otherwise.
She outlineda list of challenges that she’s faced since arriving.
“She said when she arrived, FAMU was dealing with the aftermath of a hazing scandal, unfavorable financial audits, changes in top leadership and addressing the large percentage of students enrolled who were not ready for the academic challenges.”
The board will meet August 6th and the Special Committee on Presidential Evaluation will meet the day before.
FAMU seemed to be on higher ground as the school had emerged from a cloud of scandal. A string of good press and Magnum’s award were definitely good ways to show off what the school had to offer.
But as the power struggle continues between Magnum and the board, the way forward for the school hangs in the balance.
A recent article via Forbes.com asks a fairly interesting question regarding financial aid for students attempting to attain a higher education.
Does financial aid help colleges more than students?
The article is based on a report via the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that shows how well financial aid works for students.
“Students pay an extra 55 cents in tuition for every dollar of Pell Grant they receive, meaning they only save 45 cents in terms of out-of-pocket costs. Colleges gain even more than the 55 cents from each dollar of new Pell Grants because they collect the extra tuition from all their students, including all the ones who do not receive Pell Grants.”
Basically students can’t seem to catch a break.
The study goes further by stating that student loans make the situation worse as “college tuition goes up by 70 cents for every extra dollar of student loans.”
So basically, if the federal government truly wants to help drive down the cost of higher education and help students, making student loans and Pell Grants more available to students isn’t the best route to take.
The other part of that is how may students attain capital in order to attend college without help from the federal government? Is there a way to place caps on the tuition charged to students who receive loans and grants? If so, then that would make the playing field uneven for everyone.
Certainly a study worth looking further into, the government has to find ways to ensure that colleges aren’t unfairly profiting off of programs meant to help students.
According to information posted by Brookings.edu, the mentality that education equals equality is not a reality. The data shows that education disparities aren’t getting better for poor people or minorities.
Brookings reports that “big gaps” remain for improving high school graduation rates for minorities and those considered poor.
The study also notes many low-income individuals are staying away from enrolling in college due to “tuition and debt worries.”
It is the failures of the American education system that highlight how far away we remain from some form of economic equality for those in the colorful minorities. Black and brown students are often outpaced by their white counterparts not due to a lack of trying or intelligence, it is the brevity of resources available to those students that prove to be an identifier as to why some educational numbers for minorities are so low.
Is the education equals equality mentality valid at all?
But the article isn’t totally a summation of negativity. Brookings presents solutions that may help to solve the growing problems in education in America.
For instance, one suggestion is that “there needs to be more flexibility in budgets at all levels of government to allow education innovations to be explored and services to be customized for students.”
Generally state legislators do not look kindly upon education budgets when cutbacks loom.
Another piece of guidance is to give parents and students more access to data to properly track school performance, offers, and to help track student progress as well.
In essence, there needs to be a more stringent focus on helping students who lag behind due to inefficiencies in our education system. Through no fault of their own, many students have fallen behind because of our collective nature to form monoliths around past successes.
Minority students and those from low-income families deserve our full attention, and if they do not receive it, our educational system will continue to fall farther behind other nations.
In an ever-changing online environment, course customization may soon reign supreme. As education online continues to grow and evolve, so will demands on the industry and one area that this is especially true is course design — or specifically, creating courses that fit each classroom just right and move away from the “one size fits all” approach to curriculum.
It’s why Blackboard Inc, the once-popular company that provides software solutions and tools for learning for higher education, high school, and k-12 classrooms, is up for sale,
According to Reuters.com, the company’s growth and revenue have slowed due to upstarts and changes in higher education.
Those “changes” are coming mainly in the way of customization options. Recently Odysseyware, an up and coming software company that provides curriculum for online institutions, announced alterations to its system that will make teaching and learning much more personal.
The company’s software will now allow educators to completely customize standard courses, “rearrange, add and delete content including assignments…and search curriculum by topic and standard.”
There are more changes, like the creation of search engines that give educators the unique ability to search and save content, as well. More than anything, this shows how nimble and proactive Odysseyware is being to a rapidly evolving education environment. For students to reach their full academic potentials, teachers must tap resources that best fit each individual class structure and customization options facilitate this.
I believe the way teachers create lesson plans will look much different in 5 years than it does today, thanks in part to the upsurge of customization technology.
