Franklin Schargel’s Blog

The U. S. Department of State sponsors the “Doors to Diplomacy” educational challenge – to encourage middle school and high school students around the world  to produce web projects that teach others about the importance of international affairs and diplomacy. There are four components to the Doors to Diplomacy challenge.

Collaborative Web Project: Doors to Diplomacy is a collaborative project, where small teams are formed consisting of two to four student members and up to two adult “coaches.” Research can be conducted both online and offline, and then the findings are assembled to produce an educational web project. Students are also encouraged to become spokespersons for their projects.

Project Narrative: Each Doors to Diplomacy project also includes a Project Narrative that explains how the project has been organized, what challenges had to be overcome, and how the project supported local content standards.  Many wonderful community building success stories often emerge from these “behind the scenes” narratives.

Peer Review Process: As part of the competition, teams must also participate in a Peer Review activity, in which they evaluate at least four other projects, using a web-based evaluation rubric.

Awards:  Each student team member of the winning “Doors to Diplomacy” Award team receives a $2,000 scholarship, and the winning coaches’ schools each receive a $500 cash award.

PROJECTS ARE DUE BY MARCH 15.

Each team who submits a completed project receives a special Doors to Diplomacy certificate. Winners are announced in May.

 

Competition Organizers

Now in its 9th year, the Doors to Diplomacy Award is funded by the United States Department of State. The educational portion of the competition is managed by Global SchoolNet Foundation (GSN).

Global SchoolNet Foundation, a non-profit 501(c)(3) educational organization, which has been linking classrooms around the world since 1984. GSN creates educational programs that engage students in meaningful content and personal exchanges with people around the world — in order to develop literacy and communication skills, create multi-cultural understanding, and prepare youth for full participation as productive and effective citizens in an increasing global economy.

 

The greatest cause of of low performance or  failing schools  than poverty.  The point was well made by Joe Greenberg, Principal of Lehman Alternative Community School in the Ithaca City School District of Ithaca, NY wrote in an Letter to the Editor of Education Week (August 29, 2012, P. 20).

“According to ‘Wealth Gaps rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks and Hispanics’, the Pew Research Center’s report from July 2011, the median wealth of white households was 20 times higher than that of African-American households, and 18 times higher than that of Hispanic households in 2009… If counties and states failed to make adequate yearly progress in ensuring economic growth for all families, those elected officials would be judged failing and removed from office.  This would hold them to the same standard as our public school educators.”

At the very least, people should expect that when comparisons of schools are made, that there is a “level playing field”.  But expecting Camden New Jersey to perform as well as Asbury Park New Jersey when the Asbury Park School System spends $24,428 per pupil and Camden spends $16,131 per pupil is not only wrong, it is deceitful as well.

In 1954, when the United States Supreme Court unanimously declared in Brown v. Board of Education that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” civil rights activists around the nation hailed the pronouncement as a great victory.

In 1957, Martin Luther King, Jr. described Brown as “a legal and sociological death blow to an evil that had occupied the throne of American life for several decades.”

He predicted that: “With the coming of this great decision we could gradually see the old order of segregation and discrimination passing away, and the new order of freedom and justice coming into being.”

In praising Brown, Dr. King emphasized the ways in which a principle of non-discrimination would not only promote equality but also advance liberty by enabling African Americans to achieve economic independence and political voice.

Brown itself seemed to support this view. The Court described access to education as a prerequisite to democratic participation and personal accomplishment.

Indeed, the justices went so far as to observe that “it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education.”

As this passage from Brown suggests, equality and liberty are intertwined like two strands of a double helix that makes up our nation’s DNA “” at least when it comes to preserving individual rights.

Equality standing alone cannot tell us what the critical elements of opportunity are “” the freedoms that make our flourishing possible. Without a strong sense of how liberty shapes our personhood and dignity, equality can mean little more than a race to the bottom for the unfortunate and disadvantaged.

Conversely, freedom by itself cannot impose the limits that grow from respect for the rights of others. Without regard for norms of fair play, liberty can become a license to overreach the helpless and the poor.

Taken together, however, equality of opportunity will give us the freedom to pursue our dreams, while freedom will allow us to grow as individuals who can lay claim to equal dignity and respect.

Leaders like Dr. King never forgot the essential relationship between freedom and equality. When he told the nation that “I have a dream,” it was not simply a dream in which people of all races would be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. It also was a dream in which freedom would ring “from every village and hamlet, from every state and city” so that all people would have the chance to live out our country’s creed, vote for just and fair political representation, and work to achieve a better future for themselves and their children.

If freedom did not ring, equality would be a hollow promise.

Unfortunately, since the Court handed down its landmark decision in Brown, the justices have unraveled the strands of liberty and equality that together constitute our democratic identity.

In 1973, in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, students and parents challenged a public school financing system that led to wide disparities in per-pupil expenditures based on the wealth or poverty of particular districts.

In rejecting this challenge, the Court concluded that there is no fundamental right to equal educational opportunity.

The justices no longer seemed to view meaningful access to schooling as foundational to our prospects as citizens and workers.

Because Rodriguez treated the provision of an adequate education as primarily a political question, the Court acquiesced in the entrenchment of marked inequality for vulnerable communities with limited resources and influence.

Shorn of any connection to the right to education, equality of opportunity has become an increasingly formalistic and effete doctrine in the ensuing years.

The Court now views any official consideration of race as inherently suspect, and so it insists on colorblind policies even in the face of glaring racial inequalities.

In school desegregation cases, the justices traditionally have made an exception for race-conscious remedies that counteract the effects of past discrimination.

As federal district courts across the country find that vestiges of prior wrongs have been eradicated and lift busing orders, public schools often revert to being racially identifiable.

Some school boards have tried to reduce racial isolation by adopting voluntary integration plans, but the Court has rejected race-conscious student assignments as an impermissible form of discrimination.

The upshot of this jurisprudential shift is that school boards can largely disregard disparities that produce unequal educational access, but cannot attend to the harms of racially identifiable schools without risking a constitutional veto.

Dr. King observed that, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Therefore, no American can afford to be apathetic about the problem of racial justice.”

Today we must remember that a Constitution that treats liberty and equality as divisible does more than betray children in schools isolated by race and poverty. This act of doctrinal legerdemain also does a grave disservice to the rest of us.

In the end, none of us is truly free if some of us can be relegated to dead end lives, and none of us is truly equal if some of us can be left behind before our lives have truly begun.

Rachel F. Moran is dean and Michael J. Connell Distinguished Professor of Law at U.C.L.A. School of Law, and has written and lectured extensively on issues of equity and access in education.

Millions of learners have enjoyed the free lecture videos and other course materials published online through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s OpenCourseWare project. Now MIT plans to release a fresh batch of open online courses-and, for the first time, to offer certificates to outside students who complete them.

The credentials are part of a new, interactive e-learning venture, tentatively called MITx, that is expected to host “a virtual community of millions of learners around the world,” the institute will announce on Monday.

Here’s how it will work: MITx will give anyone free access to an online-course platform. Users will include students on the MIT campus, but also external learners like high-school seniors and engineering majors at other colleges. They’ll watch videos, answer questions, practice exercises, visit online labs, and take quizzes and tests. They’ll also connect with others working on the material.

The first course will begin around the spring of 2012. MIT has not yet announced its subject, but the goal is to build a portfolio of high-demand courses-the kind that draw more than 200 people to lecture halls on the campus, in Cambridge, Mass. MIT is investing “millions of dollars” in the project, said L. Rafael Reif, the provost, and the plan is to solicit more from donors and foundations.

Ten years ago, MIT galvanized the open-education movement by giving away free learning materials from 2,100 courses. But some universities are moving beyond publishing online syllabi and simple videos. They now provide virtual tutors and automated feedback through interactive projects like the Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University and the free online computer-science courses at Stanford University. MIT’s new venture is a step in that direction.

If Stanford’s experience is any indication, the potential pool of participants could be vast. Back in November, roughly 94,000 students enrolled in Andrew Ng’s open course on machine learning there.

MIT’s project could also help answer a big question facing open education: How do you sustain projects whose content is free?

Although access to MITx courses will carry no cost, the institute plans to charge a “modest” fee for certificates that indicate a learner has mastered the content. It’s unclear exactly how the assessment will work.

What is clear is that any credentials “would not be issued under the name MIT,” according to an MITx fact sheet. “Rather, MIT plans to create a not-for-profit body within the institute that will offer certification for online learners of MIT course work,” the sheet says. “That body will carry a distinct name to avoid confusion.”

Mr. Reif stressed that the open-learning experiment “is not an easier version of MIT.”

“For them to earn a credential, they have to demonstrate mastery of the subject,” he said, “just like an MIT student does.”

A 3-Tiered Ecosystem
Monday’s announcement marks a shift for MIT. The institute does not offer a fully online education for conventional credits. And when the OpenCourseWare idea emerged, the thinking was to avoid credit-bearing courses so as not to “dilute the MIT brand,” according to one official quoted in Unlocking the Gates, a book about open learning by Taylor Walsh of Ithaka S+R, a nonprofit group that promotes the use of technology in higher education.

But the new venture will apparently create a three-tiered ecosystem, with traditional MIT degrees, for residential students; cheaper MITx certificates, and free OpenCourseWare materials, said Roger C. Schonfeld, Ithaka’s director of research.

“It seems like an effort to begin to expand the breadth of individuals who can claim an educational association with MIT,” he said.

The project aims to “lower the existing barriers between residential campuses and millions of learners around the world,” MIT says. But how much will outside individuals get to interact with MIT professors? That’s unclear.

One way to promote such contact will be software that handles many questions, said Anant Agarwal, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

“Through voting and other mechanisms, you can create a funnel of requests so that the requests that come off the funnel at the very top can actually be answered by MIT professors and MIT TA’s,” he said. “A large number of questions at the lower parts of the funnel can actually be answered by other learners who may be slightly ahead.”

MIT faculty members have also developed technology that can automatically grade essays. Other technologies that could come into play here include automatic transcription, online tutors, and crowdsourced grading.
 I am indebted to  Bonnie Bracy for making me aware of this information.

Forbes Magazine published (December 5, 2011) an article by Scott Davis entitled “5 Brands Most Likely to be Gone by 2015”.  While schools might mimic businesses, they are not carbon copies.  But as Mr. Davis points out, “its worth analyzing and learning from the mistakes (of businesses) and learning so as to not repeat them.”

Failure # 1 – They don’t know what their customers want and as a result provide them with bad service that doesn’t meet customer’s needs.  (Examples: Netflix, the Post Office, Sears, Kodak)  Educational Lesson:  Involve internal and external customers in district decisions is critical.

Failure #2 – They not innovative and/or willing to change even though their competitors are.  (Examples: the Post Office, Kodak, RIM [Blackberry])  Educational Lesson:  If you are not willing to meet the needs of your customers (parents, children), somebody will (charter and magnet schools).

Failure #3 – They use outdated processes and thinking resulting in ineffective practices and financial issues. (Examples: Motorola, the Post Office, Kodak, RIM [Blackberry])  Educational Lesson: Because we believe the teaching and learning processes are correct, we blame the failure of education on people.  “If only we had better students, better parents, better teachers, etc….”)

Failure #4 – They don’t use technology to their benefit.  (Examples:  the Post Office, Kodak) Educational Lesson:  Technology is here to stay which can make schools more efficient.  But the problem is how to use them.  For example getting students to responsibly use smart phones or Ipads beats banning them.

All the business world and the education world are different, it doesn’t mean that we cannot profit from learning from their successes and failures.

Adapted from Emily Davis material.

 

 

 

Dr. Harold Shinitzky is a colleague and a friend who is the co-author (along with Dr. Christopher Cortman) of “Your Mind:  An Owner’s Manual For A Better Life:  10 Simple Truths That Will Set You Free.” Harold is the 2009 recipient of the Florida Psychological Association Distinguished Psychologist Award and the 2009 FPA Outstanding Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest Award.  He has also developed positive peer-oriented prevention programs for high-risk youth.

Able Village is an Internet-based, referral network by which patients and family members can find resources, providers and helpful information.  Members have access to finding every type of provider in their geographic area from our searchable database.  No longer are you alone.  Medical and social Blogs and Forums, healthcare articles and educational videos are all accessible.  Every provider receives a free, no charge web-page to double their existing marketing efforts or use as a stand-alone. No longer are you wondering what steps to take for the healthcare of your loved one.  Professionals share their expertise as well as patients/caretaker share the lessons they have learned.

Able Village is divided into two communities.

1. Community One ““ people with medical or mental health conditions, as well as their caretakers.  As a Registered patient/caretaker Member of Able Village you may navigate throughout the site.  When you select the Directory icon, you may use the Searchable Database for every range of healthcare services in your area based on your needs.  As a Registered Member you may select the Resources icon and be lead to the latest research on the topic of your interest in our Article subsection.  Additionally, you may choose to learn from others who have experienced similar circumstances in our Blog subsection.  Registered Able Village Members may discover state and national agencies for assistance, guidance and resources.  You may select the Village Video icon to enjoy and learn from informative videos posted by other members.  Lastly, you may select the Village Social icon and join a Social Network of individuals with others who can share their successes in life.

 

1. Community Two ““ people who provide services, resources, treatment, information to those with medical or mental health conditions. A Neurologist for issues associated with the brain to a Hair Stylist who is familiar with working with someone who has Sensory Integration Disorder.  A Psychologist for evaluating or treating a person with mental health or medical illness to a Tutor for a child with a Learning Disability.  A Developmental Pediatrician to a Residential Treatment facility.  As a Registered Professional Member you may promote your practice in our No Charge Directory Listing.  You may create your own interactive, visually appealing web-page.  If you know how to type and use Word, you can create a colorful and creative web-page that you control.  Update it anytime.  List your services by searchable key words and if you want link this page to an existing web-page.  It’s easy and Free. As a Registered Professional Member you may upload helpful articles within the Resource icon section, you may view or upload clinically helpful videos of your specialty.  You may join the Village Connect and electronically share your business care with other professionals.  Lastly, you too may join the Village Social and directly share information with the general members.

With Able Village you are no longer are alone.  Able Village is one site that connects patients/caretakers with specialists to provide comprehensive care.  For more information go to www.ablevillage.com or call Dr. Shinitzky at 727-560-2697.

Welcome back!

I am indebted to my friend, Bonnie Bracey-Sutton for making me aware of this article.

Education and Inequalities in the U.S. (Sean Reardon) by larrycuban
Sean Reardon is a professor at Stanford University. This piece appeared in the Boston Review, December 1, 2011.

Education has long been the primary pathway to social mobility in the United States. The American Dream””the idea that one’s family origin is no barrier to economic success””is plausible to the extent that we believe that our schools provide all students with equal opportunity to develop skills that will enable them to succeed in our complex society. Without such opportunity, hope for social mobility dims.

So when we ask whether America is becoming more or less equal, we should ask not only whether income and political power are becoming more unequally distributed (they are), but also whether the opportunity for social mobility is declining. We should ask whether children from all backgrounds have equal opportunities to succeed in life.

Increasingly, the answer seems to be no.

It is well known that economic inequality has been growing in the U.S. since the 1970s. Less well known, however, is the fact that inequality in educational success has also been growing. The difference in average academic skills between high and low-income students is now 30″“40 percent larger than it was 30 years ago. Indeed, the difference in average test scores between high- and low-income students is now much larger than the difference between black and white students. Likewise, the college completion rate for children from high-income families has grown sharply in the last few decades, while the completion rate for students from low-income families has barely moved. [PDF]

This rising gap in academic skills and college completion has come at a time when the economy relies increasingly on well-educated workers. Largely gone are the manufacturing jobs that provided a middle-class wage but did not require a college degree. In today’s economy, young men and women without college degrees are increasingly consigned to low-wage jobs with little opportunity for advancement. So family background has become increasingly determinative of educational success, and educational success, in turn, has become increasingly determinative of economic success. The American dream has moved farther out of reach for lower-income children.

What has caused this rise in educational inequality? Contrary to popular rhetoric, our schools are not worse than they used to be. The average nine-year-old today has math skills equivalent to those of the average eleven-year-old 30 years ago. Nor have test scores or college completion rates for students from low-income families declined; they simply haven’t risen nearly as fast as those of high-income students. Although there are striking inequalities in the quality of schools available to children from low- and high-income families, these inequalities do not appear larger than in the past. Furthermore, if schools were responsible for widening educational inequality, we would expect that test-score gap to widen as students progress through school. But this does not happen. The test-score gap between eighth-grade students from high- and low-income families is no larger than the school-readiness gap among kindergarteners. The roots of widening educational inequality appear to lie in early childhood, not in schools.

So what has been happening in early childhood? Rising neighborhood segregation by income means that low-income children are more likely to grow up in poor neighborhoods [PDF] where they have less access to high-quality child care and pre-school. High-income families, by contrast, increasingly invest more of their income [PDF] in their children. They spend more on preschool and early childhood education than they used to, more on tutors and lessons, on private school tuition, and on college. This is a reasonable response to an economy where educational success is increasingly important in securing a middle-class job. The problem, of course, is that lower-income families have not seen their income grow at the same rate as have upper-income families, and so they have not been able to increase their investment in their children. Stagnant incomes have left the poor and working-class without the resources to give their children the improved educational opportunities and supports that the children of the rich enjoy.

What can we do about this problem? The most effective way of narrowing the academic achievement gap would be to ensure that all children have access to secure, stable, and cognitively stimulating environments in early childhood, both at home and in child-care or preschool settings. And the best way to do that is ensure that we have an economy that provides families with stable incomes at a living wage. We need jobs, we need affordable health care, and we need a social safety net to support families through the hard times between jobs. We also need high-quality child-care and preschool programs for low- and middle-income children. We need programs like the Nurse-Family Partnership, in which nurses make home visits to help low-income first-time mothers develop effective parenting skills.

These do not sound like education policies, perhaps, but the best way to reduce inequality in educational outcomes is to ensure that all students start school on a more even footing. Schools alone are unlikely to remedy the very large disparities among children entering the kindergarten door. We can””and must””do more to improve our schools, of course””particularly those schools that enroll low-income students. But schools alone cannot save the American Dream.

larrycuban | December 23, 2011 at 1:00 am | Tags: Preschool education, school reform | Categories: school reform policies | URL: https://wp.me/pBm7c-196
Education and Inequalities in the U.S. (Sean Reardon)
larrycuban.wordpress.com

Now that Congress has come into session isn’t it time that they focus on this issue?

Based on data from the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, minority students are being suspended or expelled in disproportionate numbers.  The report drew on national and state data.

As a percentage of enrollment, more African-American students nationally have received out-of-school suspension of one or more days than their peers.  Data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights found in 2006 more than 28 percent of African-American middle school boys had been suspended at least once, compared with 10 percent of white males.  For females, it was 18 percent of black students compared with 4 percent of white students. The Education Department found that 3.25 million students or 7 percent of the total number of students in school had been suspended at least once.

Most suspensions were for minor violations such as being tardy or skipping school.  The North Carolina study, found that students were suspended for possessing or using a cellphone at school.  Thirty-three percent of African-Americans were suspended for possession of a cellphone while, 15 percent of whites were suspended.  Thirty-eight percent of African- Americans were suspended for dress code violation, while 17 percent of whites were suspended.

The incident at Columbine High School have contributed to the imposition of zero tolerance rules.  But the studies indicate that the suspension for minor offenses like being tardy do not make the school safer.  I favor suspension or expulsion for bring weapons to school.  But not for minor offenses.  Suspending a student for excessive absence only contributes to excessive absence.  Imagine as an adult, the police took away your driver’s license the first time you passed a red light or was caught speeding.    Punishments need to equal the severity of the offense.  And absolute rules fail to do so!