US News and World Reports recently posted their list of the 50 best careers for 2011.  Educators might want to post this list and let their students know about it. 

Here’s our list of the 50 Best Careers of 2011″”click each job to learn more:

Business Jobs:

“¢ Accountant

“¢ Actuary

“¢ Financial adviser

“¢ Financial analyst

“¢ Logistician

“¢ Meeting planner

“¢ Public relations specialist

“¢ Sales manager

“¢ Training specialist

 

Creative and Service Jobs:

“¢ Commercial pilot

“¢ Curator

“¢ Film and video editor

“¢ Gaming manager

“¢ Heating, air conditioning and refrigeration technician

“¢ Interpreter/Translator

“¢ Multimedia artist

“¢ Technical writer

 

Healthcare Jobs:

“¢ Athletic trainer

“¢ Dental hygienist

“¢ Lab technician

“¢ Massage therapist

“¢ Occupational therapist

“¢ Optometrist

“¢ Physician assistant

“¢ Physical therapist

“¢ Physical therapist assistant

“¢ Radiologic technologist

“¢ Registered nurse

“¢ School psychologist

“¢ Veterinarian

 

Social Service Jobs:

“¢ Clergy

“¢ Court reporter

“¢ Education administrator

“¢ Emergency management specialist

“¢ Firefighter

“¢ Marriage and family therapist

“¢ Mediator

“¢ Medical and public health social worker

“¢ Special-education teacher

“¢ Urban planner

 

Technology Jobs:

“¢ Biomedical engineer

“¢ Civil engineer

“¢ Computer software engineer

“¢ Computer support specialist

“¢ Computer systems analyst

“¢ Environmental engineering technician

“¢ Environmental science technician

“¢ Hydrologist

“¢ Meteorologist

“¢ Network architect

The National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) stated that Colleges of Education need to set higher standards for admission and need to give aspiring educators more exposure to classrooms during their training.  The group said that being in a classroom and mentoring by professional educators are critical to new teachers.

The organization said that many teachers colleges had low admission standards and some do not even require minimum teast scores or grade point averages.  Many draw students from the bottom two-thirds of their college classes.

Because of these factors the teacher retention rate in the United States is lower than many other countries.

I never understood why student teaching takes place at the end of the college experience rather than at the beginning.  Having some practical experience in a classroom with field-based people is as valuable, and may be more valuable, than sitting in a college classroom.  But this report raises another valuable point.  Maybe we need at low school performance in the United States because colleges are accepting from the lowest two-thirds of the high school graduating class.  If the present administration is really serious about getting highly effective as well as highly qualified teachers into the classroom, maybe they need to give individuals incentives to go into the teaching field. 

Create a “”G.I. Bill” for educators.  Pay for people to go to college to become educators.  If they work in a classroom for five years, their college tuition would be paid off.  If they worked in a low-performing classroom for three years, their college costs would be wiped off.

As we enter the second decade of the new millennium, how is digital access changing, and what are the implications for schools?

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 95 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 use the Internet? And all of this is happening while we are in the midst of an explosive rise in mobile technology.  According to Pew research, in 2010, just 45 percent of households that earned less than $30,000 a year had broadband in their homes. Access to the Internet has become a necessity.”

How Things Have Changed

Mobiles: According to CTIA – The Wireless Association, some 91 percent of Americans now use a cell phone, and 90 percent of cell phone subscribers in the United States and Western Europe have phones that are Internet-ready, according to comScore’s 2010 Mobile Year in Review. Whether cell owners are using the Internet-access feature or not, it’s there, and if the trends say anything, they’ll be adopting its use by leaps and bounds.

“Kids are bringing more technology to school in their pockets than we have been able to buy them over the last thirty years,” says Shelly Blake-Plock, blogger in chief at TeachPaperless and a faculty associate at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education. This fact has prompted some to say that the digital divide is shrinking: African Americans and English-speaking Latinos are among the most active users of the mobile Web, and cell phone ownership is higher among these groups than it is for whites, according to several recent studies. But for many of these cell phone users, mobile technology is the only way they can get online. At the same time, many schools continue to ban cell phone use during school, which may be an outdated policy. Not only are there an increasing number of educational applications for mobiles but also, as Blake-Plock suggests, prohibiting phones now means “disconnecting the kid from what’s actually happening in most of our lives.”

Digital Inclusion: In some circles, the term digital divide is itself defunct. Students who are excluded from the digital universe know exactly what they’re missing, according to Deloney. “They know they’re not getting the homework help that everyone else is; they know they’re not getting that discount textbook or taking classes to further their degrees.”

Perhaps the authors of the “NMC Horizon Report: 2011 K-12 Edition” — part of a series of research-based analyses of trends in ed tech by the New Media Consortium — said it best: “The digital divide, once seen as a factor of wealth, is now seen as a factor of education: Those who have the opportunity to learn technology skills are in a better position to obtain and make use of technology than those who do not.”

How to Level the Digital Playing Field

Schools need to look at how the new technology enhances learning.

Availability of the Devices Themselves: Is there broadband installed at home or at a library close by? If there’s a computer in the classroom, does it do more than collect dust? Has it been updated in the last five years?

Accessibility of the Technology At Hand: Once there is a Web-enabled computer at a community center or school, can students access the websites they need to in order to learn, contribute, and create? Is there help nearby if a computer breaks down or if a piece of software fizzles? If it’s a broadband connection at home, is the monthly cost sustainable for the family? Blake-Plock calls this the access divide. This is a more complex issue to address because it encompasses a variety of obstacles. Among the remedies is to end the practice at many schools of blocking creativity-enabling websites, to make sure there’s a computer maintenance staff on hand (or to allow tech-savvy students to do the troubleshooting), and to regulate telecommunications companies so they adopt open-Internet rules when it comes to low-income consumers.

Literacy: Blake-Plock refers to a final and crucial barrier to digital equality. This refers to literacy, not only with hardware and software but also with the vast global conversation that the Internet enables. He notes that there is a gap between those who are “getting connected into broader networks, building their capacity and their social capital, creating the new wave of learning” and those who are, for a slew of complex reasons, not doing so. Addressing this means beefing up effective technology-integration programs at schools of education, encouraging and enabling students to create media and to participate in collaborations with others around the world, and making sure that every computer lab — whether at a school or elsewhere — has a way for users to tap into an educational component.

Affordability: 36 percent of non-adopters, or 28 million adults, said
they do not have home broadband because the monthly fee is too
expensive (15 percent), they cannot afford a computer, the installation
fee is too high (10 percent), or they do not want to enter into a
long-term service contract (9 percent). According to survey
respondents, their average monthly broadband bill is $41.
We also know that Broadband is not available to many Americans.

Digital Literacy: 22 percent of non-adopters, or 17 million adults,
indicated that they do not have home broadband because they lack the
digital skills (12 percent) or they are concerned about potential
hazards of online life, such as exposure to inappropriate content or
security of personal information (10 percent) So in some places that I go
even when schools have the access the filtering even weeds out the National Geographic. At the Wireless Conference last week, most of the Superintendents
admitted that filtering was used because of the fear of cyberbullying and inappropriate access to pornographic sites
.
Relevance: 19 percent of non-adopters, or 15 million adults, said they
do not have broadband because they say that the Internet is a waste of
time, there is no online content of interest to them or, for dial-up
users, they are content with their current service.

Digital Hopefuls, who make up 22 percent of non-adopters, like the idea
of being online but lack the resources for access.
Few have a computer and, among those who use one, few feel comfortable
with the technology. Some 44 percent cite affordability as a barrier to
adoption and they are also more likely than average to say digital
literacy are a barrier. This group is heavily Hispanic and has a high
share of African-Americans.

Computers and the Internet can make learning more authentic and powerful for students. The question is not whether we can get an iPod into every kid’s hand. It’s whether communities can leverage the capacity of networks to make It’s not just word processing, but blogging and tweeting; not just a class project, but an international student collaboration; not reinventing the wheel every time, but tapping into a professional-learning community that shares ideas and resources”.

For more information on the digital divide, visit our Digital Divide Resource Roundup.

Sara Bernard is a former staff writer and multimedia producer for Edutopia.org.

Additional Resources on the Web

• Internet for Everyone website
• The Digital Inclusion Forum
• Digital Media and Learning Research Hub
• “Internet Access is a Human Right” (Amalia Deloney, Center for Media Justice)
• Special Rapporteur Frank La Rue’s United Nations Report ( PDF)
• “Mobile Phones and America’s Learning Divide” (S. Craig Watkins, The Young and the Digital)
• What is Digital Inclusion? (Washington State University)
• Media Action Grassroots Network
• Digital Inclusion Champions Pledge (Center for Media Justice)

I am indebted to my friend, Bonnie Bracey Sutton for bringing this article to my attention.

 

 

I was raised to believe that one of the key foundations for America’s success was our nation’s desire and ability to educate all people who came to this shore.  It mattered little if they spoke the language, knew the culture, if they were poor or rich.  In fact if you go into a room of successful people, you will find that there is one commonality ““ they all were successful in their education. 

 But that is all changing.  With the vilification of education and educators by some of our nation’s governors and federal officials, there is a dramatic decline in the number of people seeking a position in education because teachers are being laid off and others are unable to find a job.

 

For decades, young people were told to go into education because there were a growing number of children and that many states were lowering class sizes that would create a growing demand for educators.  They were told that someone with a teaching credential would always have a job or would never have difficulty finding one. 

 

 A survey conducted by the American Association of School Administrators in May of this year found that of 1,000 school superintendents, 74 percent expected to cut jobs this year.  In California alone, budget cuts resulted in 30,000 teachers being laid off in the past 3 years.  In Michigan, the number of teachers shrunk by nearly 9 percent or 10,000 educators.  Austin, Texas hired 72 teachers this year.  Six years ago they hired 800.

 

According to the Associated Press, at the University of California, Los Angeles the number of applicants desiring to go into education fell by more than one third since 2003.   

 

So the message is getting out to potential educators.  Do not saddle yourself with tens of thousands of dollars in student loans because you will not find employment and if you do, there is a strong likelihood that you will be laid off.

 Politicians do not seem to mind that they are eating America’s seed corn.  Obviously they got their education.  Besides when it is time for children to vote, they will be long gone from the political arena.

“No Child Left Behind” and the O’Bama’s Administration “Race to the Top” brought us many things including high stakes testing, what I call gates examinations – pass the test and you go through the gate, fail it you do not.  But the question of testing needs to answer the question, what is the purpose of tests?

Tests currently are being used to evaluate students, teachers and the entire educational system.  Because of this emphasis, more standardized tests are being examined and homework and classwork time is being devoted to preparing students to take them and less time is being spent on instruction.  In addition, because things like history, art, music and sports are not being tested, they are either being eliminated or seriously being restricted from students’ programs.  For many students, these subjects are the reasons they come to school.  Because of budget restraints, students are now being charged for playing in sports or in the band.  This seriously hampers poor student’s participation.  In places like Atlanta and Philadelphia, PA teachers and school administrators have been accused and are being brought to trial for helping students cheat on the examinations.

Two sociologists, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, conducted a study which showed that 45 percent of college students, after two years of colleges, “have made no significant gains on a test of critical thinking.”  This raises the serious question, do tests actually test for things that we want the students to know? Do we simply want students to do well on a test for its own sake?  Do we want them to demonstrate some knowledge or skill like knowing how to multiply or do want to be able to think critically as well?

Computers are filled with knowledge but lack the ability to process the information into knowledge.  Aren’t high stakes test testing information and not knowledge?  Schools are teaching students what to think and not how to think.  Doesn’t the business public want students who know how to think as well as what to think?

We also know that children learn differently.  Yet our current tests simply test student’s ability to recall, rote memorize and regurgitate. Is this what we want for our children?

My mentor, Dr. Myron Tribus, has stated that the purpose of testing is simply to determine what to do next.  Have we seriously considered what to do next?

 

Do you remember when we were told that students were spending too much time watching television?

The American Academy of Pediatrics has restated its long-standing recommendations that parents limits the access to television of children under age two. But it’s fairly clear that few people are actually heeding the advice. According to a recent study by Common Sense Media, children of all ages are spending more and more time in front of screens of all sorts — not just television screens, but computer screens, iPads, smart-phones, gaming consoles and the like.

Concern about children’s access to and consumption of media — even media that’s labeled “educational” — is nothing new. But there is a new warning flag in this latest report: a so-called “app gap.”

An “app gap,” Common Sense Media argues, is developing between children of high-income and low-income families, the latter having limited access to mobile devices and the applications on them. Some statistics from the report:

• One in 10 lower-income children (that is, children from families earning less than $30,000) has a video iPod or similar device in the home, according to Common Sense Media, compared to one in 3 of upper-income children (those from families earning more than $75,000). Two percent of low- income children have an iPad or tablet in the home, versus 17 percent of higher income children.
• 38 percent of lower-income parents say they don’t know what an app is, compared to just 3 percent of higher income parents. Fourteen percent of lower-income parents have downloaded apps for their children to use, compared to 47 percent of higher income parents.

No surprise, the difference in access to devices and to the apps on them leads to different usage figures: 55 percent of children from higher-income families have used a cell phone, iPod, iPad or similar device to play games, watch videos or use apps, whereas just 22 percent of children from low-income families have done so.

Here is another problem that educators will, inevitably have to deal with. 

 

In an article in Science 23 September 2011 entitled The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Schooling, Diane Halpern and a number of other authors argue that “single sex schools neither improve academic success nor counteract gender stereotyping by teachers and students.”

In an article in Science 23 September 2011 entitled The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Schooling, Diane Halpern and a number of other authors argue that “single sex schools neither improve academic success nor counteract gender stereotyping by teachers and students.”

Single-sex education has been growing in popularity since the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act was passed, allowing local educational agencies to use “Innovative Programs” funds to support same-gender schools and classrooms “consistent with existing law.” Today more than 445 public coed schools offer single-sex classrooms.

Yet many experts say much of the success of single-sex schools stems from a demanding curriculum and a focus on extracurricular activities “” gains that would have been seen regardless of whether the opposite sex was in attendance.

“In attempting to improve schools, it is critical to remember that not all reforms lead to meaningful gains for students. We argue that one change in particular””sex-segregated education””is deeply misguided, and often justified by weak, cherry-picked, or misconstrued scientific claims rather than by valid scientific evidence. There is no well-designed research showing that single-sex (SS) education improves students’ academic performance, but there is evidence that sex segregation increases gender stereotyping and legitimizes institutional sexism. School is preparation for adult life. How can boys and girls learn how to interact as equals in the workplace if they have no experience interacting as equals in school?”

Why separate?

Single-sex education advocates often point to brain differences and different maturity rates as evidence for the benefits of separating girls from boys in the classroom.

“Timing is everything, in education as in many other fields,” says Leonard Sax, author of several books on the science of sex differences. “It’s not enough to teach well; you have to teach well to kids who are developmentally ripe for learning.” For example, asking 5-year-old boys to sit still, be quiet and pay attention is often not developmentally appropriate for them, but there are other ways to teach boys to read that don’t require boys to sit still and be quiet, he says.

Many experts agree that gender differences can be overblown. Teachers use strategies in the all-girls classroom and in the all-boys classroom that don’t work as well “” or don’t work at all “” in the coed classroom. For example, despite performing as well as boys in math courses, girls often doubt their ability to develop their math skills when faced with difficult material, according to research by Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck, PhD. This mindset appears to contribute to substantial gender gaps in math scores that emerge during and after middle school, While these types of teaching approaches may be thought to improve grades, test scores and college acceptance rates, there’s little empirical evidence showing that sex-segregated classes improve educational outcomes. A 2005 U.S. Department of Education comparison of same-sex and coeducational schools found a dearth of quality studies examining academic benefits and concluded that the results are mixed and not conclusive enough for the department to endorse single-sex education.

Yet other experts suggest that segregating students by sex can actually increase gender stereotyping.

Others point to the long-term effects of gender stereotyping on school infrastructure and curriculum as a down side of separating boys and girls in the classroom. Educational psychologist Sue Klein, EdD, education equity director with the Feminist Majority Foundation, a non-profit advocacy organization dedicated to women’s equality, reproductive health and nonviolence, says that separate rarely means equal in public schools that make the switch to a single-sex format. Often, Klein says, women receive fewer quality resources, and many single-sex schools and classrooms exaggerate and encourage sex stereotypes by emphasizing competition and aggression among boys and passivity among girls or by setting the expectation that boys are not good at writing. “We need to understand this whole area better, but I think we know enough now that this is not a good way to spend our country’s limited education dollars,” Klein says.

It’s about choice

The bottom line, Sax says, is that most single-sex education advocates don’t believe that single-sex education is best for every child.

The Federal Government has been looking to improve the numbers of females entering math, technology, science, and engineering (STEM) programs.  It appears that the jury is still out on whether single-sex classrooms are the answer.

 

 

According to the American College Testing organization one-fourth of this year’s graduating class who took the ACT college-readiness exam met benchmarks in English, reading, math and science, indicating they could earn B’s or C’s in entry-level college courses. Students performed better in English and reading than in science and math, and the scores are an increase from 2005, when 21% of students were considered college-ready. While observers are pleased with the uptick in overall readiness, they note that three-quarters of students still are unprepared for college-level work.

What do the governors and congressmen have to say about that as they make bone-cutting cuts in education?