Developing World Class Schools and Graduates
Franklin will be interviewed by Fred W. Hofmann on Thursday, May 12 starting at 7:10AM, Mountain, 8AM, Central. Here is a link to the station web site: https://kcpsradio.com
To listen to live stream online: https://kcpsradio.com/media/index.htm
Link to archives: https://ff.curesolutions.com/kcps/archieves
The topic of the discussion will be: How to lower dropout rates and increase graduation rates.
America’s senior population is expected to double to 71 million in less than 14 years. Between 2000 and 2030, the number of Americans 65 and older will increase from 12.4 percent to nearly 20 percent according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The increase reflects both the aging the bay boom generation and improvements in life expectancy.
Worldwide, the number of senior citizens is projected to more than double by 2031 from 420 million to 973 million.
What are the implications of this increase? There will be increased demands for health services from the government as well as tax abatement requests.. Where will these funds come from? In the United States, education is funded mainly through property taxes. Seniors are already voting against tax increases where those increase do not go to increasing their benefits. Schools take the largest chunk of local and state taxes and seniors who do not have children or even grandchildren in school have difficulty supporting children who are not their own.
Worldwide, education cuts are already taking place in countries where the population is rapidly aging (Italy,Spain, China, Japan) and where the economy is not doing well (Brazil, Spain, Japan, China.
Bullying is an insidious disease and in its cyber-bullying form lasts 24/7/365 days long. It has disastrous effects on student learning, attendance, school dropouts and can even cause suicide.
I have been honored to receive the Hero Award from Auburn University for the work I have done in addressing the problem of bullying in schools. Below is the video application the helped me to win the award.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6j1s_-i4DY
A recent study from the University of Washington finds that many college students have to adapt their critical thinking skills after graduation in order to benefit from them in their professional lives. Furthermore, less than one-third (only 27 percent) of graduates said their education taught them how to develop and ask their own questions.
Critical thinking is an important business skill; this issue could pose a problem for future grads and their employers, alike.
The study, published in January 2016, consisted of researchers interviewed over 1,600 graduates from ten U.S. colleges and universities. The study’s goal was to evaluate the continued learning needs of today’s college graduates. What researchers found was that 30 percent of graduate learning needs after college were related to the workplace. Of these learning needs, 69 percent were related to professional development, 57 percent were related to desktop and laptop use and 56 percent were related to interpersonal communications. Furthermore, of all 1,600 participants, 84 percent had approached a coworker in the past year, informally, to learn more about the skills needed to succeed in the workplace.
Many of today’s job applicants need to be tech-savvy, but they also need to have excellent problem-solving and critical thinking skills in order to been seen as valuable members of their teams.
The current emphasis in K-12 schools emphasizing multiple guess questions, do not teach critical thinking skills and if colleges do not teaching these skills where are students expected to learn them?
Dr. Jean Strait of Hamline University is a friend of mine, a Professor in Teacher Education and an expert on Service Learning. She is the first female Native American tenured full-professor at Hamline.
Dr. Strait has several publications, including her most popular book, The Future of Service-Learning and is the co-author of E-Service-Learning: The Marriage of Experiential Learning and Civic Engagement published by Stylus Publishing.
For many of us the summer is an excellent time to catch up on reading. My friend Lee Jenkins, a former superintendent has developed a new way of improving schools. He has written a new book, Optimize Your School: It’s All About the Strategy, published by Corwin Here is a description.
All people begin life with a need for love and positive relationships. Most children have this early need met in their family. Then schools, churches, clubs and athletics meet the need further. Most fortunate are the people who have positive relationships from home and at least one other organization. When children come from a loving home what a bonus it is to have positive relationships with at least one other organization. Think about the super stars with positive relationships everywhere. However, there are many students in our schools without positive relationships at home. For these students, the schools play an even more important, huge role.
Unfortunately, many common school practices work against this goal of positive relationships with all students. Obviously, there are many, many teachers and administrators who overcome this, but the institutional practices are still a barrier. In Optimize Your School, the processes to replace poor practices that unintentionally demotivate up to 2/3 of our students are explained in detail. The practices combine elements of high standards, data, teamwork, celebrations, student engagement, and visible evidence of improvement for all to see. Even though all of the fore mentioned elements are written about in many other places, the unique combination and application of them is unique to education. Not everyone immediately accepts the premises, but nobody says, “Been there; done that.”
We can have a system of schooling that creates positive relationships with all students. The operative word is system which does not depend upon having all perfect teachers and administrators.”
School districts where more than 10 percent of students miss required statewide exams for a second consecutive year will lose funding and may have their performance ratings downgraded.
The state Department of Education decided on the penalties after the U.S. Department of Education directed Connecticut and 12 other states to come up with plans to deal with high numbers of students that missed the annual exams last school year.
Districts that achieve the federally required participation rate of 95 percent will receive a letter of commendation from the state education commissioner, and those that have participation rates between 90 and 95 percent will receive a letter reminding them they must raise their participation rate to meet the federal requirement.
“This approach will ensure that districts meeting the standard are commended, those failing marginally are gently alerted, and those falling behind are strongly reminded of the potential consequences and provided support to remedy the situation,” Connecticut Education Commissioner Dianna Wentzell wrote in a letter to the federal government.
It was not clear how much money the state would The government wants to withhold monies from sanctioned school districts. The state gives schools performance ratings on a number of quality measurements, and schools that fall far short of required exam participation rates will be given a lower rating.
About 11,200 students did not take the state exams last school year “” a growing trend referred to as the “opt-out movement.” It coincides with growing concern among parents that their children are spending too much school time being tested or prepared for tests.
But education leaders counter that these exams are, among other things, an important civil rights vehicle, that identify whether minority and vulnerable populations are receiving the education they deserve.
“Participation in state assessments is a matter of educational equity,” said Wentzell. The state “is not pleased with the low participation rate in some districts during 2014-15.”
Wentzell said during a recent interview that she believes students should get some sort of sticker after they take their exam to highlight the importance of participation, just as citizens do on Election Day after they vote.
This past spring, one-quarter of public school districts throughout Connecticut did not test at least 95 percent of their students.
School districts will begin facing the state sanctions based on whether too few students take the exams next spring. School district leaders will be notified by Jan. 15 of the potential consequences they face, and districts where fewer than 90 percent of students participated last school year will be required to submit plans to the State Department of Education by mid-February outlining how they plan to address the problem in the upcoming testing cycle.
Twenty-two school districts tested fewer than 90 percent of all students last school year. The participation rate of 90 is also required among a number of student subgroups, such as minorities, students whose primary language is not English and children in the foster care system.
It was not immediately clear how many districts fell below the 90 percent participation rate for any group of students.
High school students missing the exams were to blame for most of the shortfall. Of the 148 schools where too many students missed the statewide Smarter Balanced Assessment, nearly three-quarters were high schools. (Curious how many students skipped the test in your school? Click here to find out.)
Connecticut lawmakers earlier this year voted to replace the Smarter Balanced Assessment for high school students with the SAT, an exam many students take regardless.
“It is clear that the primary challenge was in Grade 11,” Wentzell wrote. “It is anticipated that participation in the state assessment will improve significantly in Grade 11.”
Changes to federal education policy signed into law earlier this month by President Barack Obama did not alter the requirement that 95 percent of students participate in testing.
“While we are still digging through the components of the new law, it is clear that the ESSA requires that states administer statewide assessments in reading/language arts and mathematics in grades 3-8 and at least once in high school, and it requires that states build into their accountability systems ways to hold schools and districts that miss the 95 percent participation rate target accountable,” a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Education wrote in an emailed statement.
The department has informed officials in 13 states so far that too many students missed the exam last spring and the states must come up with plans to ensure every student is tested.
Although it is clear in the new federal education law that goes into effect next October that the U.S. Department of Education can require states to submit a plan to improve test participation, it has not been determined whether the federal government has the power to order changes to the plan.
A spokeswoman for the state education department said her agency is awaiting approval of its plan from the federal agency.
How can schools be held accountable if students and/or their parents “opt-out” of taking the examinations? If a doctor says to a patient to lose weight and the patient doesn’t who should be held accountable? The patient or the doctor?
According to the Daily Mail.com (United Kingdom) (September 17,2015) an eight-year old girl uploaded sexually explicit video of herself on to the Internet according to police. A 12-year-old boy also sent naked snapshots of himself to a 13-year-old-girl. And a 15-year-old girl sent explicit messages to an 18-year-old man.
Many children see sexting as harmless fun, but it is illegal and can leave young people vulnerable to blackmail or attract the attention of sex offenders. Children can send sexual images of themselves in an instant. They often don’t really think about the consequences.
They send these pictures to a girlfriend or boyfriend but these images can quickly end up being shared widely in school and online.
We need to try to avoid criminalizing children wherever possible and aim to educate them (and their parents) in order in order to protect them from harm.