Developing World Class Schools and Graduates
For those of you in the area of Jackson, Mississippi an upcoming Stop the Drop Dropout Prevention Summit, which will be held on Tuesday, November 13, 2012, 8 a.m.-1 p.m. at the Mississippi Center at Jackson State University. Please register by visiting www.mpbonline.org/stopthedrop.
Space is limited so please register soon. The event is free, but registration is required.
The USA’s largest teachers union is losing members and revenue, potentially threatening its political clout.
The National Education Association (NEA) has lost more than 100,000 members since 2010. It presently has 2.2 million members. By 2014, union projections show, it could lose a cumulative total of about 308,000 full-time teachers and other workers, a 16% drop from 2010. Lost dues will shrink NEA’s budget an estimated $65 million, or 18%.
In 1988, the typical teacher had 15 years of experience, according to research by the University of Pennsylvania’s Richard Ingersoll. By 2008, it was down to one year. “An increasing number of them are not sticking around,” Ingersoll said. “There’s this constant replenishment of beginners.”
America will regret the loss of teachers. Losing experienced teachers, the lifeblood of education will hurt the country. Assume that you needed a vital operation and had a choice of a newly graduated surgeon from a highly regarded medical school or a 15-year experienced doctor who had performed hundreds of these surgeries. Who would you choose?
According to the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, more than a quarter of American teenagers have sent nude photos of themselves electronically and those who have were almost twice as likely as their peers to have had sex. About half of almost 1,000 students ages 14 to 19 from seven public high schools in Texas said they had been asked to send a naked photo.
Of females who had sent a nude message, more than 77 percent reported having had sex. For those who had never sent a naked photo, 42 percent said they had had sex. For males, those numbers were 82 percent compared with 45 percent. The most prevalent group asking for and sending nude photos were white non-Hispanics and African-American teens.
I do not believe that educators or parents would have predicted so high a number of sexting was taking place.
According to a report from the Center for American Progress analyzed three years of questionnaires from the Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress, a national test given each year.
Among the findings:
While this may not be true for all students, this is a problem for many. Thanks to high stakes testing students are being taught “what to think” instead of “how to think”. But the problem isn’t simply a matter of blaming the tests. The phrase “rigor, relevance and relationships” comes quickly to mind. Are our students being pressed to a rigorous curriculum or have we watered down our standards? Do students see the relevance of what they are being taught? Or are they simply being told, “Learn this because it will be on the test”. Or, “you may need this later in your life’. Are we boring our students? The Gates Foundation report, “The Silent Epidemic” said that the reason students dropout of school is they are being bored. The curriculum is just void of critical thinking, creative thinking. As a result, students are probably bored, and when they’re bored, they think the classes are easy.
According to the Institute of Medicine, schools “should be a major focal point for preventing the spread of obesity”. The latest evidence is that one-third of children can now be considered overweight or obese. The institute predicts that the health care costs associated with obesity could become “catastrophic” in future years.
The institute states that since children spend most of their waking hours in school, “schools are in a unique position to support student in getting optimum physical activity”. The institute further suggests that students should get 60 minutes worth of physical activity every day.
Schools do have a role in maintaining children’s health. They need to insure that children’s lunches are nutritious and healthy. But as far as providing an hour a day of physical activity the Institute of Medicine and the American Academy of Pediatrics should talk to Department of Education officials and state legislatures. The demands of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, etc. has resulted in a decrease, and in some cases an elimination of all “unnecessary (which equals non-tested) subjects”. Outside agencies believe that school need to have additional responsibilities are not aware of the realities of financing, political realities as well as time-factored limitations that schools now face.
Going on line will result in the most interesting finds. If you would like to find some FREE audio tools for educators go to:
https://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/02/free-audio-tools-for-teachers.html?goback=.gde_148975_member_94590620
Two-thirds of teens and young adults have had oral sex “” about as many as have had vaginal intercourse, suggests research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The research shows that one in four teens is now having oral sex before vaginal sex. The CDC study is based on 6,346 interviews from 2007 to 2010, conducted anonymously via computer. Those interviewed ranged in age from 15 to 24.
Forty-four percent of 15- to 17-year-old boys and 39% of girls of that age engage in some kind of sex with a partner of the opposite gender.
Girls and boys gave and received oral sex equally and that sexual activity began at roughly the same age, with 44% of 15- to 17-year-old boys and 39% of girls of that age engaging in some kind of sexual activity with an opposite-sex partner.
There’s no such thing as totally “safe sex,” though oral sex reduces pregnancy risk to zero and HIV risk to almost nothing. But people who perform or receive oral sex are still at risk for other sexually transmitted diseases such as herpes, gonorrhea and chlamydia.
The growing frequency of oral sex means parents also need to address it with their children. Parents need to consistently talk in age-appropriate ways about sexuality, morality and physical self-esteem.
The new figures suggest that sex education programs need to directly address oral sex as well as vaginal intercourse. Those young people are at risk for sexually transmitted diseases even though they aren’t yet at risk for pregnancy if they’re only having oral sex. There is a need to educate teens about the risk of contracting a sexually transmitted disease from oral sex.
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The most recent data from the National Center on Educational Statistics (NCES) showed that more than 3.3 million students were either suspended or expelled in 2006 – nearly one in 14. Of these fewer than one in 10 were for offenses such as tardiness, talking back to a teacher or violating a school’s dress codes. For minority students, in 2006, about 15 percent of black students were suspended as compared with 7 percent of Hispanic students, 5 percent of white students. In New York City, the Civil Liberties Union revealed that suspensions of 4-to 10-year-olds had increased 76 percent since 2003.
If these statistics had resulted in better school performance or less violence I could support zero tolerance. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Research shows that zero tolerance fails to improve student behavior. It is a “quick fix'”because it remove from class/school the students who could profit the most from increased education and denies them access to needed services like counseling. Worse still, it increases the likelihood that the suspended students will be involved with the justice system which will lead to their dropping out of school.