Union calls for an end to the policy of inclusion after a study suggests that it harms all children
THE policy of educating children with special needs in mainstream schools has failed and must be changed immediately, the country’s biggest teaching union said yesterday.
The National Union of Teachers dramatically reversed decades of support for “inclusion” and demanded a halt to the closure of special schools. It called on the Government to carry out “an urgent review of inclusion in policy and practice”.
The union issued a report by academics at Cambridge University, which suggested that inclusion was harming children with special needs, undermining the education of others and leaving teachers exhausted as they struggled to cope with severe behavioural and medical conditions.
John MacBeath, one of the authors, described inclusion “as a form of abuse” for some children, who were placed in “totally inappropriate” schools where they inevitably failed.
Pupils with special needs were nine times more likely to be expelled and teachers were leaving the profession because they could not cope with the pressure of working with them. Teachers were being given responsibility for tasks such as clearing out tracheotomy tubes, changing nappies and managing children prone to harming themselves in outbursts of extreme violence.
Other pupils lost out as staff devoted excessive time to special needs children. Many students witnessed highly disturbing behaviour as special needs pupils reacted in frustration and anger to their surroundings. Teachers often delegated responsibility for special needs pupils to classroom assistants.
Parents felt betrayed as their children’s educational needs went unmet and the children sunk into a spiral of misbehaviour that often ended in expulsion. Parents of other children were unhappy at the repeated disruptions to their education.
Steve Sinnott, the union’s general secretary, said that “inclusion has failed many children”. Teachers supported the idea in principle, but felt let down by the practice. He said: “It demonstrates very clearly the failures in policy and practice in our education system and in our schools.”
The Cambridge researchers interviewed teachers, children and parents at 20 schools in seven local authorites. They concluded that the reality of inclusion was very far from the “world of fine intentions” inhabited by policymakers. “While there are many examples of social benefits both for children with special needs and their peers, there is much less positive evidence that learning needs are being met across the whole spectrum of ability,” the report said.
But Lord Adonis, the Schools Minister, said: “Children should be taught in mainstream schools where this is what their parents want and it is not incompatible with the efficient education of other children.”
David Willetts, the Shadow Education Secretary, said: “This report should lead the Government to a radical rethink on its inclusion policy.”
Tony Halpin, The Times
May 17, 2006
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2184133,00.html
As Babies Are Born Earlier, They Risk Problems Later
More and more babies each year are being born just shy of spending a full pregnancy in their mothers' wombs, putting more infants at risk of health and possibly developmental problems because they enter the world before they are ready.
The percentage of babies born slightly early has been increasing steadily for more than a decade and is now at an all-time high. So many babies are being born a few weeks early -- more than 350,000 annually -- that the average U.S. pregnancy has shortened from 40 weeks to 39.
The increase is driven by a combination of social and medical trends, including the older age of many mothers, the rising use of fertility treatments and the decision by more women to choose when they will deliver. At the same time, medical advances are enabling doctors to detect problem pregnancies earlier and to improve care for premature babies, prompting them to deliver more babies early when something threatens their lives or those of their mothers.
Many obstetricians argue that the trend is positive overall because they are preventing thousands of stillbirths and avoiding potentially serious risks for mothers. But other experts worry because these babies are prone to a long list of serious, potentially life-threatening complications, which often require intensive, costly treatment. Moreover, growing evidence suggests that their long-term development may be more problematic.
"We should be concerned about these babies," said Tonse N.K. Raju of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. "They have more short-term problems, and there is evolving evidence that they have long-term risks as well."
Although most of these babies fare well and face far less risk than very premature infants, researchers have begun to realize that they are nevertheless more prone to short-term complications, such as problems breathing and feeding, and jaundice. And because so many are being born each year, even a small increased risk translates into thousands of sick babies. Studies are also starting to suggest that these children may tend to not develop as well as full-term babies, leading to behavioral, learning and other difficulties.
"There's no question these babies tend to have more [immediate] problems compared to full-term babies," said Richard E. Behrman of the Federation of Pediatric Organizations, who chairs a panel assembled by the National Academy of Sciences that will issue recommendations on the rising late-preterm birth rate next month. "The concern is about whether there is some adverse impact on their long-term development."
For years, most of the attention focused on the earliest, smallest "preemies" -- those born before 32 weeks -- because they face the greatest risks of dying or having permanent disabilities, such as cerebral palsy, deafness and blindness. But the proportion of babies born that early has leveled off, while the rate of "near-term" or "late-preterm" births -- between 34 and 36 weeks -- continues to rise. They now account for about two-thirds of all preterm births.
"These kids have been below the radar screen," said Marie C. McCormick of the Harvard School of Public Health. "They're just starting to get our attention."
Nearly 9 percent of all babies delivered in the United States were born late-preterm in 2003, according to the most recent federal data. That is up from 7.6 percent a decade earlier and the highest since the government started tracking such births -- and translates into about 50,000 more of these babies each year.
"It's a huge increase," said Mary E. D'Alton of Columbia University. "The question is: Are we doing too many of these deliveries?"
While the precise cause of the increase is unclear, one reason is that more women are delaying childbearing until their thirties, when they are prone to complications, including premature labor. Older women are also more likely to need fertility treatments, which increase the chances of having twins and triplets -- which tend to be born early. The obesity epidemic may also play a role -- obese women have more complications, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, that can make it necessary to end a pregnancy early.
Medical advances are making it easier to spot babies who are in distress or developing poorly, prompting doctors to deliver them early -- either by Caesarean section or by inducing labor with drugs -- to prevent stillbirths. Techniques for caring for premature babies have also improved, giving physicians more confidence that a baby will survive if delivered early. That makes them more likely to suggest an early delivery at any hint of a problem that might endanger the mother or baby -- or risk a lawsuit.
"In the past they wouldn't have dared -- they would have tried to wait it out," McCormick said. "Now they know what the neonatal intensive-care unit can do. That's been a very powerful, powerful change."
So powerful, obstetricians say, that the rate of stillbirths has dropped and the chances that a premature baby will survive have risen sharply.
"We shouldn't be worried," said Charles J. Lockwood of the Yale University School of Medicine. "We're doing a good job of avoiding stillbirths and subsequent infant mortality. When you have a fetus with no growth or insufficient food, the better place for that fetus is outside the womb."
But some specialists question whether the increase in Caesareans and inductions is the reason for the drop in stillbirths. And they worry that too much of the increase may be due to women hastening delivery for nonmedical reasons -- they want to make sure their mother will be in town, their husband has a business trip pending, or they are just fed up with being pregnant.
"It's a common request," said Mark Lollar, an obstetrician in San Ramon, Calif., who routinely honors such requests for the wives of professional athletes so their husbands can be present. "I have no problem arranging that for them."
Lollar and other obstetricians insist that they make sure that the fetus is at least 38 weeks old. "We never compromise the mother or the baby's safety," Lollar said.
Other experts, however, say it can be difficult to calculate the precise gestational age of a fetus.
"If a woman comes in late in the pregnancy and only has one ultrasound, you can have an error of up to two weeks, which can be significant," Tonse said.
After losing her first baby three days before her due date, Becky Veduccio and her doctor decided to induce labor in March just before her 37th week. Her daughter, Sophie, spent several days in intensive care getting breathing help, antibiotics and intravenous fluids. Less than a week later she was readmitted to the hospital for jaundice, and she has had digestive problems ever since.
"I thought 36 1/2 weeks would be okay," said Veduccio of Bloomfield, N.J. "But it's been just torturous. Every time we thought we could relax, something else would happen."
The lungs, brains and other organs of babies born even a week or two early are often underdeveloped, making the infants much more likely to have problems breathing, maintaining their body temperature and feeding. They are also vulnerable to infections and jaundice, which can be life-threatening or cause brain damage.
Such complications often require them to be sustained in the hospital for a week or two until they are fit to go home, adding thousands of dollars to the cost of their care. Often, they end up being readmitted once doctors realize they are not quite fully formed.
"These babies often masquerade as term babies," said Elizabeth A. Catlin of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. "They look like full-term babies -- they are chubby, they have a head of hair. But they just don't have the maturity and development of full-term babies."
In addition to the added cost and anxiety the complications cause, late-preterm babies are about five times as likely to die in the first week of life and about three times as likely to die in the first year than full-term babies, studies show.
"Doctors ought to be aware that there's no free lunch," said Michael Kramer of McGill University in Montreal. "There are a lot more babies out there who are getting sick and dying."
Although very little research has been done on these babies' long-term well-being, researchers suspect they may also be at increased risk for behavioral problems such as hyperactivity and possibly cerebral palsy and mental retardation.
"Could this group of babies be contributing significantly to the total burden of mental retardation in the United States and the world?" asked Gabriel J. Escobar of Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program in Oakland, Calif. "I would say yes. We don't know how much, but it's not trivial."
Some studies have found evidence that these babies are more likely to have subtle problems with speech development and coordination and behavioral and learning difficulties.
"The thinking had been that these babies were basically the same as term babies," said Steven B. Morse of the University of Florida. "Now it looks like they really are different."
Morse presented a study at a conference in San Francisco this month that found late-preterm babies were significantly more likely to fall behind in reaching language, coordination and developmental benchmarks at age 3, were less likely to be ready to start preschool at age 4, and were more likely to need special-education classes, have behavioral problems and be held back in kindergarten.
"A lot of brain maturation occurs in those last few weeks," he said. "How the brain develops when the baby is still inside the mother may be different than how it develops when it is outside. If these kinds of development problems persist for these children, that is a concern from a societal standpoint."
Rob Stein, Washington Post Staff Writer
May 20, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/
2006/05/19/ AR2006051901702.html
ADHD in girls overlooked
Many parents and paediatricians assume girls don't suffer as much from attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder as boys.
However, researchers in Northern California observed girls with the disorder at summer camps, and found they are much more impaired than their counterparts who don't have the condition.
Girls show ADHD differently
The findings suggest the medical community doesn't appreciate the frequency and severity of ADHD in girls, says Stephen Hinshaw, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley and co-author of the new study.
"Boys and girls are similarly afflicted and impaired by the symptoms of the disorder," Hinshaw says. "Girls appear to be as affected as boys, if not more so in some instances."
Several researchers have argued that many affected girls have been left behind, largely because they are less likely to be hyperactive and more likely to have trouble paying attention.
"The hyperactivity tends to come to the attention of teachers and parents, and gets kids in trouble with their peers," while a lack of attention is less noticeable, says Nadine Kaslow, chief psychologist at Emory University School of Medicine.
Establishing a test scenario
In the UC-Berkeley study, researchers enrolled 228 girls aged six to 12 in day camps held from 1997 to 1999.
Of the girls, 140 had ADHD and were specially recruited; the others, who weren't diagnosed with ADHD, were told the camps were for "enrichment."
The girls with ADHD went off their medications for the six-week day camp periods so researchers could observe their "natural" behaviour.
The findings appear in the October issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.
More subtle aggression and attention deficits
Researchers watched the girls closely, and found those with ADHD were often socially isolated and uninterested in following directions.
The girls with ADHD weren't as physically aggressive as boys with the disorder, but Hinshaw says they were more likely to engage in what is called "relational aggression" - "getting back at someone by excluding them from an activity or social group, or spreading rumours rather than directly aggressing against them."
The girls scored as poorly as boys on tests of their abilities to set goals, alter strategies in response to changing situations, and make plans.
Helping the children live an easier life
Kaslow praises the study, and says more attention to the ADHD problems of girls will help them later in life.
"This really underscores the importance of teacher, parents and paediatricians paying attention when girls aren't doing as well as one thinks they should be," she says.
"The longer these problems go untreated, the worse kids feel about themselves, the more social difficulties they have, and the harder life becomes for them."
Some adult women appear in her office with cases of ADHD that have been undiagnosed since childhood, Kaslow says. "They didn't know they had it, but they knew they struggled more to organise their work and their thinking. Sometimes teachers would say these kids weren't that smart, but it's not an intelligence issue. It's about an ability to organise it, and get it all together."
The good news is that ADHD drugs appear to work as well in girls as in boys, Hinshaw says. "ADHD is a serious, but treatable, problem in girls."
HealthScout News
http://www.health24.com/mind/ADHD/1284-3441,19832.asp
Is tech injuring children?
Mitali Perkins worries about her sons' hands.
Her 13-year-old twins, James and Timothy, are avid gamers who own three computers, two Sony PlayStations, a Nintendo GameCube and a Microsoft Xbox. Physically, they're fit, with one oddity: The boys can bend their thumbs all the way back to their forearms, and they constantly stretch and crack their knuckles with ease. For tasks like ringing a doorbell, dialing a phone number and changing the remote, they use their thumbs.
"The word 'arthritis' comes to mind," Perkins wrote in an e-mail to CNET News.com.
The Perkins boys' flexi-thumbs could be genetic--or they could be the physical adaptation of two game fanatics, just like big thighs are to bicyclists and strong shoulders are to swimmers. Whatever the case, the prolonged exposure to technology by a generation of kids has doctors, researchers and physical therapists expecting a rash of new repetitive stress injuries in the coming years.
A study from 2000 in Australia on the effects of laptop computers in schools showed that 60 percent of students aged 10 to 17 complained of neck and back discomfort while using the PC.
"Not since the development of a written language has the task performed by children and adults changed so dramatically," according to the report from the International Ergonomics Association.
Unfortunately, conclusive research on the subject of computer ergonomics for kids has been lacking. But researchers are concerned nonetheless.
"The exposure to ergonomic risk hazards for children is expected to be higher than it would be for adults because of the sheer amount of time that they're on computers at home and at school," said Ken Harwood, director of the practice department at the American Physical Therapy Association.
"So we expect to be seeing more diagnoses of repetitive stress injuries (RSI) in kids in the upcoming years as these kids start to develop, but we lack the evidence that supports it," said Harwood, who's also a physical therapist and certified industrial ergonomic specialist.
Repetitive stress as young as 8
Some physical therapists and pediatricians are already citing cases of RSI in children as young as 8 years old. Kids complain of headaches, neck problems and backaches. And when pediatricians can't identify the source, they'll send the child to a physical therapist.
"We see so many more middle school children with neck (pain) and backaches," said Doreen Frank, a physical therapist based near Albany, N.Y. "When we evaluate them and find there's been no trauma or no new activity, it narrows down to the fact that they sit for way too long and then they're on the computer way too long," Frank said.
Many adults who have witnessed kids trading hobbies like soccer or dance for instant messaging and computer games aren't surprised by these concerns. But even athletic children can suffer as a result of prolonged states of sedentary computer slump without break that strain developing muscles and joints. In the last five years, Frank said, at least 5 percent of her patients have been middle school children with neck and back pain, some in just the sixth grade.
Alan Hedge, a professor of ergonomics at Cornell University, said it takes an average of five to 10 years for people with poor computer habits to develop RSI problems. At that rate, kids in high school or college today might be primed for stress injuries while in the workplace--and it would likely be recorded as a work-related injury. Because there's no national database tracking child ergonomics issues in schools, there would be no way for researchers to understand the scope of the effects, he said.
Still, there's hope that digital kids could adapt to their heavy computer use.
A theory called the "Healthy Worker Effect" supposes that when someone performs a repetitive task for a long time, like lifting heavy boxes or surfing the Web, the person can develop a resistance to problems associated with the activity. The effect may be developmental, according to Harwood, in that children could develop a body structure to handle more ergonomic stress than they would have if they started the task as an adult.
Harwood said that it's not easy to measure RSI symptoms and then link them to a particular activity. Most research is conducted through surveys, he said, and kids don't fair well filling out such questionnaires. However, he said, there have been many studies in adults that show a relationship between computer use and RSI, and that could correlate to children. There's a need to track children's use of technology over time so as to measure future effect, he said.
"There's a lot of work that still needs to be done in this area," he said.
Hours and hours each day
The potential dangers are associated with several trends. One, of course, is the ubiquity of computers, cell phones, text messaging, instant messaging, social networking, and whatever the next technological fad might be. More than 80 percent of American kids age 12 to 17 use the Internet, and more than half of those kids log on daily, according to a Pew Internet and American Life study.
Kids nowadays can spend hours cradling a cell phone with a crooked neck, slumping over a computer game, slouching in front of a PC while text messaging friends and listening to music. And that's on top of time they might spend in school on a PC surfing the Web to research topics and do homework.
Experts are particularly concerned about the ergonomics of PC setups in schools because many computer labs are designed with a one-size-fits-all approach. Children might not have chairs suited to them or computer screens at eye-level that help avoid common repetitive strain.
College and high-school kids could once be found on a bed or couch reading a book for school. Now, studies are happening more on the computer, adding hours to sitting at the PC.
The state of Maine, for example, has mandated that all school kids be equipped with a computer. Microsoft, too, has donated computers to schools. Yet many such initiatives don't include programs to teach children how to use those computers properly to avoid injury, experts say.
"We'll have trouble; then we'll accommodate to it," said Dr. Stephen Nicholas, director of the Nicholas Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma.
Karen Lunda, a physical therapist in Tuscon, Ariz., said when it comes to children, people consider the developmental vulnerabilities they're prone to in many activities. For example, the pitcher in Little League baseball is restricted in how many innings he or she can pitch to avoid arm injury. The same might be warranted for computer use, she said. Perhaps, she added, kids should be forced to take a break every 1,000 keystrokes.
"It's something to examine because if we don't, boy, we're going to have a huge problem as they get older," she said.
Except for a few initiatives, very little has been done in the United States to protect children from computer injury and teach them good habits like regular breaks, posture and stretches, experts say. The state of New Jersey has passed legislation to set standards for school furniture that would support computer use, but the measure has yet to be enacted. At least one company, Magnitude, has developed software for schools called Ergo Fun. Cornell has also developed downloadable software that teaches kids the principles of PC ergonomics.
"If you teach children the principles of good ergonomics for using computers when they're young, then those will become habits to protect them throughout their life," said Cornell's Hedge.
For now, the Perkins boys show no signs of repetitive stress from mouse or joystick use, according to their mother, who said that's likely because she and her husband do their best to limit game play.
"I'm not sure about the long-term effects," Perkins said.
Send insights or tips on this topic to stefanie.olsen@cnet.com.
Stefanie Olsen, Staff Writer, CNET News.com
May 19, 2006
http://news.com.com/Is+tech+injuring+children/
2009-1041-6073730.html?part=dht&tag=nl.e703
TalkBack
backache from computers
msngurl05 May 23, 2006
A little break never hurt anyone!
TechMom236 May 22, 2006
"fair well"?
George Liddy May 19, 2006
Bad Science
noybypos May 19, 2006
Of Course they won't
Bruce Jenner May 19, 2006
It actually affects the parents
Christopher Hall May 19, 2006
Immigrant children lag behind in European schools
EUOBSERVER /
The research by the economic think tank reveals that more than a third of second-generation immigrant children in
About 40 percent of second-generation immigrant students leave school without basic skills in mathematics.
Concerned by the statistics, the OECD warned against being passive on the issue.
"Doing nothing isn't an option, the data suggest: with unemployment rates in many countries two to three times higher among immigrants than among nationals, the cost of inaction may be far greater than the cost of action," an OECD statement said.
In certain countries immigrants do substantially less well.
At the other end of the scale, Sweden emerged as the best performer among West European states in succeeding to reduce educational inequality between second-generational immigrant children and the native population
The research also says that immigrant students whose families are from Turkey tend to perform poorly in many countries, Germany remains the country where they do significantly worse.
From all the countries analysed,
In these countries, the performance of second-generation immigrant children is much closer to that of native children and close to the national average.
The OECD study suggests that public policy can make a big difference.
For the study, OECD experts tested 15-year-old students in 41 countries in mathematics, reading comprehension, science and problem-solving skills.
Then the study focused on 17 territories with large immigrant populations.
Aleander Balzan
EUOBSERVER
http://euobserver.com/9/21608
Gifted and Tormented
Academic Stars Often Bullied -- and More Likely to Suffer Emotionally as a Result
More than two-thirds of academically talented eighth-graders say they have been bullied at school and nearly one-third harbored violent thoughts as a result, according to a study believed to be the first to examine the prevalence and impact of bullying in a group some experts regard as particularly vulnerable.
The study -- published in the current issue of Gifted Child Quarterly, a peer-reviewed journal -- involved 432 students in 11 states, including
"All children are affected adversely by bullying, but gifted children differ from other children in significant ways, and what they experience may be qualitatively different," said Peterson, whose study was conducted with doctoral candidate Karen Ray. "It is important to remember that although cognitively these children are advanced, physically, socially and emotionally they may not be."
In the view of Peterson and some other experts, the personality traits and interests of many gifted children may make them targets of bullying by their classmates. At the same time, she added, gifted children may be more susceptible to the emotional damage that bullying can inflict.
Some studies have found that gifted children, especially those with high verbal aptitude, may be more sensitive than their less-gifted peers and to worry more about their social standing.
"This study is a great start and the tip of the iceberg," said developmental psychologist Susan Limber, an associate professor of psychology at
Sylvia Rimm, a clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at Case School of Medicine in
"Regular kids get bullied, too, but gifted kids are bullied based on their school performance, which makes the child's strength into a weakness" and a potential source of shame, said Rimm.
Peterson said that one of her most alarming findings involved the frequency of violent thoughts. By eighth grade approximately 37 percent of boys and 23 percent of girls reported having unspecified violent thoughts in response to being bullied; 11 percent said they had resorted to violence to cope with the problem, often by striking a classmate.
Goad to Violence
The link between bullying and school violence has attracted increasing attention since the 1999 rampage at
In the last two months, Columbine-style plots involving students as young as 12 have been disrupted in more than half a dozen American communities, from North Pole, Alaska, to Atco, N.J. Bullying was cited as a motive in some of these incidents, but it is unclear how many of the suspected conspirators would be considered academically precocious.
Jaysen Kettl, who was convicted of conspiracy after his plan to murder 20 classmates, teachers and administrators at
Often, psychologists say, gifted children who are bullied turn their rage and despair inward. Among them was J. Daniel Scruggs of
Scruggs was tormented for more than a year by middle school classmates who shoved him off the bleachers, affixed "Kick Me" signs to his back and made him eat his lunch off the cafeteria floor. Many school officials knew about the abuse and failed to intervene, state investigators found. On
One of Rimm's clients, a middle school student, told Rimm she worried that if her grades were too good, she would be ostracized.
"Some kids get away with it if they're really good at sports or very pretty," Rimm said. "If kids are teased in the one area they have that's strong, there is this feeling of isolation and anger. Adults need to take it seriously because otherwise these kids go underground."
Peterson conducted detailed interviews with 57 students as part of her study. Some told her their intelligence was used against them; school officials, including teachers, were low on the list of people to whom they turned for help.
"Many students said they assumed responsibility for fixing the problem" Peterson said. "Some felt they had essentially been told by school officials, 'If you're so smart, figure it out yourself.' "
Out of the
Many studies of bullying have found that the problem escalates in the later years of elementary school, is most severe in middle school and tends to dissipate by high school. Peterson's subjects reported that sixth grade was the peak year for bullying.
Rimm said she suspected that bullying might be less a problem for gifted children who are grouped together, as in many
Mary Shaw, a spokeswoman for the Fairfax County Public Schools, which offer gifted education programs beginning in kindergarten, said officials there declined to comment other than to say that bullying of gifted students "is not an issue for us."
That is not true elsewhere. Developmental psychologist Richard Olenchak, director of the University of Houston's Urban Talent Research Institute, which works with gifted minority students, said some cultures label gifted children as "overly intellectual"; standing out for being "a brain" at an age when children most want to fit in, he said, may make a gifted student a target of unwanted attention.
Peterson found that being teased about appearance, reported by 24 percent of study participants, bothered students "a lot" in sixth and seventh grade, the same age that being teased about intelligence and grades peaked.
One finding that merits further study, according to Peterson: 16 percent of students in her study said they had bullied someone else. Although fewer students reported being bullied by eighth grade, the number who said they bullied others increased.
To Clemson's Limber, who consults with school systems around the country about bullying prevention, the key questions have to do with the tone set by teachers and administrators.
"Do they mark [gifted] kids as being special or different?" she asked. "Are they looking out for those who may be socially isolated?".
Comments: boodmans@washpost.com.
Sandra G. Boodman
2006/05/15/AR2006051501103.html
Dropout Data Raise Questions on 2 Fronts
One Side Says Problem Isn't as Dire as Thought, but Others Doubt Research
Economist Larry Mishel was troubled by high school graduation statistics that contradicted what he thought was good research. That was particularly true of data used by many politicians and pundits to bemoan a 30 percent dropout rate in American high schools.
"This picture was radically different from what I knew from labor market data I regularly examined in my studies of wage and job trends," said Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank. His research indicated that only about 12 percent of the workforce lacked a high school diploma or its equivalent, so how could the dropout rate be so large?
Political scientist Jay P. Greene also had trouble with the data, but for a different reason. He found many school systems were claiming low dropout rates, even though their ninth grades were bulging with restless students eager to be elsewhere and many had disappeared by graduation time. Working as a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and as head of the education reform department at the University of Arkansas, Greene reported that graduation rates seemed to be worse than many people thought, as low as 50 percent in low-income urban neighborhoods.
A collision of those two views by prominent scholars was inevitable, and in the past several weeks it has hit the education policy world in an explosion of articles, e-mails and public debates, some quite heated. Experts disagree over who is right, and some say the truth may be somewhere in between. But the argument has aggravated a widespread feeling that information on how many children are disappearing from public schools is not nearly as accurate as it should be.
"Jay Greene and Larry Mishel have performed the valuable service of exposing the huge inadequacies in the way we measure the percent of students who achieve a regular high school diploma -- inadequacies not attended to in over two decades of education reform," said Paul E. Barton, senior associate in the Educational Testing Service's Policy Information Center.
Such congratulatory words have not ended the scholarly strife. Mishel and Greene continue their sometimes testy exchanges, and the argument has broken into disputes over lost diplomas, growth computation mistakes, uncounted immigrants and other issues loved only by people whose livelihoods depend on population data.
The major event has been the publication of a book by Mishel and Economic Policy Institute economist Joydeep Roy, "Rethinking High School Graduation Rates and Trends." It is only 100 pages, many of them full of charts, but it takes a big swing at powerful forces, particularly the National Governors Association and its recent report that said high schools are in crisis.
"About a third of our students are not graduating from high school," the association declared in a 2005 report by a task force that used Greene's data. "About three-fourths of white students graduate from high school, but only half of African American and Hispanic students do."
Mishel and Roy say that is wrong. Using U.S. Education Department data that follow student experiences and results of Census Bureau household surveys, they get very different numbers: an overall high school graduation rate with a regular diploma of 80 to 83 percent, a black student graduation rate of 69 to 75 percent and a Hispanic graduation rate of 61 to 74 percent.
They say that in the past 40 years, the high school completion rate, including graduates and those passing General Educational Development diploma tests, has gone up substantially and that the black-white gap has shrunk, except in the past 10 years, when there has been little improvement. Only graduation among Hispanics increased during the past 10 years.
Greene and Manhattan Institute research associate Marcus A. Winters have quickly counterattacked. They say the Mishel-Roy book is too dependent on Education Department longitudinal studies that follow a representative sample of students over several years and on census surveys that depend on people telling the truth about their success in school. If, for example, there were as many high school graduates in 2003 as Mishel and Roy said, they would number 476,442 more than the number of students school systems reported that year, Greene and Winters said.
Russell Rumberger, a University of California at Santa Barbara education professor, said he carefully checked the longitudinal survey used by Mishel and Roy and found that it appeared to "generate very accurate population estimates confirmed by published data." Greene struck back with a political analogy. He said the "assertion that we should believe the results of a survey over population counts is a little bit like the people who asserted that Kerry really won the 2004 election because the exit polls showed him winning even though the vote count gave the victory to Bush."
Daniel J. Losen, senior education law and policy associate at the Harvard University Civil Rights Project, said he agreed with Greene that the dropout problem is severe. "There is a consensus that this crisis is real and particularly severe for Latinos, African Americans and Native Americans," he said.
Researchers say this is not just an academic question; there are consequences for many children. "If Larry Mishel is right that the graduation rates have been improving, then some of the radical reforms for high schools being proposed may be misguided or dangerous," said Richard Rothstein, a former New York Times columnist and a research associate at Mishel's think tank.
"It may seem that we are talking about just a few percentage points here and there," said John Robert Warren, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota who agrees with Greene, but "five percentage points would be 175,000 young people annually."
No matter who is right, Barton said, it is embarrassing for educational research to have scholars as reputable as Mishel and Greene be so dubious about the value of major sources of dropout data.
Barton said census officials told him that there had been no field or validity studies of the census question on high school completion rates -- so experts cannot be as confident about that data. By contrast, he said, "tens of millions of dollars have gone into getting the questions right in that survey that gives the monthly unemployment rate."
Jay Mathews, Washington Post Staff Writer
May 23, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/
2006/05/22/ AR2006052201187.html
Dropout Data Raise Questions on 2 Fronts
One Side Says Problem Isn't as Dire as Thought, but Others Doubt Research
"This picture was radically different from what I knew from labor market data I regularly examined in my studies of wage and job trends," said Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank. His research indicated that only about 12 percent of the workforce lacked a high school diploma or its equivalent, so how could the dropout rate be so large?
Political scientist Jay P. Greene also had trouble with the data, but for a different reason. He found many school systems were claiming low dropout rates, even though their ninth grades were bulging with restless students eager to be elsewhere and many had disappeared by graduation time. Working as a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and as head of the education reform department at the University of Arkansas, Greene reported that graduation rates seemed to be worse than many people thought, as low as 50 percent in low-income urban neighborhoods.
A collision of those two views by prominent scholars was inevitable, and in the past several weeks it has hit the education policy world in an explosion of articles, e-mails and public debates, some quite heated. Experts disagree over who is right, and some say the truth may be somewhere in between. But the argument has aggravated a widespread feeling that information on how many children are disappearing from public schools is not nearly as accurate as it should be.
"Jay Greene and Larry Mishel have performed the valuable service of exposing the huge inadequacies in the way we measure the percent of students who achieve a regular high school diploma -- inadequacies not attended to in over two decades of education reform," said Paul E. Barton, senior associate in the Educational Testing Service's Policy Information Center.
Such congratulatory words have not ended the scholarly strife. Mishel and Greene continue their sometimes testy exchanges, and the argument has broken into disputes over lost diplomas, growth computation mistakes, uncounted immigrants and other issues loved only by people whose livelihoods depend on population data.
The major event has been the publication of a book by Mishel and Economic Policy Institute economist Joydeep Roy, "Rethinking High School Graduation Rates and Trends." It is only 100 pages, many of them full of charts, but it takes a big swing at powerful forces, particularly the National Governors Association and its recent report that said high schools are in crisis.
"About a third of our students are not graduating from high school," the association declared in a 2005 report by a task force that used Greene's data. "About three-fourths of white students graduate from high school, but only half of African American and Hispanic students do."
Mishel and Roy say that is wrong. Using U.S. Education Department data that follow student experiences and results of Census Bureau household surveys, they get very different numbers: an overall high school graduation rate with a regular diploma of 80 to 83 percent, a black student graduation rate of 69 to 75 percent and a Hispanic graduation rate of 61 to 74 percent.
They say that in the past 40 years, the high school completion rate, including graduates and those passing General Educational Development diploma tests, has gone up substantially and that the black-white gap has shrunk, except in the past 10 years, when there has been little improvement. Only graduation among Hispanics increased during the past 10 years.
Greene and Manhattan Institute research associate Marcus A. Winters have quickly counterattacked. They say the Mishel-Roy book is too dependent on Education Department longitudinal studies that follow a representative sample of students over several years and on census surveys that depend on people telling the truth about their success in school. If, for example, there were as many high school graduates in 2003 as Mishel and
Russell Rumberger, a University of California at Santa Barbara education professor, said he carefully checked the longitudinal survey used by Mishel and Roy and found that it appeared to "generate very accurate population estimates confirmed by published data." Greene struck back with a political analogy. He said the "assertion that we should believe the results of a survey over population counts is a little bit like the people who asserted that Kerry really won the 2004 election because the exit polls showed him winning even though the vote count gave the victory to Bush."
Daniel J. Losen, senior education law and policy associate at the Harvard University Civil Rights Project, said he agreed with Greene that the dropout problem is severe. "There is a consensus that this crisis is real and particularly severe for Latinos, African Americans and Native Americans," he said.
Researchers say this is not just an academic question; there are consequences for many children. "If Larry Mishel is right that the graduation rates have been improving, then some of the radical reforms for high schools being proposed may be misguided or dangerous," said Richard Rothstein, a former New York Times columnist and a research associate at Mishel's think tank.
"It may seem that we are talking about just a few percentage points here and there," said John Robert Warren, an associate professor of sociology at the
No matter who is right, Barton said, it is embarrassing for educational research to have scholars as reputable as Mishel and Greene be so dubious about the value of major sources of dropout data.
Barton said census officials told him that there had been no field or validity studies of the census question on high school completion rates -- so experts cannot be as confident about that data. By contrast, he said, "tens of millions of dollars have gone into getting the questions right in that survey that gives the monthly unemployment rate."
Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/
2006/05/22/AR2006052201187.html
From a Poet's Failing Sight, a Novel 'Seeing Machine' Emerges
A poet and artist has enlisted the help of scientists and engineering students to create a "seeing machine" that may eventually help people like her, with severely impaired vision, to read, look at pictures and explore landscapes and buildings.
Elizabeth Goldring's eyesight has come and gone over the years. Mostly, it has gone. Now 61, she has had juvenile diabetes since college, and the disease has pecked away at her vision, causing hemorrhages in her retinas, the fragile layer of light-sensitive cells at the back of the eye.
About 10 years ago, when she was nearly blind in both eyes, her doctor recommended a test to find out whether she had any healthy retina left at all. The test involved a large $100,000 machine called a scanning laser ophthalmoscope, which would let the doctor examine her retinas and project images directly onto them. If there were any live spots, the device might let her see.
It worked. She saw a stick-figure turtle. Ms. Goldring, a poet who has had three books published, asked to see a word. She was able to read "sun." It was the first word she had seen in many months.
"For a poet, that's an incredible feeling," she said. "I said almost immediately, 'I need to get in touch with the man who invented this machine.' "
She wanted a scaled-down version to use on her own, and she thought other people with impaired vision would want one, too. About 14 million people in the
Ms. Goldring had tried just about every device made to help people with low vision, but the doctor's machine was far better than any of them. She imagined using a home or library version of it.
The idea of creating a new device did not intimidate her: though she is not a scientist or engineer, she works at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"I was convinced it would work," she said, though she added, "at first people were really, really suspicious."
She and a team of M.I.T. students collaborated with the machine's inventor, Robert W. Webb, a researcher at Harvard and the
The result is what Ms. Goldring calls a seeing machine, a smaller, simpler desktop device that cost less than $4,000 to build. It consists of a projector, computer, monitor, eyepiece and a joystick for zooming in and out. It uses light-emitting diodes instead of a laser.
Ten people with severely impaired vision tried out the prototype as part of a pilot study, Ms. Goldring said.
Most had diabetes or macular degeneration, which is becoming more common as the population ages. The patients used the seeing machine to look at words and navigate through virtual architectural models.
"I can't think of a one of them that didn't respond very vividly and excitedly to the experience," Ms. Goldring said. She and her colleagues described the pilot study in a recent article in a medical journal, Optometry. But no seeing machines are available for sale yet. "Ten patients is great, but we need to do a large-scale test of the machine," Ms. Goldring said.
Dr. Webb agreed that more testing was needed but said he thought that the machine would ultimately be useful to only a small minority of people with low vision.
Most can see only three or four letters at a time or tiny bits of a picture, and even that can be hard and slow. For people with vision like hers, she said, words like book and door can be almost indecipherable because the letters b or d followed by o create a weird visual effect.
For that reason, Ms. Goldring created a "visual language" that combines letters and simple pictures to represent hundreds of nouns and verbs. For example, the word book is a b, the outline of an open book and then a k. Door is a d, the outline of a doorway and then an r.
Patients in the study liked the visual language and it made reading easier and faster; one woman liked it so much she wished her recipes could be written in it, Ms. Goldring said.
She said she thought the machine might eventually be used to help people look at material from Internet libraries for people with impaired vision, so that the images were not too complicated for them to process.
The machine might allow people to study the layout of places they are about to visit, to make it easier to get around. Ms. Goldring said she tried this, asking students to videotape the interior of a building at M.I.T. that she had never entered. "It was too complicated, but I looked and looked," she said. "Then I went by myself. My sense of confidence was something entirely different."
Just knowing the location of staircases or the arrangement of buttons in an elevator can be enormously helpful, she said.
She has also been using the machine to help her create artwork that she calls "retina prints," impressionistic, digital portraits of the world as she sees it, superimposed on faint images of structures of the retina, her own and other people's.
Ms. Goldring hopes that eventually the seeing machines will be mass produced and available for even less than $4,000. "My dream is that these seeing machines will make it out of my laboratory and into the hands of people who could use them," she said.
DENISE GRADY
May 23, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/23/health/23visi.html
Hang It Up
YOU'RE a teacher in the
You turn your back to write the definition of "thesis" on the chalk board. It takes about 15 seconds. You turn around to the class expecting to see 25 students scribbling the concept in their notebook. Instead, you see a group of students who have sprung appendages of technology.
Jose has grown an earphone. Maria's thumbs have sprouted a two-way. Man Keung, recently arrived from
Come the end of the term, a handful will fail the class. A number will never pass the Regents. As we all know, far too many will drop out of school. And I can tell you with no hint of pride that it isn't the teacher's fault. As much as any other problem plaguing our schools, the onus for failure should be placed on distractions in the classroom, specifically the cellphone.
Though electronic devices have been banned in public schools for years, the issue came to the forefront last month when Chancellor Joel Klein announced the random placement of metal detectors in schools. The result: more than 800 cellphones have been confiscated.
Students and their parents, who say they rely on cellphones for safety reasons, are outraged. There's even talk of a lawsuit arguing that the rule should be struck down.
But as a former
Parents think of cellphones as a connection to their children in an emergency. I have a few questions for those parents: First, when was the last situation that genuinely called for immediate interaction with your child? In most cases, the hospital or the police would seem more urgent. Second, is phoning the main office and having it patch you through to your child not quick enough? And third, do you know why your children really want to take cellphones to school?
Because just like the new
And saying students can store their phones in the locker is a joke. If they have cellphones, they're going to bring them into class.
There are legitimate causes that parents should be taking on. Rally against crowding in the classroom. Fight against the oppressive and culturally biased Regents tests. But you're wrong on this cellphone issue. In this case, you are part of the problem, not the solution.
Jesse Scaccia, a film producer, taught at
JESSE SCACCIA,
May 23, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/23/opinion/23scaccia.html
Schools, students match wits over Web access
Thousands of websites are blocked on school computers in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, including pornography, video games, gambling and MySpace, the wildly popular social-networking service.
Sergio Molina, a senior at
But while he explains it, he makes a few clicks on a classroom computer and shows off his own MySpace page. He could easily slide to others, including pages of classmates with suggestive pictures or far racier material elsewhere on the Internet.
His trick -- which is far too widely known among students and teachers to qualify as a secret -- is a proxy server, which allows students to skirt the Miami-Dade school district's watchdog software.
''We use proxies, like, every week,'' Molina said.
Think of school computers as a telephone that can dial only a few numbers -- but one of those belongs to a friend who can start a conference call with anyone else in the world. That friend is the proxy.
District administrators -- and the contractors they hire to run the blocking software -- scramble to cut access to proxies, but new ones open at least as quickly.
''We have had a problem with it,'' said Chuck Stanley, the
Proxies are almost impossible to block manually because students can set up new ones every morning. They have become far more common over the last few months, according to Eric Lundbohm, vice president of 8e6 Technologies, the company that produces the software used in Miami-Dade.
8e6 is releasing an update today that may be able to zap proxies more quickly, using the same techniques that block instant messaging and file-sharing programs, but it may not be completely effective.
''The kids are way ahead of everybody in figuring out ways around filters,'' Lundbohm said. ``It's an ongoing cat-and-mouse game.''
Schools can suspend students for circumventing the blocks, but proxy servers are a gaping hole in an Internet security program that serves a number of purposes.
SOFTWARE'S PURPOSES
Educationally, the blocking software prevents students from frittering away time when they should be studying. Teachers cannot monitor every computer at every moment, especially when students are spread out in the school's media center. X-Stop, the software used in Miami-Dade, blocks some of the most tempting distractions.
Perhaps most importantly, though, district officials use blocking software to protect students from inappropriate content and from predators.
''Kids do tend to make stupid decisions sometimes,'' said Elizabeth Cárdenas, Varela's journalism teacher, who gives her students wide latitude to work online and sometimes catches them on the wrong side of the Internet tracks.
Varela has a little more than 4,000 students, and more than 840 MySpace pages belong to users who claim to be current students.
''Everyone's on it because everyone's on it,'' said Varela senior Mayling Gomez, 17.
Molina said his mother watched his MySpace page, and the service's own help page for parents urges them to monitor their children's usage, but many are either unfamiliar with the service or intimidated by the technology.
Some pages are strongly sexual or violent, and some students said they routinely receive provocative and uninvited contact from strangers. ''I don't accept any friend I don't know,'' said sophomore Stephanie Henao, 15.
Some of her friends restrict their pages to an approved list of buddies. But many are quick to welcome anyone who approaches them online -- in some circles, more online friends equals more popularity.
But it also equals more danger, according to some parents and policymakers. ''They are posting very personal information: the names of their school, the names of their friends, the stores they like to shop at, along with photos of themselves -- it's become a virtual catalog of children for child predators lurking on the Internet,'' said Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican who has sponsored a bill in Congress that would ban MySpace and similar sites in schools and libraries.
The district could easily make its system far more restrictive by reversing its strategy. Instead of blocking sites on its blacklist, it could give access only to prescreened sites on a ``white list.''
''We could say these are the educational sites and this is it, but then you really shut down search capabilities,'' said Deborah Karcher, Miami-Dade's information technology chief.
LEGITIMATE CONTENT
''They probably have to go home for that one,'' Karcher said. ``That's just one of the things where we have to say no.''
MATTHEW I. PINZUR
mpinzur@MiamiHerald.com
May 22, 2006
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/education/14637230.htm
Seeing college in the future
At fair, focus is on special ed
But the event on May 11 in the
The fair filled a need. At its height, nearly 200 teenagers and their parents crowded around the tables of 36 colleges and trade schools.
School officials say that by showcasing academic and vocational programs that provide support to young people with cognitive or other disabilities, fairs like the one on
Believing that other college fairs are ''too big and intimidating" for special-education students, Tassone worked with a committee that included parents as well as members of the Arlington High School guidance and special-education departments to create an alternative.
It started six years ago with only 15 to 20 schools and about 25 students and parents in attendance, but it soon became a much larger event.
''The regular college fair is mostly for juniors and seniors, but we invite all students in grades 9 through 12 from
''More students who need academic support are applying to college," Tassone observed, ''and more colleges now realize they need to accommodate them."
Principal Charles Skidmore agreed with Tassone, noting that ''the special-education fair makes it clear that there is a college for every student who wants to go on to postsecondary education, and it demonstrates how much support colleges are willing to give all students as they make the transition to higher education."
The college fair opened with a panel presentation that included four participants: Tish Pieper, admissions counselor for the Program for the Advancement of Learning, or PAL, at Curry College in Milton; Susan Woods, director of disability services and the transition program at Middlesex Community College; Sean Garballey, a 2003 Arlington High special-education graduate; and Sharryn Gedeon, a 2005 special-education graduate of the high school.
Pieper led off by describing PAL, which was founded in 1970 and serves students with learning disabilities at Curry. PAL is a competitive program, with about 900 applicants vying for 180 slots. Students meet with PAL instructors for two hours per week and receive credit for their first year of participation.
''With the proper supports," said Pieper, ''PAL students can achieve anything."
Woods said the two most important things students need when making the transition from high school to college are self-advocacy and current test results.
''You have to be your own advocate" and ask for services, said Woods. She also observed that because accommodations are based on documented disabilities, the results of cognitive, neuropsychological, and achievement tests submitted to the college must be no more than three years old.
Woods added that since all community colleges have open enrollment and are nonresidential, they are well suited to students whose high school records are less than stellar and those who are not ready to live away from home.
Sean Garballey attends the
''I want to make sure students know they can succeed. The key is to stay motivated," said Garballey.
Sharryn Gedeon, who is a freshman studying prelaw at Becker College in Worcester, said in an interview that special-education fairs are helpful because the college representatives know why students are there and don't ask embarrassing questions.
''I feel more confident at a special-education fair," Gedeon said. ''I don't have to hide anything."
Gedeon encouraged students to find and apply for scholarships, saying, ''They're everywhere."
''If you have a disability, don't be afraid to talk about it," Gedeon said. ''Keep your head up. Don't give up. Smile."
Carla DeFord, Globe Correspondent
http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/
2006/05/21/seeing_college_in_the_future/
Teacher putting down her pen after 69 years
After spending the equivalent of two careers in the classroom,
''She's always here by this time,'' says a student slumped at the foot of a nearby staircase, prompting an ominous twinge that perhaps the excitement of yesterday's boisterous retirement party over at First United Methodist, plus the prospect of teaching the creepy witches scene from Macbeth today for the gazillionth time, might have precipitated an unfortunate . . . well, never mind. And then a tiny, stooped figure rounds the corner and begins her sedate shuffle down the hall.
''I don't ever remember being late,'' Miss Haley says, eyes gleaming. ``I get up at 10 minutes to five, and I sign in between six-oh-five and six-oh-seven. This is what I'm locked into. This morning I did not open my baby blues until almost 6:30, so anybody who comes in tardy today has my sympathy.''
13,500 STUDENTS
Through the years, Miss Haley has taught an estimated 13,500 students, including Lawton Chiles,
''My inspiration every day comes from the satisfaction of being with these young people,'' Miss Haley says. ``You know, they give you so much back that is stimulating, exciting and fun, and that every day I will miss. That's been an integral part of my life for most of my life. I depend on it. It's not approval, . . . although sometimes I get that, and sometimes I don't. But it's a life force. It's an energy that comes from the children that nothing else can replace.''
TEACHING ABOUT LIFE
''She doesn't just teach you about English, but she teaches you about life,'' says senior Tori Harvey, whose mother once sat in this classroom, too.
''She just lets you know that you are special,'' says Robin Harris, class of 1987, who named her 11-year-old daughter Haley, because, ``when you're in high school, you don't really know which way you're going. She just made me interested in school again. She made it exciting to learn.''
Harris and her daughter were among more than 500 fans -- community leaders, co-workers, friends, students and alums, even Miss Haley's mailman -- sipping punch and nibbling on cake and homemade cookies at the frothy Queen for a Day retirement party at the church. ''She said she remembered me,'' says Jo Kelly of Brandon, class of 1940, who turns 80 in July.
``Of course, she says that to everybody, but she might. I never forgot her.''
Here are a few things to remember about Miss Haley: She was a student here herself, graduating in 1933. She has never married and lives alone, but every student she has ever taught is dearly regarded as ''my child.'' She drives to school in Earl, her 1988 Grand Marquis. She is a lifelong Anglophile and will happily show off letters from Margaret Thatcher and the Queen.
An accomplished motivational speaker, she believes that life is a series of little joys.
She believes it is a long string of choices, that each choice exacts a consequence, and if you choose to say something naughty on the video being shot for your retirement party, you must be genteel when the editor calls your bluff and lets you spill these spicy beans: ``I love being with the children. . . . That's my whole life every single day, but when I come home, then I'm ready to close the door, take off my clothes and run naked through the house.''
LAST DAY OF TEACHING
Well, Krista cannot, but when Miss Haley leaves this classroom for the last time, she is not taking everything she might need, either, just that pink plush bear over in the corner, the lady-writers umbrella that hangs over her speaker's stand and her British flag. And that will be that. Or maybe not.
''I'm a great compensator, and I will find something else to do,'' Miss Haley says. ``I laughingly say I have had three job offers, so I may go to work.''
In the meantime, though, ``All right, sweethearts. Anybody have a question? Put the books up for me, boys. That's very kind. You're very thoughtful. OK, dears. Bye, sweetheart. Bye, little one. Bye, darling. Aren't they adorable?
``Bye.''
MARGARIA FICHTNER
mfichtner@MiamiHerald.com
May. 16, 2006
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/education/14587725.htm
Can Computers Help Schools?
I'm not really a technophobe. Call me a technoskeptic, which doesn't sound so wimpy.
Either tendency is a problem for an education reporter. School districts have embraced the computer age with the fervor of a mother welcoming a new baby. I don't want to seem like a wet blanket by pointing out there isn't much data yet showing these new machines and software are helping more kids learn.
But I can't help it. My focus has always been on what is going on in the classroom, rather than the principal's office or the school board meeting room or the exhibition floors of all those education conferences that look like software fairs. In the classes I visit, plenty of students are working on computers. I am happy they are mastering the essential tools of modern life. But I wish there were more evidence that those hours tapping keyboards are making them better at reading, writing and math.
I used to get considerable pleasure from debunking school computer miracle stories. One of my proudest moments in the 1990s was a story about a
Yet so many smart educators are putting so much time and effort into making these devices do for schools what they have done for business (including mine -- notice this is an online column) that I have decided to grow up and try to accentuate the positive. My timing is good, because Education Week has just produced another one of its annual Technology Counts progress reports, and it is full of hopeful information.
I am on the board of Editorial Projects in Education, the non-profit that owns Education Week. My fellow board members, not to mention the Edweek staff, are probably astonished that I actually read the new report: "The Information Edge: Using Data to Accelerate Achievement." I am glad I did.
First, the good news: I think the greatest potential for raising achievement through computers can be found in two new approaches to school information -- quick, consistent and regular reports to teachers on how their students are doing on tests they don't control, and student identifier systems that allow educators to follow closely the progress of each child no matter how many times he or she switches teachers or schools. Edweek says schools are making progress on both counts.
Edweek Senior Writer David J. Hoff describes a system in
(Okay, that is a big jump, and may reflect factors unrelated to the new machines and software, but it is a hopeful sign.)
As for student identifiers, Hoff says in 1999 just eight states had an identification number for every student. Now, according to a survey by the Editorial Projects in
Now we move to the bad news, with which we skeptics are more comfortable. The same survey found that three states don't match the identifiers with performance on state tests, six states plus the District don't use them to track whether students complete high school and 27 states plus the District don't link the identifiers to high school transcripts.
Last year, Hoff notes, all 50 governors agreed to standardize the way they calculate high school graduation rates and to measure the percentage of students who earned a diploma based on the number of students who entered ninth grade four years earlier. Hoff says this won't be possible if states don't improve their data systems, most of which are not set up at the moment to determine which ninth graders stay at their schools, which transfer and graduate elsewhere and which stop going to school.
A national comparative survey of all the states showed much room for progress. Edweek graded states based on their success at providing students access to computers and the Internet, training teachers and administrators, and creating policies that promote innovative use of computers. The top two states were
At the bottom of the class were
I remain much more interested in what the new technology is doing in the classroom than I am in state-level assessments, such as this one. And I am not going to place any large wagers on the new computers being able to make up for the low expectations, short school days and apathy that plague our worst schools.
But there is something interesting going on with all these new devices and assessment techniques, and the inventors who seem to be about the same ages as my children. I wish them well, and will try not to let healthy skepticism degenerate into ignorance.
Washington
May 16, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/
2006/05/16/AR2006051600586.html?nav=rss_technology
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