Hey! This site is supposed to be dead!
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NCLB Rule Changes for Special Education In response to federal rule changes in the No Child Left Behind law for special education students, the National Education Association has posted the brief, What testing is allowed under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA/NCLB) for students with disabilities? Gephardt on Special Ed Along those lines, Democratic presidential hopeful Dick Gephardt "is calling for new spending on special education, easing rules allowing people with disabilities to get jobs and using federal contracts to favor businesses that hire such workers." In Gephardt Seeks Special Ed Spending Boost, Gephardt is quoted as saying, "At a minimum, the federal government should not make it harder for people with disabilities to accept a job." Jay Mathews Columns The Washington Post's Jay Mathews summarizes the apparent positions of 2004 presidential candidates in The Best Education President? In Finding Truth in Teacher Qualifications, Mathews writes about some questionable reporting practices by the states in reporting teacher qualifications to the federal government. Schools With Diverse Populations at Disadvantage Under NCLB Sam Dillon writes in The New York Times about one of the inequities of No Child Left Behind requirements that apparently penalize schools that serve diverse populations of students. Dillon reports in Diverse Schools More Likely to Be Labeled as Failing, Study Says about a study on California schools that were designated as "needing improvement" . It "found that many of the 3,000 schools were designated not because tests had shown their overall achievement levels to be faltering, but because a single student group &emdash; disabled learners or Asian students, for example &emdash; had fallen short of a target. Another New York Times column by Ford Fessenden, How to Measure Student Proficiency, tells of two studies that show widely "divergent standards" in testing by different states. Fessenden writes that the studies show, "Across the country, there is no agreement on how much students need to know to be considered proficient."
The Astronomy Picture of the Day for last Sunday, Trifid Pillars & Jets, was a real dandy. Of course, I'm partial to photos of nebulae. Anyway, it just wouldn't be an Educators' News posting with making mention of the Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive. The Required End of the Year Column Not Really an End of the Year Column is the lastest View from the Classroom column. Devotion for December 28, 2003 - January 3, 2004 Zach Wood's weekly devotional for this week is Are We Dependent or Independent? Zach also maintains an archive of previous devotionals. Send Feedback to |
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Will Christmas Vacation Break the Flu Cycle? An Associated Press posting from Indianapolis, In, caught my eye this morning. Will holiday break slow flu in schools wonders if "family gatherings, shopping malls," etc. won't defeat the often positive effect of long school holidays in breaking epidemics. AP writer Ken Kusmer notes that federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have not done any studies to see if there is a decline in flu cases after school holidays. Possible Ban on Head Scarves in French Public Schools Los Angeles Times staff writer Sebastian Rotella tells in Chirac Proposes Ban on Head Scarves of a law proposed by French President Jacques Chirac that would "ban Muslim head scarves, Jewish skullcaps and large crucifixes in public schools." According to Rotella, Chirac hopes to "reassert the separation of religion and state to defend tolerance, women's rights and national values," and to prevent "lawlessness, Islamic extremism and resentment of the state." Split Grade Classrooms Still Exist The Washington Post's Linda Perlstein writes of Linda Waters's mixed fourth and fifth grade classroom in Mixed-Grade Classes a Handful. If you've ever taught a split grade or multi-level class, you'll probably find this article and enjoyable read. Science@NASA Dr. Tony Phillips has been busy of late with three Science@NASA postings suitable for classroom use.
A Dyslexic Rhodes Scholar Rhodes scholar overcomes learning problems is an inspiring column for those who have or have children with disabilities. AP writer Nancy Rabinowitz tells of Heather Long's struggle to overcome dyslexia and attention deficit disorder in path to becoming a Rhodes scholar. Software
Dan Benjamin's Hiveware Enkoder
has allowed me to return to posting an email address on
columns and web pages. Enkoder puts your email address into
a JavaScript to hide it from robots seeking online email
addresses to sell to spammers. I'd had to remove my email
address from all of the pages on this site because of an
avalanche of spam and put them onto my Contact
page in coded form. Dan's online
JavaScript maker allows me to post a real address at the
bottom of these pages. Isn't this site closed? It is, and I'm supposed to be retired from teaching by now. But someone at my school system woke up, decided one teacher trying to teach 29 disabled kids to read (and 40+ overall) wasn't too bright, and advertised for another teacher. They even popped for a couple of part-time assistants to avoid a denial of services lawsuit. ("Denial of services" is one of those catch phrases in special education that strike absolute terror in hearts of administrators and occasionally move them to positive action.) They're even saying nice things to me, such as, "I hope you don't retire this year." Actually, it's fun to pop something up on this page every now and then just to see what happens. It also keeps the page current with the search engines in case I ever suffer a severe head injury and decide to resume regular publication of the site:-). File Under "Hey! I Already Knew That!" The Washington Post today has a column titled Critics Say Education Dept. Is Favoring Political Right. Post staff writer Michael Dobbs notes that conservatives have taken over the Education Department and "the amount of money steered toward conservative educational groups by the Bush administration far exceeds the practices of the past." He quotes Senator Edward Kennedy as saying, "The People for the American Way report "exposes a stealth campaign by the administration to reward groups that support its private-school voucher agenda at the expense of strengthening public schools." If you were a frequent reader of EdNews (when it was in regular publication), you already knew that I believe No Child Left Behind was simply a sham by George W. to appear to be addressing the question of quality education, while actually paving the way for vouchers for his rich supporters (Do vouchers ever pay enough so truly needy kids tuition is fully paid?). Small School Districts The New York Times's Sam Dillon writes "A small but growing number of school systems around the country are beginning to resist the demands of President Bush's signature education law, saying its efforts to raise student achievement are too costly and too cumbersome" in Some School Districts Challenge Bush's Signature Education Law. Dillon's column tells of on Pennsylvania school district suing the state over its implementation of NCLB, of others refusing federal funds due to what they see as unfunded NCLB requirements, and even conservative legislators opposing the law. School Nurses Needed Associated Press education writer Ben Feller has an interesting column about the rising challenges facing school health workers and nurses. In Nursing along? School health workers face rising demands, Feller describes all the stuff we teachers see every day and notes the increasing demands upon school health care givers. While Feller writes, "About three out of four schools have a full-time or part-time nurse, often someone who juggles health care, teaching and training responsibilities in more than one building," that person may only be at the school one day per week. Often, school secretaries find themselves surrogate nurses (doctors, counselors, etc.) when "the nurse" is gone. While I often have a bit of fun with my school system here on EdNews and in various columns, the good old Metropolitan School District of Backwash, Indiana, has always had a full-time RN employed. During the last week of school before Christmas vacation, I had reason again to appreciate our school nurse...and my teaching assistant, who is a former EMT. One of my kids sitting right in front of me did a reverse swan dive out of his chair onto his head! It turned out to be an apparent seizure due to a problem with his medications. But in times like that, those of us with minimal medical training surely appreciate having folks around who know what they're doing. Anyway, it must have been a popular column. Yahoo has it listed as appearing in dozens of newspapers! I do hope a lot of taxpayers read it and begin to think about funding for school health care professionals. Typing Software An article from The Arizona Republic, Typing in grade school, has gotten me on a bit of a jag. The column is a good one and points out that keyboarding skills are still not taught, emphasized, or tested as they should be. Republic reporter Anne Ryman points out , "Children use e-mail, browse the Internet for classroom research and play computer games, which makes it vital to learn proper hand placement on the keyboard. Yet despite the importance, not many elementary schools offer classes devoted to learning keyboarding skills." Beyond just a lack of keyboarding instruction, little to no attention is given to proper posture or seating to prevent repetitive stress syndrome. While my students don't spend enough time at school on their laptops to cause injury (probably!), they also all have a computer at home. Teaching proper posture and seating at the keyboard needs to become a regular part of computer instruction. While I can't offer much help on RSS other recommending some common sense in the amount of computer use and making sure the kids are seated appropriately, I can recommend a couple of software options we've used for keyboarding. PAWS in Typing Town is one I just stumbled into. Our school had a site license to the old floppy disk version. I find that this program is easy enough that I can use it with our younger kids. Note that the link above is to the SRA site, as a general web search usually only reveals the newer, CD version that doesn't network as well! Unfortunately, PAWS doesn't take most kids to fluent keyboarding all by itself. When we had some grant money a couple of years ago, I looked long and hard for an inexpensive intermediate typing program. I ended up getting a great deal on All the Right Type 3.0. Our elementary computer teacher has adopted it for our intermediate kids, as has one of our high school business teachers! ATRT 3.0 begins with an excellent lesson on seating, posture, proper height of keyboard, hand position and so on that could go a long way towards preventing repetitive stress injuries. What the "Other Side" Is Saying While poking around the web looking for good articles on computer posture and such, I ran into a links page of articles against the use of computers in schools. While Educators' News has always been an education page that views the use of computers in the classroom as a possible positive tool, it's always good to hear what detractors are saying. We've all probably seen way too much time and money wasted in the name of technology in schools. I guess it's also our job to make sure it's done right! We're Outa Here! Educators' News is no longer an active site. It was regularly published from April 18, 2001, through April 18, 2003. Content from the site (archives and features) will remain available via the current URLs through February 29, 2004. For those seeking current education news, let me recommend the following links:
For Macintosh specific news, including some education links, let me suggest:
My sincere thanks go out to the regular readers and contributors to this site for their support over the last two years. Please stay in touch. I'm not dying, just closing this part of the site:-). Ads shown on this site do not represent an endorsement or warranty of any kind of products or companies shown. Since all of my email indicates this is basically a "guy site," and since we're really officially closed, why not have a bit of fun with this. Remember, guys, Valentines Day is just around the corner. Why not start shopping early, rather than on the way home from work on February 14!
Ads shown on this site do not represent an endorsement or warranty of any kind of products or companies shown. Ads shown on archive pages may not represent the ads displayed in the original posting on Educators' News. |
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