Are teachers appreciated by their students?

I came across a really cool education website called TeAch-nology.com which provides free, easy-to-use resources for teachers dedicated to improving the education of our students. The site gives free access to more than 20,000 lesson plans, 6,700 free printable worksheets, pre-formatted rubrics, printable generators, teaching tips and themes, games, webquests, downloads, and access to more than 257,000 reviewed sites.

Members get access to lesson plans, background sites, web quests, teacher workbooks, rubrics, themes, web tools, tutorials, teaching ideas, worksheets, downloads, and games that we have available. Feel free to use and distribute these worksheets for educational purposes, so long as the copyright and footer information are left intact.

They also have a weekly Teacher Poll. One question and the results is listed below.

TeAch-nology.com's Teacher Poll of the Week
Teachers: Do you feel appreciated by your students?
Yes
60.0%
No
40.0%
Total Votes: 435

I find it pretty interesting that only 60 percent of the 435 teachers believed they are appreciated by their students. Perhaps it is because so many of our students today have a bad attitude about the classroom. As a board member of several educational charities like Children of the City, for example, it seems clear that once an outside group gets involved in a child’s life, there is a much greater appreciation for school, education and teachers as well.

Our dedicated team includes many certified professionals, along with 50 highly committed and trained volunteers who visit close to one thousand children every single month Kaylen: Children of the City Rocks!

One little girl named Kaylen was very shy when she first came to Children of the City. Now she is getting close to people because of the organization’s Create Success program. Failing grades had depleted her confidence and her social skills were suffering so she had started to isolate herself from her friends and classmates.

Create Success is an after school and summertime program that works to help a student’s academic success with intense tutoring and help with their daily homework. We have already seen dramatic increases in student’s reading and math levels, healthy study habits, communications, improved peer relationships, and more. Click here to learn more about this program.

When Kaylen entered Create Success, she was math phobic. “We do a lot of math. I was just so-so,” she said as she handed over a folder full of 90+ grades.

She has now become an expert at word problems thanks to the strategies she learned from her tutor, Melissa.

Her comments now -- “Children of the City Rocks!”

Kaylen is just one of the many kids who are being helped by this outreach program. If you want to learn more about it please visit my website Rocco Basile.org.

Kids at Children of the City Excel

As a Board member of Children of the City, I often come across the interesting stories of those kids who are benefiting the most from our programs. Each child has his or her own unique story, that in some cases, brings tears to the eyes.

Here's one for example ... Jesenia was attacked by a savage pit-bull and left with scars. She also suffered from a brain hemorrhage, which left the doctors wanting to experiment. Three surgeries later, this little Hispanic girl had face reconstruction, and walked with her head down looking at the ground, afraid to look people in the eye because she was ahsamed of her scars.

When Mary, one of our Children of the City counselors began working with Jesenia and her family, she found out that her mother did not speak English -- so she accompanied them to the hospital and interpreted with the doctors and surgeons, then continued to work with the family and help them through the recovery process.

Jesenia also attended the Children of the City girl's mentoring group meetings, and today she walks with her head held high.

The charity has a number of programs, including educational as well as support programs like the one Jesenia attended. One program was started after Tuesday, 9/11 when Children of the City was one of the first programs to reach out to children who lost family members and loved ones, traumatized by visually seeing the attacks. The program was named, Heal New York, and we continue to counsel with these children and their families to this day. More than 600 children and youth have been served to-date through Heal New York, whereby counseling sessions have been provided in the homes monthly.

Children of the City expanded its Heal New York counseling program to a broader populace of children due to the large amount of pre-existing trauma and prevailing mental health challenges.

To learn more about educational programs like this please visit my Rocco Basile charity website.

Women and Bachelor's Degrees

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 33 percent of young women aged 25 to 29 had a bachelor’s degree or more education in 2007, compared with 26 percent of their male counterparts. A report called the Educational Attainment in the United States: 2007 showed that among adults 25 and older, men remain slightly more likely than women to hold a bachelor’s degree (30 percent compared with 28 percent). As the percentage for women rose between 2006 and 2007 (from 27 percent), for men, it remained statistically unchanged.

These tables also showed that more education continues to pay off in a big way in that adults with advanced degrees typically earn four times more than those with less than a high school diploma. Also noted is that workers 18 plus who have either master’s, professional or doctoral degrees earned an average of $82,320 in 2006, while those with less than a high school diploma earned $20,873.

The report also shows that in 2007, 86 percent of all adults 25 and older reported they had completed at least high school and 29 percent at least a bachelor's degree.

More than half of Asians 25 and older had a bachelor’s degree or more (52 percent), compared with 32 percent of non-Hispanic whites, 19 percent of blacks and 13 percent of Hispanics.
The proportion of the foreign-born population with a bachelor’s degree or more was 28 percent, compared with 29 percent of the native population. However, the proportion of naturalized citizens with a college degree was 34 percent.

Workers 18 and older with a bachelor’s degree earned an average of $56,788 in 2006, while those with a high school diploma earned $31,071.

Among those whose highest level of education was a high school diploma or equivalent, non-Hispanic white workers had the highest average earnings ($32,931), followed by Asians ($29,426) and blacks ($26,268). Average earnings of Hispanic workers in the same group ($27,508) were not statistically different from those of Asian or black workers.

Among workers with advanced degrees, Asians ($88,408) and non-Hispanic whites ($83,785) had higher average earnings than Hispanics ($70,432) and blacks ($64,834).

Feel free to access my educational resource site known as www.roccobasile.org where I post information about charities such as Children of the City in Sunset Park near Brooklyn, New York. This organization has a dedicated team that includes many professionals, along with highly committed and trained volunteers who visit more than one thousand children every month.

During the year Children of the City maintains current information on over 500 families in the community representing approximately 2,000 children, using the information as a channel to serve them effectively via earning their trust and giving them the affirmation, encouragement and resoures they need.

SOURCE: Data is from the 2007 Current Population Survey’s Annual Social and Economic Supplement, which is conducted in February, March and April at about 100,000 addresses nationwide.

News Article on David Tyree and Children and the City

The April 3 edition of the local Home Reporter and Sunset News had a great article about the recent Children of the City gala with photos of Super Bowl XLII hero David Tyree who received the charity's Children's Champion Award at the benefit. Again the event was to erasie awareness of the educational needs and social challenges of underprivileged children in the Sunset Park community.

One quote from the organization's Co-founder and President Joyce Mattera reminds us, "With a 48 percent dropout rate in the inner city and one out of four living in abject poverty, we have to act now to ensure the viability of our next generation."

Top model, Selita Ebanks presented New York Giants Super Bowl XLII hero, David Tyree, with the Children’s Champion Award at the Children of the City Benefit hosted by Sopranos and Tonight Show celebrity, Steve Schirripa, along with New Jersey Net superstar, Richard Jefferson.

David Tyree was also photographed for the article at the Sunset Park outreach center reading with some of the children. He has done so much
for the organization since he started participating three years ago.

In fact, he was also interviewed last Saturday night on Access Hollywood, and he talked about how glad he was about working with our organization.

The programs have evolved to include advocacy, afterschool, and summer programs, counseling, legal guardianship, parenting support and more. If you want to read more about Children of the City drop by my website at http://www.rocco.basile.org/. Or you could also go to http://www.childrenofthecity.org/ or call 1-718-222-5819.

High School Students Take Advanced Courses

The good news is that a report on the state of United States education indicates that high school students are taking more advanced coursework -- especially in mathematics, science, social studies, the arts, and foreign languages. This is according to The Condition of Education 2007 report released by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a Congressionally mandated report that provides an annual statistical portrait of education in the U.S.

There are 48 indicators in this report covering all aspects of education, from student achievement to school environment and from early childhood through post secondary education.

Enrollment in U.S. public schools is becoming more and more diverse, and more individuals are enrolling in post secondary education. What's more, today there are more bachelor’s degrees being awarded than in the past.

As a Board member of the Joe DeMaggio Committee, which helps raise funds for my alma mater, Xaverian High School in New York City, it is my belief that lack of education is the root of most of the problems that we have in this country. This group raises money to help financially challenged families give their children a good education. My website RoccoBasile.org has an entire page on it.

The bad news is that many students in America cannot afford a quality education. And just as an example, approximately 10 percent of the Xaverian enrollment includes students that have learning difficulties. But the good news is, as an example, out of the Class of 2005, 25 percent ended up going to to Ivy League schools.

If you are interested in learning more about the state of education in our country, here is a place to start, showing indicators that were compiled from the 2003–2007 editions of The Condition of Education that I mentioned earlier. It lists things including: Student Attitudes and Aspirations; Student Effort; Elementary/Secondary Persistence and Progress; Transition to College, and much more. Go to http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/list/index.asp

Eight and 12th Graders Show Improvements

In an article today (04/05/08) in the Wall Street Journal, Robert Tomsho did a piece about the fact that the recent news on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results, which is a national achievement test showing that our country's eighth- and 12th-graders are making some gains in their writing skills. The bad news is that the proportion performing at the highest levels has barely budged. The NAEP tests are given periodically to a nationwide sampling of students in a variety of subjects and are overseen by the Department of Education.

This all started because educators and business leaders finally realized that that many recent year public-school graduates don't have the writing skills needed to succeed in college, let alone in jobs.

On a zero-to-300 point scale, 12th-graders had an average score of 153 points on the NAEP writing test, which is up from 148 points in 2002. The average score for eighth-graders rose to 156 points, up 153 points. The NAEP officials said both scores are significant.

Meanwhile, the proportion of 12th-graders with at least a basic grasp of writing increased to 82 percent from 74 percent; among eighth-graders, 88 percent had a score in the basic range or better, up from 85 percent.

The proportion of high-school seniors earning scores in the proficient range was 24 percent - high-school seniors earned scores that were in the proficient range, and that number was unchanged from 2002. About 33 percent of eighth-graders were deemed proficient, up just two percentage points from 2002. Now many school districts emphasize writing across their curriculums, with added focus to narrative skills in math and science classes and languages, since 2005 when a writing section was added to the SAT college-entrance test, and administered by the nonprofit College Board.

Females outscored males by 18 points or more. White students still outscored African-American and Hispanic students by an average of 20 points or more. This isn't all too surprising -- our Children of the City program in Sunset Park near Brooklyn, New York, is focusing on assisting Hispanic children.

One very successful case study is about a little girl named Liana.
Before her dad found Children of the City his daughter hated school and was doing poorly and falling behind her classmates because she was having trouble reading. At first she was reluctant to join, but within a few weeks Liana began to love learning. Her mid-year progress reports show a steady progression in her reading, phonics and math scores. Liana is no longer bringing home failing grades and now has an overall 80 average.

You can research more facts and statistics on trends in education on my Rocco Basile website provides many facts and statistics on this program.

New Educational Pilot Program for Under Performing Schools

Today U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced she is going to take steps to ensure that all states use the same formula to calculate how many students graduate from high school on time, and how many drop out. Apparently the data wills be made public so thatPublish Post people can compare how students of every race, background, and income level are performing nationwide.

In another recent educational trend in the news, a March press release talks about the new NCLB Differentiated Accountability Pilot program on the U.S. Department of Education website. This is a pilot program to help states differentiate between under performing schools that are in need of dramatic interventions, and part of fulfilling the "No Child Left Behind" goals.

The press release outlines a speech made by U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings who said, "Thanks to No Child Left Behind, we have collected a wealth of information about where schools are falling short, where students' needs are not being met, and where more rigor is needed. We've built an appetite for change, and we've done a good job of framing the problem. The next step is to use this knowledge to customize our efforts to improve."

There is also a background Fact Sheet that provides the basics on Spellings' Building On Results Blueprint -- a blueprint for strengthening the "No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)" designed to provide additional resources and flexibility to our schools and educators to help achieve NCLB’s goal of every student reading and doing math at or above grade level by 2014. The Department called for differentiated accountability as part of this blueprint - to allow states to distinguish between those schools in improvement that are just missing the mark and those that need significant reform.

Once the states had developed the framework to capture the student skills each year, as required by law, they combined those stats to demonstrate progress over time. This method proved viable, and then all eligible states were invited to adopt the more sophisticated measurement system. Specifically states were helped in developing better ways to measure progress for students with disabilities and limited English skills

Damatic action is needed to help states improve underperforming schools, and Spellings believes this new "differentiated accountability" program will help -- then 10 states will be invited to create more nuanced ways of distinguishing between schools in need of dramatic intervention, and those that are closer to meeting goals. Spellings feels confident that this process will help educators nationwide learn more about helping the children acquire grade-level knowledge.

I am all for this kind of intervention. My website http://www.roccobasile.org/ talks about all my charities focusing on education and assisting kids in need, including Children of the City and Xaverian, where I went to school. Aside from working with my family at the Basile Builders Group, I spend time working on organizing The Joe DiMaggio Award Gala, a major fundraiser for Xaverian.

The funds raised at our last gala in January honoring Tiki Barber will go towards programs for Xaverian students with learning disabilities, and young men from disadvantaged backgrounds who are in financial need. If it were not for the generosity of alumni, parents and friends, many of these students would not be able to afford a quality, college-preparatory education.