Helping Kids Go Green

A cool website (Greenraising.com) was started by a group of parents who had observed how challenging it is for parents' associations to raise the funds necessary for their kids to get an excellent elementary education. These parents also had noted that their kids were coming home from school frustrated about not being able to actively participate in having an effect on what they had learned about pollution, global warming, and poor living conditions among some people around the world. The website was developed to help solve both problems.

Greenraising raises money for schools, and also gives kids an opportunity to learn that their actions can help make changes in the world. For anyone who is interested in other educational trends, such as how one charity, Children of the City is helping kids please check out the information on my own website at http://www.roccobasile.com/

Schools and non-profits like http://www.childrenofthecity.org/ can fill out an online application and in one to seven business days they will receive 25 percent of the sales from Web drives or 40 percent of sales from catalog drives directed to buyers who name their group as the beneficiary.

Things like recycled gift wrap paper, cleaning supplies, free-trade chocolate, even recycled rulers made out of old paper money that has been taken out of circulation by the government are available on the website.

Student SAT Scores are Lowest in Decade

News just out today about our country's high-school students and their poor performance on SAT college-entrance exams. There is a bigger gap now between minority groups (who score lower) and the overall population. This raises the question, which I have been covering for the last year in my website http://www.roccobasile.net/, about the quality of education in the U.S. This news is really sad.

Apparently the average scores for the class of 2008 were as follows:
502 for the critical-reading section;
515 for mathematics; and
494 for writing.
Note: Each section judged on a 200 to 800 point scale.

These scores match the averages last year in 2007. What this means is that the combined scores remain at the lowest level this current decade. Reading scores over the past two years were the lowest since 1994, while math represented the worst since 2001.

The really bad news is that African-American students only received an average critical reading score of 430, which is 72 points below the general population and also three points beneath the 2007 level.

what does all this mean? The wide variations among different groups of students taking the SAT tests has now fueled yet another debate on the effectiveness of our system's test-preparation courses aiming to improve the performance and SAT scores.

According to the College Board, a New York-based nonprofit that oversees the SAT test, says the stalled scores stem from a larger and more diverse group of students taking the test.

In total, more than 1.5 million students from the high-school class of 2008 took the SATs. That is two percent more than in 2007 and eight percent more than five years ago. Minority SAT takers comprise 40 percent of test takers, up from one third in the last 10 years.

--Rocco Basile

Middle School Students

About 96 percent of middle school students - that bridge between gradeschool and highschools comprised of grades 7 8 and 9 - believe that it is very important or somewhat important to make good grades. An awkward age, these students are between childhood and adolescence, experiencing the physical, emotional and cognitive changes associated with this stage of human development. Nine in ten (90%) said they felt prepared and expected to succeed.

I remember this age well, because it was before my time as a student at Xaverian High School in
New York. You can find more information on my interests in
educational trends at http://www.roccobasile.net/, where I list many aspects of my charity work via supporting the school's Joe DiMaggio Award Gala where we raise funds for the school. Xaverian includes one of New York City's only International Baccalaureate Programs. Xaverian attracts about 1,400 students annually, and in addition to its reputation for academic excellence, the school is renowned for graduating young men of strong moral character .

According to the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), Lumina Foundation for Education, Phi Delta Kappa International (PDK) and their KnowHow2Go campaign, commissioned Harris Interactive last March 2007 to conduct a poll called "Voice From the Middle." They polled 1814 seventh and eighth graders who shared their perspectives about current school experiences and expectations for high school. (Source: http://www.pdkintl.org/ms_poll/ms_poll.htm)

The middle school survey also found the following:
• 93 percent of students say there is “no chance” that they will drop out of high school and not graduate. (This is compared to the nearly 500,000 students who drop out annually as estimated by the NCES and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)
• 83 percent of students know little or nothing about the classes they need to take to graduate from high school.
• About 32 percent say that they have “quite a bit” or “a great deal” of information about the classes they need in preparation for college.

Cash to Kids for Passing AP Subject Tests Flunked

In the news today (New York Post) it seems a very controversial initiative paying high-school students for passing Advanced Placement (AP) tests has apparently failed. The new program, which was targeting black and Hispanic students, didn't spur kids to make the grade, according to the Council of Urban Professionals, the organization who distributes the funds.

Here's how it was supposed to work -- 25 low-income city public schools and six parochial schools were offered private money on a sliding scale - from $500 to $1,000 - if they passed their five-point AP subject tests by scoring between three and five.

The interesting thing is that right here in New York, we have a program called Children of the City that is non-profit, and seems to be working really well to help students improve their grades. As I am on their Board, I support this charity wholeheartedly on my own educational website, http://www.roccobasile.org/.

Here is one student's success. David began volunteering in the programs at Children of the City when he was a teenager. Then he began writing and performing Rap music with values-based lyrics that reiterated the principles that he had learned when he attended the non-profit's Future Safe Program. David now provides tech support for the traders at Goldman Sachs, and he credits Children of the City with helping him learn the principles for success that helped him to rise above the effects of poverty.

The Advanced Placement test program seemed to have a good mission, as it was meant to prepare more kids for college and give them some money to spend in preparation. But the number of students passing their AP tests in the 31 schools actually dipped to 1,476 this year - down five from 2007, when there was not a cash offer. So it actually backfired! The "pass" rate fell from 35 percent in 2007 to 32 percent this year.

Apparently people behind this privately funded initiative said they saw many positive results on such as an 8 percent increase in the number of AP tests taken in total, plus a 19 percent increase in students scoring at top point levels. And in fact, the passing rates increased by more than 50 percent at nine of the 31 schools.

More than 1,100 students are collecting about $1 million. Meanwhile, our Children of the City kids are collecting much more than than.

-- Rocco Basile

Back to School Educational Issues Include TIME

This year, children will face a number of issues and challenges at school and in the classroom including bullying, violence, and discrimination as well as the fact that there are some disadvantaged schools and classrooms without enough books or desks. What's more, many children themselves are facing individual challenges such as health problems, depression, obesity, dyslexia, disabilities, and other social issues.

Parents and teachers alike know that education is more than just classrooms and books. That we know, and I often post articles on this topic in my own educational website known as RoccoBasile.org. But what is finally encouraging, is that the government is finally proposing new bills to help deflect problems like this and increase a student's chances to learn.

For instance, Senator Kennedy recently (8/1/08) introduced the Time for Innovation Matters in Education (TIME) Act, which appears to be an important next step for the expanded learning time movement.

Co-sponsored by Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, it is intended to provide federal funding that supports states expanding their school days in pilot schools. This reform initiative, modeled after the Massachusetts Expanded Learning Time Initiative, would enable low-performing, high-poverty schools to implement a longer school days or school years, by 2010. If enacted, the TIME Act allocates $350 million next year and up to $500 million in the year 2014.

Senator Kennedy emphasizes the need to help American schools to remain competitive, and also a need to ensure that each student gets a 21st century education. He and his co-sponsors believe in expanded learning time as a promising new reform strategy for American schools.

Back to School Educational Trends

It appears as if today’s trends in education include the fact that everything is getting earlier! One online article claims that parents are now taking their three-year-olds to tutoring programs, and using flashcards and homework. Kindergartners are now doing the work that first-graders used to do with letters and numbers, and middle school kids are enrolling in algebra courses a year or two earlier than ever before. Finally, high school students are signing up for prep classes for the SAT college entrance exam.

They say these trends are being driven by several factors as follows:
1) Parents are fearful that children will fall behind if not pushed almost from birth
2) There is frustration with schools that have failed to boost achievement for disadvantaged students or challenge the middle and top tiers sufficiently
3) There is competition for college entrance
4) There’s an overall sense that America is losing ground in the global marketplace.

This last point has been fueled by futurists like James Canton in his book entitled "The Extreme Future" where he said about the top ten trends that will shape the future of America – “Quality public education, in crisis today, will either propel or crash the future aspirations of the American workforce … America’s workforce must be transformed, made more globally competitive, with higher education, science, and innovation skills necessary to ensure future prosperity.”

Sherry Cleary, assistant professor of education at Pitt and director of the University Child Development Center said, “Encouraging students to challenge themselves and expand their horizons is always a good thing, she said. "But if they're being pushed to get a head start on college credits mainly so that they can finish early and go to graduate school early and get a job early, one has to wonder, what's the rush?"

In another opinion, Psychologist David Elkind published his landmark book called, "The Hurried Child" back in 1981. “The pressure to grow up fast, to achieve early in the very great in middle-class America. There is no room today for the ‘late bloomer’... Children have to achieve success early or they are regarded as losers," he said.

This book is about to be reissued, and Dr. Elkind is now saying, the phenomenon is even more prevalent than it was a quarter-century ago.

It is one thing to offering college electives to high school teens, but the younger the child, the more controversial it is. Most child development experts agree that young children learn best in rich play environments that stimulate the senses in age-appropriate ways.

I have seen this time and time again at Children of the City, where programs help children and their mentors and families engage in activities, support for homework assistance, and community programs that help entire families.

Other learning programs like Junior Kumon Math and Reading Centers is now offering academic tutoring for children as young as two, and the Sylvan Learning Centers and Stanley Kaplan now have materials for kindergartners. Junior Kumon claims to have 28,000 children enrolled the United States, in less than two years since they entered the U.S. marketplace.

Trends indicate that introducing the concepts of math and science in middle school used to be called “acceleration” while now it is an “expectation” in the state standards. Once reason is the Trends in International Math and Science Studies survey of 1995 which showed that American students were ahead in fourth-grade math but dropped to the bottom in the 12th grade.

The Los Angeles Unified School District made passing algebra a graduation requirement. 48,000 ninth-graders took the course in 2004, and 44 percent of them failed. Many went on to repeat the course several times and kept on failing until they gave up and sadly, they dropped out.

On the other hand, a program used in the Pittsburgh Public School districts for the middle school curriculum called Connected Math was designed to introduce math concepts in a way that students could apply to real life. It has become as controversial as the reading wars and is now known as the math wars. Students who take the course for the first time in ninth grade will have to score at or above grade level. Those who don't will have to take an additional tutorial class each day.

The fact is that today, teens are killing themselves and each other at triple the rate they were twenty years ago; teen pregnancy rates in the United States are the highest for any Western nation; fourth-grade girls are dieting in record numbers; and twenty percent of youngsters are "flunking" kindergarten. Finally millions of children are medicated daily to make them more "educable" and "manageable" in school and at home.

So in reality, I believe that the answer may in fact lie in what is going on at home as well as what we deem necessary to push youngsters at school academically. If we had more programs nationwide to support students as they grow up, perhaps the results would speak for themselves just like the results speak for students who have been through the Children of the City programs. Community support has helped our community in Brooklyn New York. These programs are proven, and something the rest of the nation could learn from... Visit http://www.childrenofthecity.org/ to learn more.

-- Rocco Basile

Educational Trends: Learning Games for Kids

Today I noticed a very interesting news announcement about a company called LeapFrog Enterprises, Inc. who just released two new educational game titles based on Lucasfilm's upcoming Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

These are learning games, and apparently they are so successful that the company also plans to develop two additional Star Wars learning games for 2009. Each game connects to what is called the LeapFrog(R) LearningPath, which is a free online tool that shows parents what their child is learning.

LeapFrog developed these educational games, based on the very popular Lucasfilm storylines and characters, for its two new gaming platforms:

1) The Leapster2 Learning Game System, for kids from four to eight,
2) TheDidj Custom Gaming System, for children from six to ten years old.

Both games are available at http://www.leapfrog.com/gaming and at major retailers. The suggested retail price for the Leapster2 game is $24.99, and for the Didj title, $29.99.

In a recent survey of more than 1,000 parents by ConsumerQuest for LeapFrog, 66 percent of the parents of three-to 11-year-old children felt playing with educational video games gives their child an educational advantage.

I know from my experience with my educational charity work, which can be seen at http://www.roccobasile.org/, that parents are concerned about how their kids learn. At Children of the City, for example, there is one program known as Create Success, that is fast becoming a model sought after by other organizations. A high priority is placed on student’s academic success with intense tutoring and daily personal homework help. This connection with the student allows us the open door to provide them with counseling, advocacy within the social systems (school and court), age-appropriate group and individual mentoring, family mediation, creative and performing arts, as well as sports.
Children of the City goals are:
To close the academic skills gap;
To displace the poverty mentality;
To provide the support and resources needed to help each child and youth complete their education and enter the workplace;

Create Success evaluates student performance using NYC Department of Education assessment tools. Our evaluation measures showed that over the past three years:
95 percent of the students tested improved several DRA levels;
20 percent increased an entire grade level;
All students expressed they felt more comfortable reading, more confident in their math skills, and had a positive outlook about their educational success.