As we near the election, it seems that politics are at the top of the mind in everything we do and think about. Public education has always played an important part in politics in this country, but it also has been subject to continual political scrutiny. As are some of the educational organizations that are in various communities, who are simply trying to help, including groups like Children of the City. I support a number of educational charities, which you can read about at www.roccobasile.org. In any case, I am intriegued with the progress of educational trends and politics in this country...
Local politics and education are inseparable, as every city’s local school system is an organization with a political culture. It is a very competitive environment in which various groups from both within the system, and outside, compete for power, and typically, very limited budgetary resources. Yet our local school systems are devoted to children and tax dollars -- two of our most important resources.
It is nothing new that limited resources create varying degrees of funding ability for most local school systems, which in turn creates a lot of competition for existing resources. That’s why special interest groups compete, and funding priorities become the object of political debate at all levels – local, state and national.
In general, education is often a major part of both national political party platforms as well as local community discussions. We have seen that focus in the recent news about the current elections.
In case we have forgotten -- our country’s Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution delegated authority over education to the states, and each state varies from highly decentralized local education systems to more centralized state systems like Hawaii. But the most recent trend has been movement toward increased state standards and accountability systems.
Federal Interest in Education has long been part of our culture. In 2001, under direction of President Bush, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was renewed and renamed No Child Left Behind Act (2001). It was a critical step in bettering our country’s public education – the objective being - to increase accountability by identifying schools that were in need of improvement. It also called for “highly qualified” teachers in every classroom. Many believed that it empowered knowledgeable parents with the ability to wage war against school administrators who were not responsive to parental concerns.
Of all the localized special interest groups – from football supporters, planning and zoning committees, business, boards and various other local agencies, there is also the idea that diverse communities can become divided on school issues in areas of socio-economics. And as always, religion and political affiliation can also play a role in the politics of local education, and public education advocates and privatization groups often differ on local policies. Even community business groups can also be divided regarding the money required for facility improvement projects such as stadiums. the passing of school bond issues to finance school facilities can become very politically charged. That is why effective local school leadership lies in balancing these diverse special interest groups.
The reality is that politics are part of every local school system. Effective local school leaders must therefore learn to work within the unique political reality of their local system to accomplish organizational objectives. This is something that one of the charities that I work with called ChildrenoftheCity is quite good at, and I know they follow these guidelines for the betterment of the community as a whole. They try to clearly understand and empathize with varying points of view; they are honest about divergent positions; they try to include all stakeholders in the decision making process; they collaborate within the community, and Children of the City builds partnerships for overcoming future challenges. It works.
-- Rocco Basile
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Leaving Behind - No Child Left Behind?
The domestic law known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) took effect in 2002 with bipartisan support, with the goal moving from a desire for all children to attend school to all students in school achieving proficiency. By requiring that English and math scores be reported by categories such as income and race, it was intended to spotlight gaps in achievement.
The problem has been how to best measure proficiency, so closing the gaps has been pretty challenging -- so much so that they've delayed the act's re-authorization. Now any changes to the law maybe even its name are going to have to be left behind, or at least wait until after the country has a new president and Congress. Although there have been dozens of proposals for changes to NCLB, about the only thing anyone agrees with is the fact that it is important to find ways to help students and schools that have fallen behind.
The NCLB program has been able to identify the schools that are low-performing, but there are many improvements needed to meet the original mission of the law. Apparently about one-third of Americans see NCLB favorably, another one-third see it unfavorably, and the rest just don’t know, according to an annual poll by Gallup and Phi Delta Kappa International (PDK), an education association in Bloomington, Ind.
The National Education Association (NEA), which is the largest teachers' union in the United States, has asked that states be allowed to use growth models for federal accountability. It also would like multiple measures of student achievement, not just standardized tests. Thus far Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has allowed 10 states to test growth models.
But here’s what I find most interesting. While all this is taking place, and we are soon to find out if NCLB will be left behind next year, there are communities with programs that are already flourishing – as you can see on my educational trends website http://www.rcooccobasile.org/. And, as a Board member of ChildrenoftheCity.org. (http://www.childrenofthecity.org/) I see children and families living in Brooklyn New York taking advantage of a number of amazing programs that have been benefiting students and their learning.
And, in Texas, another town is showing what can happen when an entire community commits to student progress. In the Brownsville Independent School District, where nearly all students come from low-income Hispanic families, and four in ten are not native English speakers, they have made huge strides in closing the achievement gap with whites and higher-income students. This program earned this community the Broad Prize for Urban Education, which comes with $1 million in college scholarships for high school seniors who show academic progress and financial need.
Brownsville Superintendent Hector Gonzales said, “All children can learn …"We brought in a lot of staff development for every teacher to be able to look at the students' strengths and weaknesses and take those students to the next level.... Teachers truly believe that the students can be very successful."
Here’s how their program worked. Their review board of education experts chose five Broad Prize finalists from among the 100 of the largest US school districts serving sizable numbers of low-income/minority students. It considered factors like reduction of achievement gaps, performance on state tests, graduation rates, college entrance exams, as well as accountability measures in the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law.
Later, a consultant visited the finalist districts to conduct interviews, and later a jury of business, government, and public-service leaders chose the winner. This jury praised Brownsville for directing 85 percent of funding directly to instruction, which is much more than the 65 percent required in their state of Texas.
Brownsville doesn't narrowly focus on raising standardized test scores. It offers a program for gifted students, music, art, sports, and enrichment, including a competitive chess club. But test scores have improved, partly because teachers are trained to track student progress and target individual needs.
Nationally, Hispanic students have made gains on national assessments since enactment of NCLB, but overall progress has been slight. In the Texas program, the parents played an important role as well. Each school has a center where parents can learn English, computer literacy, and the skills required so they could help their children. What’s more, across the US, teachers in many districts have little access to professional development, textbooks, and assessments to meet the needs of students who don't speak English upon entering school.
--Rocco Basile
The problem has been how to best measure proficiency, so closing the gaps has been pretty challenging -- so much so that they've delayed the act's re-authorization. Now any changes to the law maybe even its name are going to have to be left behind, or at least wait until after the country has a new president and Congress. Although there have been dozens of proposals for changes to NCLB, about the only thing anyone agrees with is the fact that it is important to find ways to help students and schools that have fallen behind.
The NCLB program has been able to identify the schools that are low-performing, but there are many improvements needed to meet the original mission of the law. Apparently about one-third of Americans see NCLB favorably, another one-third see it unfavorably, and the rest just don’t know, according to an annual poll by Gallup and Phi Delta Kappa International (PDK), an education association in Bloomington, Ind.
The National Education Association (NEA), which is the largest teachers' union in the United States, has asked that states be allowed to use growth models for federal accountability. It also would like multiple measures of student achievement, not just standardized tests. Thus far Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has allowed 10 states to test growth models.
But here’s what I find most interesting. While all this is taking place, and we are soon to find out if NCLB will be left behind next year, there are communities with programs that are already flourishing – as you can see on my educational trends website http://www.rcooccobasile.org/. And, as a Board member of ChildrenoftheCity.org. (http://www.childrenofthecity.org/) I see children and families living in Brooklyn New York taking advantage of a number of amazing programs that have been benefiting students and their learning.
And, in Texas, another town is showing what can happen when an entire community commits to student progress. In the Brownsville Independent School District, where nearly all students come from low-income Hispanic families, and four in ten are not native English speakers, they have made huge strides in closing the achievement gap with whites and higher-income students. This program earned this community the Broad Prize for Urban Education, which comes with $1 million in college scholarships for high school seniors who show academic progress and financial need.
Brownsville Superintendent Hector Gonzales said, “All children can learn …"We brought in a lot of staff development for every teacher to be able to look at the students' strengths and weaknesses and take those students to the next level.... Teachers truly believe that the students can be very successful."
Here’s how their program worked. Their review board of education experts chose five Broad Prize finalists from among the 100 of the largest US school districts serving sizable numbers of low-income/minority students. It considered factors like reduction of achievement gaps, performance on state tests, graduation rates, college entrance exams, as well as accountability measures in the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law.
Later, a consultant visited the finalist districts to conduct interviews, and later a jury of business, government, and public-service leaders chose the winner. This jury praised Brownsville for directing 85 percent of funding directly to instruction, which is much more than the 65 percent required in their state of Texas.
Brownsville doesn't narrowly focus on raising standardized test scores. It offers a program for gifted students, music, art, sports, and enrichment, including a competitive chess club. But test scores have improved, partly because teachers are trained to track student progress and target individual needs.
Nationally, Hispanic students have made gains on national assessments since enactment of NCLB, but overall progress has been slight. In the Texas program, the parents played an important role as well. Each school has a center where parents can learn English, computer literacy, and the skills required so they could help their children. What’s more, across the US, teachers in many districts have little access to professional development, textbooks, and assessments to meet the needs of students who don't speak English upon entering school.
--Rocco Basile
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Income Disparity and Children's Education
The latest news item on educational information comes to us from Georgia in an article about how income disparity shows up in children’s health. Andy Miller of the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (10/8/2008) wrote about a new report that sadly ranks Georgia near the bottom on two key measures of children’s health focusing on family income and education.
Georgia has a higher-than-average rate of infant mortality. That is when a child dies before their first birthday. According to a national report that was released by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Georgia infants born to the most-educated mothers have a much greater chance of living past their first birthday than infants with mothers who have fewer years of schooling.
Georgia comes in as 46th among states on the size of that gap in infant mortality based on a mother’s education; and the state also shows a big disparity in children’s health status based on household wealth. Here are some of the main points:
Georgia has a higher-than-average rate of infant mortality. That is when a child dies before their first birthday. According to a national report that was released by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Georgia infants born to the most-educated mothers have a much greater chance of living past their first birthday than infants with mothers who have fewer years of schooling.
Georgia comes in as 46th among states on the size of that gap in infant mortality based on a mother’s education; and the state also shows a big disparity in children’s health status based on household wealth. Here are some of the main points:
- Nearly 15 percent of Georgia children age 17 or younger are in less-than-optimal health, as reported by their parents. But as income rises, children’s health improves. The report said 26 percent of Georgia children in poor families have health problems, compared to 5.7 percent of kids in high-income households.
- Georgia ranked 41st on that health gap between higher-income households and poor families. Even children in middle-class families appear to be less healthy than those in higher-income households in Georgia, the report found.
- The study, by researchers at the University of California at San Francisco, shows that across the country, shortfalls in health are greatest among children in the poorest or least-educated households.
Other statistics in the report state:
- More than 40 percent of Georgia children live in poor or near-poor households, while 26 percent live in high-income families.
- More than one-third of Georgia children live in households where no one has education beyond high school.
- Infant mortality rate among Georgia babies born to African-American mothers is more than twice the rates among babies of white or Hispanic mothers.
As this study clearly proves, there are significant inequalities in children’s health based on income, education and race, we know that there are ways that communities can come together to help find solutions to overcome such issues. As I continue my work with charities such as Children of the City, which can be viewed on my website at http://www.roccobasile.org/, we see examples every day of successes.
For example, the charity's Create Success Summer Program ended with outstanding results. It is the only summer program in the community of Brooklyn New York that has a strong academic focus. It is no surprise that with a drop out rate of 48 percent, children doing poorly was 
especially evident in the areas of reading and math. They simply lack of crucial foundational skills.
Children of the City tailors programs to the specific needs of each child as well as the general needs of each age group. There are students suffering from the effects of poverty like trauma, challenges at home, language barriers, poor self-esteem and lack of confidence, all of which affect their ability to learn. But because of the program's familiarity with their needs, and a holistic approach, there is much success.
No child is incapable of literary success. Children in this program have left Special Ed classes to join main stream classrooms, and kids that were about to be placed in Special Ed were able to comfortably read after being in this program for less then two months. Based on academic assessments, children in the Children of the City Summer Program showed a marked increase in their developmental reading assessments. Several even increased one whole grade level.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Educational Trends: Social Media in Education
New resources are appearing every day about social media marketing, networking and other forms of social media. What is it, and how are educators using social media? Social media is defined as the online technologies and practices used to share opinions, ideas, experiences, perspectives and insights with other people. Therefore, in the education world, social media is changing the way we learn, teach, interact and access others worldwide. People everywhere are having conversations online.
Social networks were only beginning to gain traction in the spring of 2007. Now their memberships are in the hundreds of millions. For the latest trends check Author Paul Gillin's book, The New Influencers and its website - NewInfuencers.com. But following is a quick rundown of some of the activities involved in social media:
1) Websites that are properly optimized - so people can find them via search engines online
2) RSS feeds, or Really Simple Syndication - people can now publish online
3) Optimized article submissions linking back to your website
4) Blogs and Vlogs - to share content and videos (e.g. YouTube or Google Video)
5) Webcasts/Podcasts/Videocasts - Another way to share information from a desktop
6) Social networks (MySpace, Flicker, Stumble Upon, etc.)
7) Socializing web content (tagging and bookmarking) - it's a library online
8) Communities online - niche groups according to interests and topics
Today, many businesses have been using social media and now employers are finding the benefits of using social media including: 63 percent are using social media to build and promote their brand, 61 percent are using it to improve communication and collaboration, and 58 percent are using it to increase consumer engagement. Study Finds Rapid Enterprise Adoption of Social Networks.
For many educators, the implications of social media are huge. Blogging is an enjoyable way to share information, to learn from others, and also to make professional acquaintances, while podcasts or videos can help others learn anytime, anywhere. Just take a look at my own website, http://www.roccobasile.org/, where you can note all the educational articles that I have compiled having to do with the programs I am involved with for my educational charities.
What amazes me is how fast kids have adapted to the concept of social media. MySpace is a huge congregation of sharing among kids. And as another example, at one of my charities known as ChildrenoftheCity.org, one of the ways in which we raise funds involves online social media marketing to share our successes and to let others know the good work being done.
Anyone can use social media tactics for one of the following goals:
1. Conversation Mining. Research and mine consumers in vertical and horizontal networks and communities.
2. Invite influencers (customers/teachers/parents) into the circle to share and learn.
3. Choose the tools. Subscribe to tools and assign several people to watch and listen to online conversations about education in your area.
Social media in education also provides the ability for students to interact across cultures, both virtually and directly. It also allows intercultural researchers to create new forms of study abroad via co-seminars, to create or even analyze culture creation through new social technologies. This could radically transform our approaches to international and intercultural education.
Here are some social media networking sites for educators, networking and sharing information:
Education Futures - exploring the rise of innovative knowledge societies
Twitter - where people can share in real time
Facebook.com - (Sign up; review groups; use Friendster)
LinkedIn.com - ask “Questions” and “Answers” on Linked-In
Squidoo.com - a place to post and share topical information
Gather.com - where you can post educational content
Skype - for instant messaging using audio/video
Second City - for virtual teaching and conferences
In summary, social media today is blending innovative technologies with social interaction, and the co-construction of new knowledge into popular social media outlets for online interaction that are centered around Web 2.0. Who knows what tomorrow will bring!
-- Rocco Basile
Social networks were only beginning to gain traction in the spring of 2007. Now their memberships are in the hundreds of millions. For the latest trends check Author Paul Gillin's book, The New Influencers and its website - NewInfuencers.com. But following is a quick rundown of some of the activities involved in social media:
1) Websites that are properly optimized - so people can find them via search engines online
2) RSS feeds, or Really Simple Syndication - people can now publish online
3) Optimized article submissions linking back to your website
4) Blogs and Vlogs - to share content and videos (e.g. YouTube or Google Video)
5) Webcasts/Podcasts/Videocasts - Another way to share information from a desktop
6) Social networks (MySpace, Flicker, Stumble Upon, etc.)
7) Socializing web content (tagging and bookmarking) - it's a library online
8) Communities online - niche groups according to interests and topics
Today, many businesses have been using social media and now employers are finding the benefits of using social media including: 63 percent are using social media to build and promote their brand, 61 percent are using it to improve communication and collaboration, and 58 percent are using it to increase consumer engagement. Study Finds Rapid Enterprise Adoption of Social Networks.
For many educators, the implications of social media are huge. Blogging is an enjoyable way to share information, to learn from others, and also to make professional acquaintances, while podcasts or videos can help others learn anytime, anywhere. Just take a look at my own website, http://www.roccobasile.org/, where you can note all the educational articles that I have compiled having to do with the programs I am involved with for my educational charities.
What amazes me is how fast kids have adapted to the concept of social media. MySpace is a huge congregation of sharing among kids. And as another example, at one of my charities known as ChildrenoftheCity.org, one of the ways in which we raise funds involves online social media marketing to share our successes and to let others know the good work being done.
Anyone can use social media tactics for one of the following goals:
1. Conversation Mining. Research and mine consumers in vertical and horizontal networks and communities.
2. Invite influencers (customers/teachers/parents) into the circle to share and learn.
3. Choose the tools. Subscribe to tools and assign several people to watch and listen to online conversations about education in your area.
Social media in education also provides the ability for students to interact across cultures, both virtually and directly. It also allows intercultural researchers to create new forms of study abroad via co-seminars, to create or even analyze culture creation through new social technologies. This could radically transform our approaches to international and intercultural education.
Here are some social media networking sites for educators, networking and sharing information:
Education Futures - exploring the rise of innovative knowledge societies
Twitter - where people can share in real time
Facebook.com - (Sign up; review groups; use Friendster)
LinkedIn.com - ask “Questions” and “Answers” on Linked-In
Squidoo.com - a place to post and share topical information
Gather.com - where you can post educational content
Skype - for instant messaging using audio/video
Second City - for virtual teaching and conferences
In summary, social media today is blending innovative technologies with social interaction, and the co-construction of new knowledge into popular social media outlets for online interaction that are centered around Web 2.0. Who knows what tomorrow will bring!
-- Rocco Basile
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