Trends in 2009: Multicultural Education

Did you know that currently 70 percent of the population that is online are white? The trend is that in 2009 more and more African-Americans and Hispanics are going to go online via their PCs and or mobile telephones. Marketers will follow to target multicultural audiences with more culture-specific messages and languages.

In fact, multicultural education is a more recent field of study aiming to create equal educational opportunities for students from diverse ethnic, social-class, and cultural and racial groups. The goal is to help all students acquire the knowledge, skills and attitudes that are needed to function effectively in a pluralistic democratic society.

All people have the right to learn and communicate with people from diverse groups around the globe in order to create a moral community that works for worldwide peace and the common good of everyone. Multicultural education draws content, concepts and theories from specialized fields including history, ethnic and women studies, as well as from social and behavioral sciences. Multicultural education applies content from these fields and disciplines to challenge curriculum development in educational.

I am very encouraged to see these kinds of trends in education today. My website http://www.roccobasile.net/ has been focused on trends in education and my charities over the last year, and I am seeing tremendous results from my charities including Children of the City.

As evidenced in December during the Christmas holidays, 600 children and 100 adults were invited to the headquarters of Children of the City located in Brooklyn, New York, where hundreds of toys and gifts were distributed to needy kids. Dozens of volunteers wrapped the donations of toys that were received, then distributed them to neediest children from all walks of life.

The non-profit's educational programs have helped thousands of at-risk inner-city children and youth with hope, and resources to positively affect their lives via after school programs, and by connecting them and their families to resources. The goal is to educate and empower them to break the negative and destructive cycles they’ve grown up.

The result is multicultural community where people have learned to take responsibility to bring lasting change to themselves and their environment.

--Rocco Basile

Politics and Education

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

Are we Pushing Kids too Hard in School?

In many states, schools are back in session after the summer break. We’ve been seeing the new trends for earlier educational trends for kids, such as academic tutoring programs for three year olds, and middle school students taking algebra courses. Educating our kids is starting earlier and earlier.

These trends are being driven by parental anxiety about the fact that many schools that have failed to challenge our children, boost achievement for disadvantaged students, as well as tougher college entrance exams. Are we pushing our kids to move ahead too quickly? Or is America losing its ground in education of our youth globally?

Futurist James Canton believes this might be the case. In his book"The Extreme Future" he said, "Quality public education, in crisis today, will either propel or crash the future aspirations of the American workforce."

The deputy superintendent of the Pittsburgh Public Schools, Lynn Spampinato, believes that schools are simply trying to adjust to the realities of the 21st century.

"We don't want education to be the way it was in 1920," she said. "There's more for children to learn today, more exposure to all kinds of information at younger ages. Education doesn't set the values and the pace of society, but it's our job is to prepare students for the world they're going to live in."

One example is a trend toward introducing concepts of math and science in middle school. This used to be called an acceleration class, but now the expectation in the state standards is that all students need to be learning it. The reason for this change is a survey called the "Trends in International Math and Science Studies" done in 1995. The results showed American students were ahead in fourth-grade math but dropped to the bottom in 12th.

Educators seem to agree that the younger the child, the more controversial it becomes to push down academic curricula. Most agree that young children learn best in rich play environments that stimulate the senses in age-appropriate ways. I have been collecting research like this on my website http://www.roccobasile.org/ for about a year now, and one of the programs that I am very heavily involved with which backs this up are the youth programs at Children of the City, a non-profit that reaches at-risk inner-city children and youth with hope, guidance and resources to positively affect their lives and communities.

Children of the City programs include FutureSafe, a collaborative monthly event that is attended by an average of 500 children. It is designed to deter children from drug abuse, delinquency, gangs and even teen pregnancy. It is often a first step for children when it comes to engaging in structured afterschool activities. Click here to learn more.

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.

CNN Black in America Program Highlights Educational Trends

Today CNN Student News posted an online news segment that examines how two specialized schools in New York are targeting the dropout rate of African-American students. CNN's Black in America project examines what it means to be black in America today, and education is a huge topic. I am definitely interested in this because of the charity work I do, which is featured in my website http://www.roccobasile.com/. There is a big disparity between black and white students.

The CNN news piece talks about one of the schools -- The Baldwin School -- a new public school with small classes, which has a 94 percent graduation rate. One student drops out every 26 seconds in America. Many of the New York students were failing before coming to Baldwin, and they are now doing better than most students in the New York public schools. age three blacks fall behind.

A Harvard study found that black students fall behind by the time they are three years old, and 3/4 of the one million New York students are a minority, with 70 percent impoverished. Schools like Baldwin are fighting to change this, proving that smaller schools and mentoring is what is doing the trick. They are beating the odds by focusing on a student's individual needs.

This is no surprise to me -- because the charity I work with, Children of the City, which has been proving this since 1981. We have been getting kids off the streets and into the classroom, helping to dramatically improve the students grades who live in the Sunset Park area of Brooklyn New York.

In other CNN news segments, the news is grim about dropouts. One students drop out every 26 seconds in America, and for African-Americans the number is in (Source: American Alliance) or one million dropouts a year.

That's why well known and recognized African Americans like David Tyree, started volunteering at Children of the City, winning the football hero the charity's Children’s Champion Award at the charity's annual fundraising Benefit.

For more information on how you can support, go to http://www.childrenofthecity.org/.

--Rocco Basile