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Stories by: educhoice
48 stories
Procedures and Communications Responsive to The Needs of Districts and Schools
The standards and responsibilities in this section describe activities necessary to administer psychometrically and legally defensible high-stakes tests efficiently and to a high standard of quality. These activities are typically assigned to the vendor but responsibility may be shared with the agency. Source: https://ebookschoice.com/procedures-and-communications-responsive-to-the-needs-and-concerns-of-districts-and-schools/
Appropriate Instruments for Educational and Political Constituencies
The standards and responsibilities in this section describe test development activities necessary to produce psychometrically and legally defensible high stakes tests efficiently and to a high standard of quality. These activities may be completed by either the state or the vendor. If responsibility for any portion of an activity is assigned to the vendor, the RFP (Request for Proposal) and resulting contract should so provide. If the state decides to retain responsibility for the activity, the state may seek advice from the vendor but should clearly indicate that expectation in the RFP and resulting contract.
State Reforms To Develop K-12 Academic Standards
State reforms to develop K-12 academic standards and to assess the performance of all students on these standards have resulted in a substantial increase in the number and scope of contracts with testing companies for statewide assessment programs. Many of these assessments are high-stakes for students (e.g., graduation or grade promotion tests) and/or educators (e.g., accountability programs). With high school diplomas, monetary awards or federal funding for schools and school systems dependent on test results, it is imperative that state assessments be of high quality, meet professional standards for best practice, be delivered in a timely manner, and be scored accurately. With increasingly tight budgets, it is similarly imperative that assessment programs be developed and implemented in an efficient and cost-effective manner without sacrificing quality.Source: https://ebookschoice.com/state-reforms-to-develop-k-12-academic-standards/
Establishing Trust Between School Teachers and University Faculty
The professional development school initiatives show the greatest promise in school reform due to collaborative efforts in teacher preparation. Educators in both public schools and in universities must work together in the preparation of teachers who are culturally, socially and instructionally responsive to student diversity. This lofty preparation aim begins with selecting the most promising teacher candidates for admittance into the program. The author describes an admissions procedure that has proven to be not only efficient and effective, but reflects the collaborative values of the program.Source: https://ebookschoice.com/establishing-trust-between-school-teachers-and-university-faculty/
Opportunities For Students to Review Curricular Content
When teachers initially attempt to redesign block-of-time lessons, they frequently ask about the format of a typical lesson. Numerous creative instructional approaches are possible within longer time frames; therefore, teachers should be cautious about relying too heavily on familiar daily instructional routines. As a general strategy, however, teachers might consider planning 3-4 activities during the instructional block, ensuring that at least one activity will involve direct and substantial engagement of students in the learning process. Source: https://ebookschoice.com/opportunities-for-students-to-review-curricular-content-and-to-develop-cooperative-learning-skills/
Creative School and Community Leaders Are Discovering That They Need Each Other
Throughout both urban and rural America, school reformers and community builders are beginning to discover each other. Mutual interests and benefits abound. On the one hand, community organizers work to re-situate the school at the center of the community development process. On the other hand, creative school reformers activate community residents and resources as vital partners in the educational enterprise. These two growing movements recognize the powerful advantages of bridge building.Source: https://ebookschoice.com/creative-school-and-community-leaders-are-discovering-that-they-need-each-other/
Healthy Communities Must Have Healthy Schools
Healthy schools and healthy communities depend on and nourish each other. Healthy schools aren't sustainable if their surrounding communities are in peril. Healthy communities can't exist for long if they fail to nurture productive, committed, engaged, aware, and resourceful citizens for the future.Source: https://ebookschoice.com/healthy-communities-must-have-healthy-schools/
Improved Student Learning and Strengthened Communities
The new Project on Education is a collaborative action research project to examine and make a case for the roles and results of community organizing in reforming schools, improving student achievement, and revitalizing communities. We used collaborative inquiry processes to bring parents, community members, educators and students together to examine and reflect on their efforts and has conducted both local and national studies on parent and community participation in school reform.Source: https://ebookschoice.com/improved-student-learning-and-strengthened-communities/
Creating Schools That Are Successful In Teaching And Learning
Nationwide, low-performing schools are high on the agenda of urban school reform leaders. The current focus reverses the neglect that has plagued these schools for years. Many of them are situated in distressed communities that show the results of years of disinvestment, communities where a growing concentration of poverty and its consequences has taken a social and economic toll. These issues spill over into the schools. Source: https://ebookschoice.com/creating-schools-that-are-successful-in-teaching-and-learning/
The Urgent Need For School-based Primary Prevention Programs
The prevalence of American youth who engage in antisocial and health-damaging behaviors is unacceptably high. 24% of American 10 to 17 year olds engage in multiple, interrelated social and health risk behaviors, such as delinquency and substance use. An additional 26% experiment with some risk behaviors. Such widespread involvement jeopardizes the development of young people who participate in such activities, and often negatively affects their peers, family members, and community.Source: https://ebookschoice.com/the-urgent-need-for-school-based-primary-prevention-programs/
Commitment to Retaining Talented Teachers
Training is a component of many teacher induction programs. All too often, inductees have received insufficient professional preparation. With increasing numbers of inductees entering the classroom via alternative routes, many induction programs today are compensating for little or no previous training whatsoever, in effect blurring the line between teacher preparation and induction.Source: https://ebookschoice.com/commitment-to-retaining-talented-teachers/
Help New Teachers Establish Themselves Professionally
The involvement of higher education institutions in induction is less prevalent than it should be, given the promise these partnerships offer for improving teacher preparation by redefining the boundaries between college and K-12 classrooms. Sadly, the scarcity of this type of collaboration is a missed opportunity to provide new teachers a link between their pre-service and in-service teacher development and a missed opportunity for college faculty and school-based personnel to benefit from one another's expertise, open lines of communication, collaborate on projects, share facilities, and benefit in myriad ways. Source: https://ebookschoice.com/help-new-teachers-establish-themselves-professionally/
How To Get Started Improving Your Efforts To Support And Assess Novice Teachers
Many professions offer orientation and support experiences for professionals starting out in a field. Medical residents and law associates-even rookie baseball players-receive extended training, development, and mentoring (working alongside a seasoned expert) before taking on the responsibilities of a full professional. In contrast, novice teachers often are left to fend for themselves, with little or inadequate initiation into the profession.Source: https://ebookschoice.com/how-to-get-started-improving-your-efforts-to-support-and-assess-novice-teachers/
Obstacles for Special Education Teachers
With the word "accountability" on every teacher's and parent's lips these days, one controversial tool that's emerging is state mandated proficiency exams. Statewide assessments become truly 'high stakes' when school quality, teacher competence, and individual student capability are judged by their results. The stakes hit the ceiling when these test scores are used by states and school districts as the sole determinant of whether students pass to the next grade or graduate. Source: https://ebookschoice.com/obstacles-for-special-education-teachers/
The Uniqueness Of The Middle Level Student Teaching Practicum
Most beginning teachers will agree that the student teaching experience is the most practical and worthwhile experience in their teacher preparation program. It is the one culminating experience that brings together the earlier studies in subject matter specializations, adolescent development, pedagogy, and curriculum.Source: https://ebookscheaper.com/2023/09/28/the-uniqueness-of-the-middle-level-student-teaching-practicum/
Improving Education In School And Pursuing The New Educational Standards
There are many current stimulators of educational improvement and represent multi-year efforts to define new standards, not just for subject matter content but also for teaching, assessment, and programs. Using a large-scale consensus process, new documents are reviewed extensively by constituent groups and acquired substantial "ownership" as a result. These documents and influential predecessors have much in common. They call for substantive education for all students (not just the academically elite), delineate the major content themes for the curriculum, and set new expectations for assessment, teaching, and student learning.Source: https://ebookschoice.com/improving-education-in-school-and-pursuing-the-new-educational-standards/
Challenging Standards And Student Assessments In Every State
As the nation rightly focuses on issues and events affecting our foreign policy and defense, one major element of domestic policy remains to be resolved. And it deserves our attention. Our states and their leaders have successfully pioneered many of the policies now considered essential for the rest of the nation. Our №1 priority, in fact, is the successful implementation of challenging standards and student assessments in every state.Our national insistence that schools get their collective act together is a good thing. But our focus must remain on the urgent needs of children today, and that requires choice of schools. Without choices, good intention lack motivation.
New Developments For Special Educators And Students With Disabilities
An increasing number of students require specialized health care procedures during school hours. Procedures such as tube feedings, clean intermittent catheterization, suctioning, and ventilator management are becoming more commonplace in the school setting. Who performs the procedures and is responsible for them being correctly implemented varies across school districts and states. Although consensus can be difficult to reach regarding other critical areas surrounding specialized health care procedures. Source: https://ebookschoice.com/new-developments-for-special-educators-and-students-with-disabilities/
The Status Of Students' Journey Towards Science And Mathematics Literacy
A major focus of the current mathematics and science education reforms is on developing "literacy;" that is, helping students to understand and use the languages and ideas of mathematics and science in reasoning, communicating, and solving problems. In many ways, these standards documents are far more voluminous and complex than any scope and sequence in place in school systems today. But these documents are meant to be used as frameworks which provide guidance in education reform - they are not the definitive sources articulating to teachers how education reform must occur in their classrooms. Source: https://ebookschoice.com/monitoring-the-status-of-students-journey-towards-science-and-mathematics-literacy/
Identifying District Policy Aimed At Upgrading Math And Science Curriculum
The following discussion is based on a study of curriculum upgrading by states, districts, and schools in response to these calls for reform. We have studied a relatively specific school output: the nature and quality of the mathematics and science curriculum as offered by teachers and experienced by students. We recognize that much education policymaking occurs piecemeal over time, with each piece motivated by a different purpose. From the perspective of the classroom, the pieces often appear disjointed and fragmented, with no coherent message. Thus, despite our somewhat rational and linear approach to describing and analyzing policy initiatives and their effects, we recognize that, at least to date, education policymaking has been far from rational and linear (though the calls for systemic reform may change this in the future). Source: https://ebookschoice.com/identifying-district-policy-aimed-at-upgrading-math-and-science-curriculum/
Adoption of National Science and Mathematics Standards
In 1991, Jonathan Kozol published Savage Inequalities, a book that dramatically made public what most people who visit schools have always known - that American children experience shockingly different conditions of schooling. These differences are even more likely to be exacerbated in science education, the most resource-dependent of the academic subjects. Children cannot learn what is not taught. For instance, only 45% of eighth graders report that they do science experiments each week, and only about 52% of the nation's eighth grade science teachers feel that they have enough materials to teach science. With the movement toward new standards, some educators and policy-makers fear that simply changing standards without changing the education system that distributes opportunities to learn. Source: https://ebookschoice.com/adoption-of-national-science-and-mathematics-standards/
Creating Optimal Conditions For Teaching Students With Exceptionalities
The findings from a new survey indicate that teacher perspectives are similar for both general and special educators and that administrators' views are also parallel. The similarities across special and general education groups combined with the significant differences between all teacher and all administrator points of view was interesting. The viewpoint taken by teachers regarding the conditions they work under while teaching students with exceptionalities is harsher than the view offered by the administrators. This pattern was pervasive on all the areas of contrast (materials available, physical facilities for teaching, collegiality and professionalism, pre-service preparation, professional development opportunities, and planning time). These differences also were reflected in the literature on teaching conditions. Source: https://ebookschoice.com/creating-optimal-conditions-for-teaching-students-with-exceptionalities/
Grammar Translation, The Direct Method and Bilingual Skills
The future aims of learners of English vary widely. For some they may be clearly defined. They may want to study in an English-speaking environment, or to keep up to date with what's in the English-speaking press, or to get by on holiday in an English-speaking country, or to conduct business meetings in English. These aims don't necessarily involve a deep-seated interest in English-speaking people and their culture, though that may develop. Other learners may have a more general motivation and, rather than seeing learning English as a means to an end, see it as a more educational and personal experience. This sort of interest usually is characterized by a wish to gain a deeper understanding about people's ways of life and values. The ultimate goal of this group may even be to become bilingual. Source: https://ebookschoice.com/grammar-translation-the-direct-method-and-bilingual-skills/
Words and Their Context
You have now explored in a practical way a number of different aspects of language and learning, including the difference between implicit and explicit knowledge of rules, rule discovery, the grammar of spoken and written English, phonology, and linguistic and communicative competence. I now want to turn to the significance of grammatical and communicative contexts for understanding words and grammatical structures. For example, in this unit you will study not only the grammar of the passive, but also the contexts in which it is used. The unit begins with a look at what we can find out about a word in a dictionary and includes an activity to test your knowledge of grammar terminology. It finishes with a look at some of the reasons why words and patterns change over time and the question of what we consider to be 'correct' modern English. Source: https://ebookschoice.com/words-and-their-context/
Linguistic And Communicative Rules
We learned that native speakers have an implicit knowledge of grammar and that children acquire this without realizing it. I commented, however, that a language teacher needs to be able to describe grammatical rules, and in Unit 2 you noted some grammatical differences between spoken and written English. Unit 3 will introduce further grammar concepts and you will have the chance to assess your own explicit knowledge. Unit 2 also began to explore the area of what language we actually choose to use. This unit will continue the theme by looking at how we choose to speak in different situations and will show that this sort of knowledge is just as important for a language learner as grammatical knowledge. Source: https://ebookschoice.com/linguistic-and-communicative-rules/
Making Your Implicit Knowledge Explicit And Specific Features Of Spoken English
The word revolution has often been used in connection with the arrival of the new theory of language. However, we now need to look beyond how babies acquire the mechanics of a language in order to understand language use. So, it is to language in action that we turn in this unit, and, in particular, the nature of conversational English and written English. What is spoken English like? Conversation is the most commonly used kind of English. Most English speakers make use of it every day of their lives and so nearly all learners of English need skills in it. It is therefore important for the teacher of English as a foreign language to understand what is distinctive about conversation. The activity that follows is designed to start you off on the road to gaining this understanding. It is designed to train your ear to listen, not just to what is said, but to how things are said. Source: https://ebookschoice.com/making-your-implicit-knowledge-explicit-and-specific-features-of-spoken-english/