New Approach Proposed for Science Curriculums

“That is the failing of U.S. education today, that kids are expected to learn a lot of things but not expected to be able to use them,” said Helen Quinn, a retired physicist from the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, Calif., who led an 18-member committee that spent more than a year devising the framework.

One of the big goals, the committee said in a 282-page report, is “to ensure that by the end of 12th grade, all students have some appreciation of the beauty and wonder of science.”

The report, released Tuesday by the National Research Council, also pushes for incorporating engineering into what is taught to students in elementary school through high school.

It is the latest in decades of efforts to improve the science knowledge of American students, who have typically ranked in the middle of the pack on international comparison tests. The research council, which is the operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, last weighed in on science education standards in 1996.

Now that the council has finished a framework, a nonprofit education group, Achieve Inc., will expand it into a set of standards. Similar efforts produced standards for math and language arts that have been adopted by 44 states.

Achieve is aiming to finish work by the end of next year, with drafts available publicly before then. Putting the standards into the classroom would take several more years as textbooks and lesson plans are rewritten.

While Achieve is working with states to come up with standards, the core science — including evolution — is not up for debate.

“What we’re not going to do is compromise the science just to get states comfortable,” said Michael Cohen, the president of Achieve. States will have the final say on whether to adopt the new approach.

The Carnegie Corporation of New York financed most of the $2.26 million effort, and the National Science Teachers Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science also participated.

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The Island Approach To Credit Card Use

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The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook - A Creative and Stress-Free Approach to Homeschooling

Within society, we often lose our way. As a result, many have taken it upon themselves to provide handbooks in order to help the rest of us find our way. There are handbooks available for most any situation, from how to survive in the wilderness to building a house out of surrounding materials. We can get the information we need to aid in our trek around the world seeking adventure and all that nature has to offer through handbooks. They have increasingly become an important part of helping us through life itself.

As it so happens, there is a movement afoot that is capturing the attention of parents everywhere. It is a movement borne out of concern regarding the educating of our children and the increasing evidence that supports the position that the educational system in its present form is failing our children's academic needs to a greater extent than ever. Being that necessity is the mother of invention, Dr. Raymond and Dorothy Moore have produced a handbook for the ages.

"The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook" is just such a book to meet the parent's need to guide their children through the jungle that is the educational system. And, it provides those needs in a simple, small bites approach. It is not a book that strictly advocates removing the child from mainstream schools and teaching them at home; it more accurately sees the desire for parents to do whatever is necessary to ensure their child's education and champions that position, whether it be in the home or the traditional educational arena.

"The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook" is wonderfully segmented into five distinct parts, dealing with such critical issues like that found in part two titled "Homeschooling Stress: Prevention and Remedy" addressing issues such as learning to slow down and not stress over the "what about their peers" question. In part four titled "Effective Homeschoolers Share Their Wisdom" you get a compilation of insights from actual homeschoolers sharing their experiences, revealing that each child is a treasure and unique in his or her own way. You will hear from people from every walk of life; the single mother, the Navy wife, physicians, artists, a former assistant attorney general.

In part five there are answers to questions such as how to get into college after being homeschooled, or how a working mother can still home school. You will also get some invaluable background as to how the home schooling movement was born as well as concerns regarding the dreaded word 'certified'.

In the epilogue of "The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook" you will find a chapter titled "The Moore Formula" that has been tried and true dealing with four critical areas vital to home school and, by default, societal success: head, hand, heart and health. This chapter will provide three main areas to address for the sake of the children and their future that is backed by documented research to be effective in furthering the child's academic and societal growth: study, work and service. It is the Moore's position that these are most critical if children are to succeed in life, whether it is from a home schooled environment or within the public educational system itself.

Never preachy, yet never compromising, "The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook" is nothing short of a Godsend when it comes to finding our way through life as it is today. Timeless principles abound within its covers and the message is evergreen for all generations to take heed. If we are to succeed as a society, indeed as a free nation, we need to take every step and make every sacrifice possible that our future generations mirrored in our children will receive the guaranteed need for that success. This is most assuredly found in Raymond and Dorothy Moore's wonderful book. Whether you are a single mom, grandparent or the 'stereotypical' intact family unit, "The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook" will be an invaluable guide helping you and your children see the world around you with eyes of wonder.

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Touring Schools That Work, Chancellor Says New Approach Is Needed at Those That Don’t

In the first school Cathleen P. Black visited, students in a fifth-grade classroom had one laptop apiece, from which they received individualized lessons. In the second school, for teenagers who had been on the verge of dropping out, counselors routinely show up at the homes of students if they are absent three days in a row. The third was one of four schools in a building that once housed one; students had violin and dance classes, aside from traditional subjects like history, English and math.

Ms. Black, who officially began her job as New York City schools chancellor on Monday, has been visiting schools for weeks. But the tour on Monday, more than an introduction to the system, was a tightly choreographed showcasing of the Department of Education’s biggest successes and newest programs, like using technology to help teachers in the classroom and breaking up big schools into small ones.

It was perhaps a fitting start for Ms. Black, who is taking the job with a mandate to effectively stay the course of her predecessor, and who presumably has only three years before she is replaced. She visited one school in each borough, serving different grades, most of them with similar student populations: primarily black and Latino students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a snapshot of a system where minorities are the majority and poverty is pervasive.

The schools had something else in common: they had all received A’s or B’s in consecutive years in their progress reports, the measure by which the city judges schools. The only exception was the Hungerford School on Staten Island, a middle and high school for students with severe disabilities, which, like other such schools, does not yet receive letter grades.

Still, they all had something novel: about the way their teachers taught their classes, the courses they offered, or the way they prepared their students to take the next step.

Ms. Black, who was followed at one point by close to 50 reporters, photographers and videographers, as well as by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who hand-picked her for the job, was there to witness a little bit of it all.

“We must have schools that are successful or are showing promise of really turning around,” she said. “If not, we really have to take a different approach.”

At Public School 262 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, she watched a pair of teachers guide fourth-grade students through an English lesson, in which the children learned about writing stories with a clear beginning, middle and end. At Democracy Prep Charter School in Harlem, she saw ninth-grade students learn Korean. At North Queens Community High School, she heard about the value of one-on-one counseling for students who had come close to giving up on their education.

The school’s director, Lainey Collins, told Ms. Black, “Every morning, we’re at the front door, checking them in, making sure they don’t miss school, and sometimes going after them at home to find if they don’t show up for class.”

Ms. Black replied, “Making every effort so someone doesn’t fall through the cracks.”

While Ernest Logan, president of the principals’ union, accompanied Ms. Black on her first visit, Michael Mulgrew, the teachers’ union president, did not. He engaged, instead, in his own tour, to a school on Staten Island where a possible PCB leak from light fixtures forced the closing of some classrooms, and a school in Brooklyn trying to find money to hire a math coach.

Of the schools she has visited in the past few weeks, the worst received a C in their progress reports, which are mostly based on how the students fare on standardized tests. A spokeswoman, Natalie Ravitz, said that Ms. Black had visits scheduled to schools that got D’s and F’s.

Taking stock of all she has seen so far, Ms. Black said, “Where there’s a strong and effective principal, where parents are committed, you have great schools.”

Little else of what she said had not been heard before. She emphasized the difficulty of reducing class size. (“It’s New York City. It’s not like we can build a whole lot of schools.”) She reinforced her idea of the ideal teacher. (“The most effective teacher is one who cares about her kids.”) And she showed no intention of rethinking any of the reforms that her predecessor, Joel I. Klein, brought to the system, chief among them the use of test scores and algorithms to measure the performance of teachers, principals and schools.

But mostly, she listened. During a geometry class at Democracy Prep, Ms. Black, who carried around a manila folder labeled “briefing material,” huddled with Seth Andrew, the school’s founder and superintendent, and asked in a near-whisper if he had trouble hiring teachers (his answer was no), as well as how he felt about tenure (his answer was inaudible).

At the school in Brooklyn, she gave Mary Simpson, a cook in the cafeteria, “a great big hug” and a kiss on both cheeks, Ms. Simpson said.

At Hungerford, Kelly Garcia, 17, asked through the computer that she uses to communicate, “Are you nervous for your first day of school?”

“The answer is yes,” Ms. Black said. “It’s like everybody’s first day of school. A little bit nervous, but excited.”

Juliet Linderman contributed reporting.

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Shanghai Schools’ Approach Pushes Students to Top of Tests

“Who in this class can tell me how to demonstrate two lines are parallel without using a proportional segment?” Ms. Li called out to about 40 students seated in a cramped classroom.

One by one, a series of students at this medium-size public school raised their hands. When Ms. Li called on them, they each stood politely by their desks and usually answered correctly. They returned to their seats only when she told them to sit down.

Educators say this disciplined approach helps explain the announcement this month that 5,100 15-year-olds in Shanghai outperformed students from about 65 countries on an international standardized test that measured math, science and reading competency.

American students came in between 15th and 31st place in the three categories. France and Britain also fared poorly.

Experts said comparing scores from countries and cities of different sizes is complicated. They also said that the Shanghai scores were not representative of China, since this fast-growing city of 20 million is relatively affluent. Still, they were impressed by the high scores from students in Shanghai.

The results were seen as another sign of China’s growing competitiveness. The United States rankings are a “wake-up call,” said Arne Duncan, the secretary of education.

Although it was the first time China had taken part in the test, which was administered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, based in Paris, the results bolstered this country’s reputation for producing students with strong math and science skills.

Many educators were also surprised by the city’s strong reading scores, which measured students’ proficiency in their native Chinese.

The Shanghai students performed well, experts say, for the same reason students from other parts of Asia — including South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong — do: Their education systems are steeped in discipline, rote learning and obsessive test preparation.

Public school students in Shanghai often remain at school until 4 p.m., watch very little television and are restricted by Chinese law from working before the age of 16.

“Very rarely do children in other countries receive academic training as intensive as our children do,” said Sun Baohong, an authority on education at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. “So if the test is on math and science, there’s no doubt Chinese students will win the competition.”

But many educators say China’s strength in education is also a weakness. The nation’s education system is too test-oriented, schools here stifle creativity and parental pressures often deprive children of the joys of childhood, they say.

“These are two sides of the same coin: Chinese schools are very good at preparing their students for standardized tests,” Jiang Xueqin, a deputy principal at Peking University High School in Beijing, wrote in an opinion article published in The Wall Street Journal shortly after the test results were announced. “For that reason, they fail to prepare them for higher education and the knowledge economy.”

In an interview, Mr. Jiang said Chinese schools emphasized testing too much, and produced students who lacked curiosity and the ability to think critically or independently.

“It creates very narrow-minded students,” he said. “But what China needs now is entrepreneurs and innovators.”

This is a common complaint in China. Educators say an emphasis on standardized tests is partly to blame for the shortage of innovative start-ups in China. And executives at global companies operating here say they have difficulty finding middle managers who can think creatively and solve problems.

In many ways, the system is a reflection of China’s Confucianist past. Children are expected to honor and respect their parents and teachers.

“Discipline is rarely a problem,” said Ding Yi, vice principal at the middle school affiliated with Jing’An Teachers’ College. “The biggest challenge is a student who chronically fails to do his homework.”

While the quality of schools varies greatly in China (rural schools often lack sufficient money, and dropout rates can be high), schools in major cities typically produce students with strong math and science skills.

Shanghai is believed to have the nation’s best school system, and many students here gain admission to America’s most selective colleges and universities.

Bao Beibei contributed research.

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