|
|
|
|
|
WASCD Leaders Take an Active Role in Philadelphia
ASCD’s Annual Conference in Philadelphia featured several sessions that focused on the latest education policy news and developments. Wisconsin ASCD President-elect Karen Wendorf-Heldt (CESA#9) and Richard Lange (Illinois ASCD) joined ASCD Director of Public Policy David Griffith to educate and encourage participants to become advocates for their students, organizations, and profession. Their session emphasized the crucial need for federal policymakers to hear from educators as Congress works to reauthorize ESEA. They helped demystify the advocacy process by sharing their experiences and first steps to becoming educator advocates.
WASCD Board Member Nick Dussault (CESA#7) was among those ASCD Legislative Committee members who met with Gamal Sherif, a US Department of Education Teaching Ambassador Fellow, to discuss federal policy issues. Sherif was most interested in hearing ASCD’s perspective on the Obama administration’s new RESPECT initiative and was very responsive to Legislative Committee members’ concerns about the need to reauthorize ESEA, as well as the importance of providing support for teachers and principals in this difficult economic climate.
Past President Tony Frontier (Cardinal Stritch University) presented a two-day preconference program and a Saturday sectional session with David Livingston, his co-author along with Robert Marzano, on Effective Supervision: Supporting the Art & Science of Teaching.
Past President Mary Gavigan (Whitefish Bay) presented ASCD Leadership 101 about various pathways to get involved in ASCD governance and affiliate leadership along with Anne Roloff (Illinois ASCD) and Nancy Deford (Virginia ASCD).
WASCD Program Planning Chair Eileen Depka presented a Monday sectional session Joining Formative Assessment and Response to Intervention: Information, Tools and Techniques. You have the chance to hear Eileen at WASCD’s RtI program on May 10th in WI Dells.
|
There is still time to register for WASCD’s
last program of the 2011-12 school year.
RtI: You have a team. Now what?
May 10 in Wisconsin Dells
WASCD presents a workshop for those responsible for implementing RtI plans. Bring a team of district administrators and teacher leaders including your business manager to hear what others are doing and plan your implementation. Presenters include WASCD Leaders Eileen Depka, Kurt Schneider, Sally Habanek and Kathy Myles, groups from the Stoughton Area School District, School District of Beloit, DPI and the RtI Center.
|
Common Core State Standards
|
|
ASCD on the Common Core Standards
We at ASCD believe the national dialogue on the Common Core State Standards has reached a turning point. With 46 states adopting the standards, it is no longer a question of if the standards should be adopted, but how they will be implemented.
In one recent survey of deputy state superintendents of education conducted by the Center on Education Policy in January 2012, providing professional development in sufficient quantity and quality was the most-often cited teacher-related challenge to implementing the Common Core State Standards. This data underscores the fact that to successfully implement these standards, it is critical that educators at all levels — teachers, principals, superintendents — receive the necessary professional development. This, we believe, is the key to moving the Common Core State Standards from words to action. It’s not enough to simply distribute the new standards to educators and expect positive, meaningful change to happen. We need to provide educators with targeted professional development to help them understand the new standards, plan lessons and deliver aligned instruction, evaluate learning to determine mastery, and provide additional support to the students who need it.
The professional development provided cannot be a singular event. Instead, the professional development must be sustained, job-embedded, and involve feedback and follow-up observations. It should be tied to specific instructional goals. And just as we evaluate students and teachers, we must evaluate the professional development itself to make sure it is meeting teachers’ needs. Building local capacity and enabling educators to help one another collectively deliver standards-based instruction will ultimately lead to improved student performance.
Hand in hand with an ongoing, job-embedded professional development effort should be an increased focus on the Whole Child approach to learning. ASCD believes each child, in each school, in each community deserves to be healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged. ASCD supports the Common Core State Standards because we support learning that challenges each student. However, for each child to succeed we must also set equally high standards and expectations for the school culture, family engagement, and the student’s social-emotional wellness.
Educators know that no single program or initiative provides the silver bullet for student achievement or school improvement. But we do know that the newer, higher standards will require schools and communities to more comprehensively support meaningful student learning. We believe they promote a level of academic preparedness for graduates to successfully pursue further education, a career, and civic participation. We believe they will encourage school instructional staff to develop and deliver effective, engaging instruction reflective of individual student needs and strengths. Perhaps most importantly, we know the standards necessitate an understanding of all the factors related to learning — health, safety, connectedness to school, personalization, relevance, and so forth to ensure the long-term success of students.
So, as our national dialogue around Common Core State Standards continues, let’s turn our attention to how sustained professional development and the Whole Child approach to learning can help us meet our shared goal of supporting the success of each learner.
David Griffith, ASCD Public Policy Director
Read the entire conversation from the National Journal (March 15, 2012).
There are several factors that determine whether text is complex, says Timothy Shanahan, a professor and department chairman at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey, professors at San Diego State University, California. They write in this article that vocabulary, sentence structure, coherence and organization of the text can indicate its complexity. Another factor, however, is the level of knowledge students have before reading the text.
Educational Leadership, March 2012
Check out other ASCD resources on text complexity. Watch and listen as David Liben, Grant Wiggins, Jay McTighe and Matt Copeland discuss approaches to teaching complex texts.
Editor’s Note: Text complexity is one of the topics that will be addressed at the WASCD Preconference program on Oct. 3, 2012 by Karin Hess, National Council for the Improvement of Educational Assessment
As school districts move closer to adopting the Common Core State Standards, educators say they are working to ensure they are prepared for the new focus on informational texts. Some educators say students are less familiar with nonfiction and how to read it. Experts also urge educators to ensure they maintain a balance with instruction on fiction texts.
Education Week, March 13, 2012
|
Race to the Runner-Up
Five states that lost out in the original grant competition to help reform their early childhood education programs will get a second chance to win a grant. The five runners-up to the Early Learning Challenge Fund — Colorado, Illinois, New Mexico, Oregon, and Wisconsin— will be eligible for a remaining slice of $ 133 million. Nine states won the first round of funding to increase the quality of, and access to, their early education services for children ages 0 – 5. The particulars of this new, limited competition will be released later this year with the grants to be awarded before September 30.
Education “Unconference” Opportunity
A free, one-day “unconference” called edCamp will land in Milwaukee on May 12, offering a chance for educators, administrators, students, and librarians to share and learn from each other.
“Participants are encouraged to come with an idea for a session to lead or anticipation for a full day of learning,” said Chad Kafka of Franklin Public Schools, one of the edCampMKE organizers.
In the edCamp concept, the first session of the day allows all attendees to share or listen to ideas for the rest of the sessions to be offered that day. An edCampMKE session can explore anything related to education — classroom technology integration, brain research, and other topics are all possible.
“The day focuses on education,” Kafka said, “so discussion around a teaching philosophy, sharing a tech tool, or talking pedagogy are all game!” “The concept of educators learning from other educators is a powerful means of professional learning and the edCamp format is a great way to expand and strengthen one’s own personal learning network,” said Asst. State Supt. Kurt Kiefer. “The DPI is committed to supporting this type of professional learning.”
New Assessments: Progress and Website
Smarter Balanced recently unveiled a new website which includes several features for keeping tabs on the assessment project and accessing resources related to assessment development and Common Core State Standards implementation. An interactive timeline shows when specific steps were, or will be, completed. (Some recent developments were the completion of content specifications in mathematics, English language arts/literacy, and IT architecture specifications to guide the eventual system.) Other pages targeted toward teachers, administrators, higher education, parents, and other stakeholders also provide useful updates. For example, the consortium intends to work with groups of teachers from each participating state to develop test items, pilot the new assessments, and ensure a successful transition to the tests, beginning in 2012 – 13 and continuing through 2013 – 14. The website also includes ways to stay up to date on their work through email or social media.
|
Programs from Other Organizations
|
|
4th Annual Minnetonka Summer Institutes:
Transforming Education for the 21st Century
Featuring internationally respected change leaders
Each year, the Minnetonka Schools hosts the leading educators to share research on how to transform schools and increase student achievement. Join the conversation this summer with Michael Fullan, Tony Wagner, Bill Dagget, Anne Davies, Douglas Reeves, Heidi Hayes Jacobs and James Popham. This conference is designed for teachers, principals, and district leaders to attend as a team and to be ready to return with a plan of action.
June 27 – 28, 2012: Assessment and Leadership Institute
July 19 – 20, 2012: 21st Century Learner and Change Institute
National Rural Education Technology Summit 2.0
April 30, 2012 — 12:00pm to 6:00pm EDT
Join U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan as he welcomes students, educators and rural education stakeholders to this online conference designed to provide examples of how technology is used to overcome the challenges of distance and increase access to educational opportunities in distant and remote rural areas.
The Conference sessions are designed for students, administrators and teachers, and include interactive presentations and resources. Participants will have access to a “Resource Hall” designed to highlight programs across the federal government that can be used in rural communities.
Learn more about the National Rural Education Technology Summit 2. 0 and register today — and did we mention it’s FREE!
|
Should schools teach keyboarding?
New technology, such as touch screens, has diminished the need for students to learn proper keyboarding techniques, some educators say. Now, some companies are seeking to develop a new way of typing — beyond the traditional keyboard. “Children are growing up not with the PC anymore, but the tablet,” said Benjamin Ghassabian, inventor of keyboarding software Snapkeys. “Many, many schools are using tablets. Fingers do not have to be all over the screen. There are only two positions — up or down, right or left.” T.H.E. Journal ( 4÷ 10)
Stop Bullying Now
Education Secretary Arne Duncan unveiled a new and improved StopBullying.gov website that includes action steps individuals, families, and schools can take to stop bullying. The website also includes expanded information about students who may be at risk for being bullied, and can help determine whether an individual is engaging in bullying. The new site coincides with increased public interest in bullying with the release of a powerful and disturbing documentary, Bully.
There are six keys to effective reading instruction, says Richard L. Allington, professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and Rachael E. Gabriel, assistant professor at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. The professors write, in this issue of ASCD’s Educational Leadership, that children should: read books they select, read with accuracy, understand what they read, write about what they care about, talk with their peers about reading and writing, and listen to adults read.
Educational Leadership, March 2012
Should social media be used as a learning tool?
This blog post addresses the pros and cons of using social media as a teaching tool. Among the benefits to using tools such as Facebook and Twitter in the classroom are students’ familiarity with the sites, available resources and their ability to assist in research, blogger Charlie Osborne writes. Social media also help engage students in lessons and appeal to varied learning styles, she adds. However, the same tools may create distractions, facilitate cyberbullying and require filters, she notes. ZDNet/iGeneration blog ( 4÷ 10)
|
|
|
|
|
|