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America's Best High Schools
2009-12-14 15:17:00
For the third year in a row, U.S. News has ranked America's Best High Schools . Based on student scores on statewide tests, Advanced Placement tests, and International Baccalaureate tests, the rankings involve a three-step process that analyzes how schools are educating (1) all of their students, (2) their minority and disadvantaged students, and (3) their college bound students And the winner is ---Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia with a course load that includes DNA science, neurology, and quantum physics. But that is not all.
More About: Achievement

Words of Wisdom --From the Young
2009-12-09 19:12:00
As the old saying "out of the mouths of babes" tells us, children can offer some amazing insights into some quite complicated issues. Recently, a slew of examples was made available to us when some professionals asked a group of four to eight year olds, "'What does love mean?' Here are some of the responses 'When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.' Billy - age 4 'Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.' Mary Ann - age 4 'Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.' Bobby - age 7
More About: Words , Young , Wisdom , The Young , Words of Wisdom

Ever Wonder Where Certain Words Come From?
2009-12-06 18:38:00
Psychology and linguistics have long been intrigued with finding out how words came into being. Among the many speculations, scientists entertain ideas to how sign language might have morphed into spoken language; how grunts and other vocalizations gradually changed into speech--and on and on. So far, the question remains unanswered. But when we lower our sights to individual words, we have much better luck. And the search can be fun and fascinating--as you will find if you look at a book by John Bemelmans Marciano titled Anonyponymous: The Forgotten People Behind Everyday Words . (Anonyponomy, by the way, is a person who is almost anonymous despite the eponymous use of his name in everyday language). For example, let's consider the word "sandwich" which was created in honor of the fourth Earl of Sandwich who liked to snack?with a slab of salt beef stuffed between two pieces of toast.

High School Research Papers: A Dying Breed
2009-11-29 15:50:00
In a new book titled Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell, the sociologist and popular writer, claims that the best way to achieve expertise is to spend 10,000 hours honing your skills. The idea is not new. It has been captured for ages in the old proverb of "practice makes perfect." Unfortunately, in American education, the move seems to be in the opposite direction. Writing is one of the most important skills that schools can teach. Yet, high schools are going to shorter and shorter assignments, often to the point of requiring no papers at all.
More About: Research , School , High School , High

Ensuring Our Children's Health: It Can Be Done
2009-11-22 23:12:00
Deborah Szekely is an outstanding woman, long recognized as a, if not the, founder of the modern health and fitness movement. She has served on health and fitness councils under a variety of presidents. Recently she teamed up with Dr. David Kessler, author of The End of Overeating, to write about health care reform. Their ideas --if put into action, will --at little cost--do more for health care than all the versions of the bills now being debated in Congress. They start from the premise that we'll never control health care costs until we halt the nationwide epidemic of overeating, lack of exercise, and obesity. Currently, among America's children -- nearly one in three youngsters, from age 2 to 19, is overweight, and approximately 17% are dangerously obese. But that does not mean that things cannot change. And, interestingly, they see children as the ones who can lead the way.
More About: News , Health

Exercising While Sitting--A Splendid Idea
2009-11-16 15:23:00
If you are familiar with Pilates, yoga and exercise classes, then you are familiar with inflatable balls that let you sit and bounce up and down. Some teachers say they belong in school classrooms too because they sharpen students' attention and improve their posture. And that's what has been happening in some schools around the nation. One teacher in Chicago checked the Internet for ways to help her restless pupils sit still.
More About: Tips , Idea

Schools That Are Becoming Flexible About Sleep
2009-11-10 14:51:00
In our fast paced society, sleep deprivation among school age children, particularly adolescents, is a well-known phenomenon. Now a school in Tyneside England has set the schedule so that the school day starts later--at 10AM to be precise. The school has launched a five-month experiment that has the backing of pupils, teachers and parents.
More About: News , Schools , Sleep

Worried about College? Have You Considered Waiting?
2009-11-09 14:02:00
A college admissions consultant, Gwyeth Smith, recently published an article in the Washington Post where he has some simple advice for parents and students: WAIT! For many, this may seem like a wild proposal whose main effect is to raise the anxiety of all concerned. But it takes on a new light when you consider some of the ideas that are behind it.
More About: College , Tips

Racing to the Top -- But Taking the Wrong Path
2009-11-07 00:20:00
In a program known as Race to the Top, the federal government is coaxing states to change policies by offering them chances to get a cut of $5 billion in educational grants. One of the major goals is to tie teacher pay to student performance. As always, money talks. For example, Wisconsin lawmakers are voting this week to lift a ban on using student test scores to judge teachers. Nine other states have taken similar steps, even though states can't apply for the money yet and only a few states may end up getting grants.
More About: News , Racing , Wrong

Getting a New Perspective on Our Options
2009-11-01 00:33:00
Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for the New York Times had a column this week that gave us a graphic picture of the price that our nation is paying for the current foreign policy. It is summarized in the sentence, "For the cost of an additional soldier stationed in Afghanistan for a year, nearly 20 schools could be built."
More About: News , Options

The Times They Are A-Changing in the Textbook World
2009-10-29 15:24:00
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, a major publisher, is unveiling the biggest deal in its history. It is a $40 million, multiyear contract with Detroit public schools. But they are not going to be selling many textbooks.
More About: Reading , World , Changing , Times

Baby Einstein: A Brilliant Term Crushed by Reality
2009-10-25 02:42:00
The New York Times announced today that the Walt Disney Company is offering refunds for all those ?Baby Einstein ? videos that did not make children into geniuses. As the paper reports, the videos "may have been a great electronic baby sitter, but the unusual refunds appear to be a tacit admission that they did not increase infant intellect." Susan Linn, director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, which has been pushing the issue for years was understandably pleased, seeing it "as an acknowledgment by the leading baby video company that baby videos are not educational."
More About: News , Reality

Rethinking Columbus on Columbus Day
2009-10-13 03:53:00
When I was a kid, American history was presented in very clear --albeit unrealistic -- terms. There were the good guys and the bad guys. Columbus , at that time, was invariably in the camp of the good guys--though no one bothered to ask any native Americans if they agreed with that interpretation. Now, things have changed considerably as many teachers aim to present a more balanced perspective of what happened. Not unexpectedly, this has led to a whole new vocabulary for describing what occurred.
More About: Curriculum

America's Children: Our Future Is In The Balance
2009-10-05 05:26:00
Julia Steiny, a former member of the Providence School Board, recently wrote a piece entitled: Good luck trying to succeed as a kid in America. In it, she covers a report from the ODEC, a Paris-based organization that collects and monitors statistics on 30 industrialized countries. ODEC often reports test score. But this time, in a report titled ?Doing Better for Children ? it examines child well-being with the focus on poverty, teen-parenting, environmental quality, and telling measures like whether kids have desks, calculators and other basic tools to do schoolwork at home. To give you a hint of what is to come, forty-eight percent of U.S. children do not have the basic tools to do their homework. (The ODEC average is 35.) Overall, the statistics are appalling.
More About: News , Future , Balance

Talent! Is It Only Practice Makes Perfect?
2009-10-02 04:43:00
When we were children, exhortations to do our work were regularly accompanied by the adage "practice makes perfect." Today, I in a radio interview with Daniel Coyle, author of The Talent Code, I heard a new and fascinating twist on this idea. Coyle's thesis is that through reinforcement - 'deep practice' as he calls it - particularly when it is accompanied by the opportunity to make mistakes that we can learn from - our brain develops pathways that become more efficient.
More About: News , Practice , Perfect

Schools and Cell Phones: A Hidden Connection
2009-02-02 16:54:00
As we all know, school budgets are shrinking. In an effort to deal with the shortfall, schools are going down a controversial, but little known, path. They are getting money from cell phone tower installations.
More About: News , Cell Phones , Phones , Schools , Connection

Exercising the Brain?A Collosal Effect
2009-01-23 21:49:00
Years ago, I had the good fortune to study at Cambridge University. Living on student stipends did not afford me much opportunity to take taxis on my ventures into London. But one time, when I was late for an important meeting, I frantically hailed a taxi and told the driver my predicament. He calmly replied, ?Don?t worry, luv?I?ll get you there.? And he sure did. In the process, I stared in amazement as he negotiated the unbelievable maze of streets with skill that can only be described as phenomenal.
More About: Achievement , Effect , Brain , The Brain , Exercising

Media: The Most Dominant Force in Children?s Lives
2009-01-15 18:39:00
Several decades back, Dr. David Hamburg, an astute psychiatrist, gave a talk on the new health problems that our nation was starting to face. In contrast to the problems that earlier generations had to deal with (such as infectious epidemics), he pointed out that the new health problems were the result of ?having too much??too much food, too much alcohol, too much stimulation. Now a detailed study of 173 research efforts carried out by the National Institutes of Health and Yale University shows how on target he was.
More About: Media , Children , Tips , Force , Lives

Want to Find Some Good Books?
2009-01-13 14:11:00
Parents often ask me to suggest books for their children to read--both for school assignments and for pleasure. When you are faced with those sorts of decisions, you can get lots of help, information and advice at http://www.kidspoint.org/good_reading/ind ex.asp. It's an excellent resource--offering reviews, finding books that match the ones your child likes, offering stories your child can watch, telling the stories of the lives of authors and on and on. It's the sort of site many kids can navigate easily on their own--so that they can be active partners in the selection process.
More About: Books , Tips , Find , Good

Literacy in the U.S. A. One in Seven Can't Read
2009-01-10 22:07:00
A new federal study has reported that an estimated 32 million adults in the USA ? about one in seven ? are saddled with very low literacy skills. Operationally, that means they find it challenging to read anything more than a children's picture book.
More About: Reading , Literacy , Read

Want To Live Among People Who Like to Read?
2008-12-24 21:07:00
Every year, there is a study of which cities (with populations over 250,000) offer the best "culture and resources for reading." Once again, just as they have done for the past several years, Minneapolis and Seattle top the list.
More About: News , People , Read , Live

U.S. Children--Why Do They Receive So Much More Medication?
2008-12-18 02:42:00
A recent study in the journal Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health reported that children in the US are about three times more likely to be prescribed psychotropic medications such as antidepressants than children in Europe.
More About: News , Children , Medication

A Precedent from the President
2008-12-16 16:31:00
Andy Borowitz, a comedian and writer, recently wrote an article titled "Obama's Use of Complete Sentences Stirs Controversy." It starts: "Since the election, President -elect Barack Obama has broken with a tradition established over the past eight years through his controversial use of complete sentences, political observers say." It then goes on:
More About: The President

Writing: It Can Be Done But It Has to Be Done Differently
2008-12-07 23:39:00
Reading, and reading problems, get lots of attention. Not so with writing, and writing problems which receive far less time and effort. The consequences of this neglect are serious?as many discover once they leave college and try to move up the career ladder. Skilled writing is an enormous advantage for both academic and job success. In the desert landscape of writing instruction in schools, one form stands out. It goes by the name of ?journal writing.?
More About: Writing

So That's What Vocabulary Is Like
2008-12-04 03:50:00
Want to get a feel for what kids experience when they have to learn "vocabulary" in school--when they have to memorize new meanings, when they have write sentences for each new and unfamiliar word? You can get a sense by tackling this list of 20 unusual English words. Not only do they have pronunciation rules that are even stranger than the ones we typically have to deal with, but their meanings are far from familiar. If you want the experience to be a more "genuine," you can try "writing three sentences for each word." 1. Erinaceous Like a hedgehog 2. Lamprophony Loudness and clarity of voice
More About: Vocabulary

Brain Food
2008-11-13 15:43:00
When I was a child, the "elders" in my family always advised eating fish, saying it was "brain food." Not caring much for fish in those days, I brushed their comments aside. But, as with so much, they were on the right track. Each year, more and more information appears-- confirming the importance of diet in the way we think and feel. Its effects are far greater than one might imagine. They even extend to the reduction of aggression.
More About: Food , Tips , Brain

Twins: Forever Fascinating
2008-11-10 13:27:00
Twins have long been known to have special psychic connections. Now through a strange adoption experience, there is a new intriguing tale for us to ponder. It concerns a particular set of twins who were given up for adoption at birth--each going to a different family. Further, neither of the adoptive parents were told that their child had an identical twin.
More About: Twins , Forever

High School Graduation: The Rates are Declining!
2008-10-24 18:48:00
The Education Trust, a children's advocacy group, has conducted a study showing that, relative to their parents, children today are less likely to graduate from high school. In fact, the United States is now the only industrialized country where young people are less likely than their parents to earn a diploma.The drop out rates have been, and continue to be, staggering.
More About: News , School , High School , Graduation , High

Banning Books: It's Scary But Things Are Improving
2008-10-23 15:48:00
We are all used to reading lists from schools--which cite the books that students are expected to read. But many of those same books are on other lists as well. Every years, public libraries see hundreds of requests to ban books
More About: News , Books , Scary , Things

No Schools Are Spared as 'No Child? Wreaks Its Havoc
2008-10-13 15:21:00
Today, on its front page, the New York Times had a story about a school in Sacramento California that has, until now, not missed a testing target since the federal No Child Left Behind law took effect in 2002. The law requires every American school to bring all students to proficiency in reading and math by 2014. The school contains a wide array of students ? Hispanics, blacks, Asians, whites, American Indians, Filipinos, Pacific Islanders, English learners, the disabled. Over all, the number of its students passing tough statewide tests had increased by more than three percentage points annually, a solid record. But this year, California schools were required to make what experts call a gigantic leap. They had to increase the students proficient in every group by 11 percentage points. For the first time, this school fell short. They are, by no means, alone. This year, about half the state?s 9,800 schools fell short. The failure results in probation and, unless reversed, federal ...
More About: News , Schools , Havoc