education articles

U.S. President Barack Obama recently defended Race to the Top, a 4-billion-dollar plan that aims at reforms from kindergarten to 12th grade, calling it the single most important initiative the administration has taken to date.

Proponents call the plan a much-needed solution to a patchwork system in which some public schools are top notch while others trail far behind.

Critics, however, say the ambitious plan grants too much power to the federal government and deprives states of the ability to enact local policies more in tune with students’ needs.

Obama said the states, educators and reformers, for the most part, have responded with great enthusiasm to this promise of excellence.

“But I know there’s also been some controversy about Race to the Top. Part of it, I believe, reflects a general resistance to change,” Obama said in a recent speech. “We get comfortable with the status quo even when the status quo isn’t good. We make excuses for why things have to be the way they are. And when you try to shake things up, some people aren’t happy.”

Some experts said the government had no choice but to take action now as some schools are so bad.

“Schools are so bad in some places, especially inner city schools, that somebody had to do something,” said Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former White House and congressional advisor.

Critics said that while some schools do need to be revamped, the solution lies at the state rather than the federal level.

“The people in Washington are furthest away from the students and the classroom so they are going to be the least effective in meeting student needs,” Lindsey Burke, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation, said.

There is no correlation between the national standards and academic achievement of a country, and the state solutions have worked, especially for minority students, Burke argued.

Florida, for example, has implemented a number of sweeping reforms such as strong state standards, alternative teacher certification and school choice for special needs students. Black students there now surpass or meet the statewide average in reading in eight states. Hispanic students in the state surpass or meet the statewide average of all students in 31 states.

Burke also said politics have had a negative impact on minority education.

The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which has proven successful, is now being phased out due to political factors, she said.

“The teachers’ unions hate it. And the teachers’ unions are the biggest contributors to members of Congress. They don’t like school choice in general so this program was at the top of their list to be eliminated, despite its success,” Burke said.

Obama sends his children to private schools, along with 44 percent of senators.

“The administration clearly values school choice for its own children,” Burke said.

Haskins, however, argued that Obama has done much for pre-school education — “probably more than any other administration.”

“Obama’s education agenda is quite impressive,” he said. Enditem

Australian publishers will be tempted to move their businesses and assets to the United States in the wake of a new law shielding U.S.

journalists and publishers from defamation from outside the country, an Australian lawyer said on Wednesday.

Barrister Tim Robertson, who represented U.S. newswire Dow Jones when it was sued by Australian mining magnate Joseph Gutnick, said the law, signed by U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday night, would be seen as “a line in the sand”.

“The law simply reflects the constitutional position in the United States where there is freedom of speech, and there isn’t in most other countries,” Robertson told Australian Associated Press on Wednesday.

“The U.S. courts, as a matter of public policy, have always refused to enforce defamation verdicts from countries which don’t respect free speech rights, and that would include Australia.”

Robertson said the law, which prevents U.S. federal courts from recognizing or enforcing a foreign judgment for defamation that is inconsistent with the first amendment of the American Constitution, has serious long-term implications for Australia.

“Unless Australia cleans up its act it will find publishers, such as Australian-based Crikey, relocating to the U.S., so that their website is published in the U.S. and their assets are in the U.S.,” Robertson said.

“This will be the incentive for publishers to move there because people won’t be able to enforce verdicts against them,” Robertson said. “It’s the line in the sand for protection of web publishers.”

The Pacific Islands Forum Education Ministers’ Meeting (FEdMM) has provided a very effective platform for leveraging donors and development partners’ reactions to the development needs of education in the region.

In a presentation on behalf of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat at the Consultation Meeting on the Pacific Education Development Framework in Nadi, Fiji on Wednesday, the Forum Secretariat’s Social Policy Adviser, Filipe Jitoko said since the first FEdMM was held in 2001, “We can confidently say that it has provided a very effective platform for leveraging donors and development partners reactions to the development needs of education in the region.”

The Forum Basic Education Action Plan that was adopted by the Education Ministers in 2001 has provided a mechanism for regional cooperation in education.

The Pacific Regional Initiatives for the Delivery of Basic Education (PRIDE) Project was the vehicle for implementing the Plan.

“And indeed, PRIDE has provided countries of the region with substantial financial and human resources for the enhancement of regional education systems.

At this point I want to thank the European Union (EU) and the New Zealand Assistance for International Development (NZAID) for their generous support of PRIDE,” said Jitoko.

The Pacific Education Development Framework (PEDF), endorsed by the Forum Education Ministers’ Meeting in Tonga last year came out as a result of a review of the Forum Basic Education Action Plan,

The three-day Consultation Meeting on the PEDF which started in Nadi on Wednesday will, among other things, review the Framework and identify areas that need interventions and discuss and agree on regional initiatives to support the implementation of the PEDF at country levels.

In his first visit to the Chinese mainland, Noam Chomsky, the 82-year-old world renowned intellectual, father of modern linguistics and perhaps the most famous critic of American foreign policy and mainstream media, warned his listeners at Peking University of the dangers of environmental and nuclear catastrophes.

Chomsky appeared in Beijing as the keynote speaker for GLOW in Asia VIII, a forum held by the Generative Linguistics in the Old World (Asia) at the Beijing Foreign Language and Culture University from August 12 to 15.

“There are two major threats of the lives and death of the humankind,” Chomsky said in his August 13 lecture, Contours of the world: continuities and changes. “One is the environmental catastrophe, the other is the threat of nuclear power.”

Chomsky pointed out that China had seen spectacular development following the reform and opening up in 1978; however, the problems of environmental pollution as well as huge social inequalities need to be addressed.

Wearing a blue shirt and silver tie, white haired Chomsky spoke tenderly, as laughter and applause rang out more than a dozen times.

“Professor Chomsky’s visit is not only a big event for linguistics and cognition science, but also notable for the whole Chinese academic world,” said Huang Zhengde, the organizer, who was also a student of Chomsky and a linguistics professor at Harvard University.

In 1957, Chomsky’s post-doctoral thesis “Sentence Structure” laid the foundation of modern linguistics in establishing a “biolinguistic” approach to language studies.

This new way of looking at linguistics also set new directions of research in psychology, philosophy, semantics, education and artificial intelligence.

However, it was not until he expressed his opposition toward the Vietnam War in 1967 that he became internationally known.

Called “the forever dissident,” Chomsky made a bigger public name for himself as a relentless critic of US foreign policy, media and educational systems.

A moment of truth came when an audience member asked what the contour of his life was after years of fighting and facing controversy.

“A part of my contour is trying to do something about the suffering and desperate fate of a huge number of people and, by now, the entire species. The other part is scientific research, such as linguistics, philosophy and cognitive science,” he said. “Although times change, commitments remain.”

The Swedish government has proposed to introduce games education in middle schools in the fall of 2012, said Education Minister Jan Bjorklund in Stockholm on Tuesday.

“Games education for quality students will be introduced even in middle schools.

Talented students have the right to develop that in their own will,” Bjorklund said at a press conference.The government aims at introducing an experiment with games education in middle schools in the theory subjects, exactly the same as in upper secondary schools.

Schools will use test and examinations to choose students who can get the education, and this should be a national recruitment.

“It is the students’ capability that should decide who should be accepted and no one should be tempted to take an education that they are not able to finish.

If the admission happens only because of the parents’ interest, then it will really lead to social slanting recruitment,” Bjorklund said.

A game education will contain special depth and width in the real subject. For example, students can be given a possibility to learn it already in primary school and get a certificate for that.

School administration will supervise on the quality of such education and the teacher’s right qualification.

The proposal indicated that ten classes with a maximum of 30 students each will be able to offer game education in the fall of 2012.

A total of 30 classes will be opened. Students will also study mathematics, natural and social subjects. Both public and free standing schools can take part in, Bjorklund said.

Sweden is seen as a strong country in digital games and competitions in the world.

The U.S. News and World Report released its annual list of “Best Colleges” on Tuesday, in which the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) was ranked seventh among national universities.

Caltech tied at seventh with traditional rival Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Topping the list were Ivy Leaguers Harvard, Princeton and Yale. Columbia was ranked at No. 4, with Stanford coming in 5th.

The University of Southern California (USC) tied for 23rd place with Carnegie Mellon University, while the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) tied for 25th with University of Virginia and Wake Forest University.

The rankings were based on a range of indicators, which include peer assessment, graduation and freshman retention, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources and alumni giving.

The newsmagazine’s popular annual roundup of top schools receives close attention from families making college choices and from image-conscious schools looking to see whether they have moved up or down.

The rankings are widely read because they are an easy-to- understand gauge of academic quality, educators say.

Forbes.com has released a ranking of the world’s top ten highest-paid authors based on their earnings from books, film rights, television, gaming deals and other income from June 1, 2009, through June 1, 2010.

James Patterson tops the list with 70 million U.S. dollars, while the “Twilight Saga” author Stephenie Meyer follows at the second place with 40 million dollars in earning.

whose passion is aviation and who has Asperger Syndrome (AS), lay on the floor of the family room groaning and sighing bitterly. “This assignment is mind-numbingly boring! I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do! I HATE SCHOOL!” He was angry about the perceived injustice done to him. How dare the teacher assign a speech and poster about a family member?

Foreseeing an ensuing meltdown, I was on the verge of conceding that we would try again tomorrow when an idea struck me. “I have a box of your grandfather’s WWII flight memorabilia. Would you like to see it?” My son sat straight up. “Wow! That would be super!” I quickly retrieved the box, opened it and stood back to watch what I knew was coming. “A WWII air force base flight manual! Look, his insignia and wings! Oh, cool, a canteen menu—and here are letters from his pilot buddies!” He moved quickly around the room.

“I can do my speech on Papa [his grandfather]! I will have the best project! I will write and write—my mind is racing with ideas! I can’t wait to start!” In seconds, the assignment—and my son—were transformed. What made the difference? My son’s special interest area is aviation.

What is a Special Interest Area?
Special interest areas (SIAs) are “those passions that capture the mind, heart, time and attention of individuals with AS, providing the lens through which they view the world” (Winter-Messiers, 2007). They differ from the hobbies of typical children in the amount of time, thought and focus children with AS give them, usually to the exclusion of other interests and activities. Examples of SIAs range from Thomas the Tank Engine to storms to vampires (Winter-Messiers, 2007) to toilets (Attwood, 2006). Parents and teachers often see SIAs as annoying, socially harmful activities, and seek to diminish students’ involvement in them (Attwood, 1998).

This is revealed in our tendency to refer to SIAs as “obsessions” (Kluth & Schwarz, 2008), rather than the more respectful “fascinations” or “passions.” Hans Asperger (1944/1991), however, was the first to observe the potential of SIAs: “A special interest enables [those with AS] to achieve quite extraordinary levels of performance in a certain area” (p. 45).

Why are SIAs Important?
SIAs are the best-kept secret for motivating students with AS. This untapped gold mine of drive and passion lies within students, and the challenge for parents and teachers is discerning how best to tap into the students’ reserves of passion for saxophones, frogs, fairies or Disney films (Winter-Messiers, 2007).

The SIA is so intensely important to a student with AS that she is utterly compelled to be involved with the interest and to learn more about it, a drive that Attwood (2003) perceives as “the almost insatiable thirst for access to the interest” (p. 131). This thirst should be used to change, motivate, inspire and reward students with AS.

How Can SIAs be Incorporated at School?
Far from mere leisure activities, SIAs are the core of students with AS. As one boy emphatically declared, “Airplanes are who I am” (Winter-Messiers et al., 2007). Thus, it stands to reason that a teacher or parent who can access this powerful awareness can shape a student’s behavior. Integrating assigned tasks with SIAs increases the probability that the student will work hard to achieve his personal goals (Winter-Messiers et al., 2007). Begin by asking the student about her SIA, as assumptions can lead to errors. For example, a girl interested in baseball may not really care about playing baseball herself or attending games, but may have considerable knowledge of baseball statistics, players’ personal records or baseball uniforms. Understanding the SIA is critical. Parents are also an excellent information source.

Preferred assignment design: Encourage the student to infuse his SIA into an assignment. While teachers cannot redesign every assignment to fit an SIA, some tasks readily lend themselves to SIA adaptation, such as story problems, speeches, creative essays, free reading or Internet research.

Non-preferred assignment reward: Establish a “work/play” routine in which the student completes a portion of a non-preferred assignment to earn free time in which she may engage in an SIA-related activity. Offer time to read an SIA-related book or talk to staff about the SIA once the assignment, or a segment of it, is finished.

Positive behavioral consequence: Teachers can reward students’ appropriate behaviors by allowing access to their SIAs. For example, after 10 minutes of working without talking to his neighbor, a student could earn 2 minutes of time on an SIA website. Another student may learn to manage self-stimulating behavior, such as growling or hand flapping, by taking a sensory break from class to engage in a simple form of his SIA. For example, a child who collects dinosaurs could have one on his sensory break. Caution: A student should never be denied his SIA as a negative behavioral consequence. Telling a student that he cannot read about elevators this week because of negative behaviors severs him from his core passion, and the effects can be devastating. Work positively instead: “When you finish your Civil War reading assignment, I will listen to you talk about elevators for three minutes.”

Related work activities: Teachers and parents may work together to design a school-based activity connected to an SIA. For example, a girl who wants to be a chef may help the school cook design a menu, or a boy interested in play production could assist the drama teacher in organizing props. Students could also work with community experts, such as a photographer, architect or plumber, in their SIAs. In this way, students can learn invaluable skills and see first-hand how their SIAs translate into careers.

Summary
Motivation drives engagement. The most powerful motivator for these students is their SIA. They are highly capable of working hard—if that work comes through the SIA door. Let’s open this door while it is in our power to do so!

Mark, the beautiful boy with Asperger Syndrome (AS) whose fascination with dinosaurs makes him sound like an expert far older than his six years, has meltdowns at school several times a week.

Emily, a 10th-grader with AS, becomes animated every time she talks about the book series Twilight and its recent film adaptation.

But she seems oblivious to the bored nods of peers who try to avoid getting “trapped” in conversation with her. And Luke, the mathematical genius with AS, reluctantly has to tear himself away from his calculus book every time his resource teacher forces him to converse with those around him. On the one hand, the adults who care for these children with autism spectrum disorders stand in awe and appreciation of their gifts and talents. On the other, they worry that the peers in the world in which they spend much of their time—school—never see past their odd behaviors. Indeed, these misunderstood children are ignored at best, and more often than not are the objects of ridicule and bullying. Peer education and Circle of Friends can be important steps in establishing a positive social environment for children with social challenges.

Peer Education

In my practice as a special education teacher in a public school inclusion program, I have found that once peers have been educated on the characteristics of these special-needs kids, they usually want to help. Initially, parents may want to protect their child’s privacy by not pointing out the fact that he or she is different. After all, their strengths are obvious; can’t everyone appreciate their child they way they do? Sadly, this is usually not the case with peers who shun anyone who doesn’t fit the usual mold.

Without peer awareness, the students who need the most social interaction practice often end up getting the least.If you have a child you think could benefit from peer education, here are some tips:

Try to get your child’s individualized education program (IEP) manager on board.

He/she would probably be willing, but just hasn’t thought about it. Parents can also volunteer to read a book to the class and answer questions.
If you are staff member, always get permission from the parents first before beginning a peer education lesson.
Start the lesson by pointing out that everyone has strengths and challenges. Have all children share some of their own.
Then use one of the many wonderful juvenile resources available to you. Some of these titles include: This is Asperger Syndrome by Elisa Gagnon and Brenda Smith Myles, Jackson Whole Wyoming by Joan Clark, In His Shoes by Joanna L. Keating-Velasco and Amazingly Alphie by Roz Espin. There are many more; just choose an age-appropriate book depending on the peer group with whom you’re working.

Share the book, and then follow up with a question-and-answer period.

Allow children to brainstorm ways they can positively interact with the child with social challenges, and give them safe avenues to report bullying.

Circle of Friends
In our school, after peer education, we have found it beneficial to then form peer mentor groups of 8-10 students called a Circle of Friends. A Circle of Friends is a group of peers willing to interact on a daily basis with a child with social challenges. Basic guidelines for a Circle of Friends include:

Choose peer mentors who are in the same classes/activities as the child, ride the bus with him or her, or have the same lunch period. Choose peers of both sexes.

If possible, find one or two peers who have similar areas of interest.

Have regular meetings. There are two kinds of meetings with two separate purposes: Meetings with the child who has AS are for socializing. Meetings without the child are to get feedback from the peer mentors and teach them how to interact appropriately with the child.

Teach and practice conversation skills with all of the children.
Start a book club, which is a great activity for the peer mentors to learn more about students with special needs.

One may think peer education and Circle of Friends are just extra tasks for already overworked adults to add to their “to do” list, but they should look at it this way. They can spend time proactively creating an accepting environment where children who are different have the opportunity to interact with peers throughout the day, or spend time cleaning up “messes” and denying these children the opportunity to develop the skills they will need to become productive adults. Either way, time is spent. And that aside, what could be more rewarding than to see a child with autism looking forward to coming to school, sitting in the cafeteria eating lunch at a table with other students, or even having a conversation by a locker, just like anyone else?