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Welcome to the Tuesday morning, April 24, 2018, edition of the HML Post. This weekly newsletter is a service to the members of the Horace Mann League of the USA.
More articles of interest are on the HML Flipboard site.
Editor's note: The HML Board encourages the wider distribution of the
HML Post. If you would like to have the
HML Post made available to your administrative team (or graduate students),
click here.
Donations to support the League's activities, like the HML Post, are always appreciated. The HML is a 501c3 non-profit association.
Click here for more information.
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Quote of the Week
The Leader's job isn't to have all the ideas.
It's to make sure all the ideas are heard and that the best one wins.
Chris Hawker
__________________
Because of parental protests, New York State shifted it testing
contract to Questar Assessment from Pearson in 2015 because Pearson would not release test questions to teachers and the public for review. Analysis of reading passages and questions released by Questar from the 2017
8th grade ELA exam reveal major problems in the design of the test and its value for assessing student learning and improving instruction.
A well-designed test starts with easier reading passages and questions to build up student confidence as they proceed through the test. Placing easier passages and questions first, and having a variety of different types of questions, helps educators establish the specifics children are having trouble understanding. But the Common Core aligned exam has reading passages that are almost all of similar length and difficulty and with the same types of questions. Not only is it designed so that large numbers of students fail, but it also gives educators no information about why they are failing. It is worthless as a learning assessment to inform instruction.
(
Learn more
.)
Multitasking with a mobile phone negatively impacts students' lecture recall, reading comprehension, and reading speed, according to a new analysis presented here today at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association.
The worst effects come from using social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, according to a paper presented by doctoral student Quan Chen and associate professor Zheng Yan of the University at Albany, State University of New York.
Their study, titled "A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Off-Task Multitasking with Mobile Phones on Learning," used statistical techniques to aggregate the results of 29 prior studies on the topic, published between 2003 and 2016. All told, 1,925 participants took part in those studies, each of which examined the ways students (often in college) engage in multitasking behaviors such as talking, texting, social networking, surfing the internet, and instant messaging.
(
Learn more
.)
Research shows that teachers of color help close achievement gaps for students of color and are highly rated by students of all races-a fact that is all the more relevant in light of persistent gaps between students of color and students from low income families and their peers who are White or from more affluent families. Unfortunately, although more teachers of color are being recruited across the nation, the pace of increase is slow and attrition rates are high, leaving growing gaps between the demand for such teachers and the supply.
This report finds that while the population of teachers of color overall is growing, Black and Native American teachers are a declining share of the teacher workforce and the gap between the percentage of Latino teachers and students is larger than for any other racial or ethnic group. The report also examines how the lack of diversity in the teaching workforce impacts students, and offers district and state policy solutions. (Learn more.)
Technology is entwined in the lives of the children who attend Johnson Elementary School in Charlottesville, Va.-perhaps too deeply, said Principal Summerlyn Thompson.
Thompson, the leader of the PK-4 school since 2013, has seen some of her students arriving at school bleary-eyed from lack of sleep. She believes the culprits are television and digital devices.
"I've had to tell kindergarten parents to take the television out of their kids' rooms," said Thompson, who leads a diverse school of about 365 students. Some parents have told Thompson they hide tablets and cellphones at night, but their resourceful children have found them while their parents are sleeping.
No surprise, then, that Thompson is among the 95 percent of principals who indicated in an exclusive Education Week Research Center survey that students spend too much time on devices when they're not in school.
(
Learn More
.)
Why is corporal punishment still being administered in the schools of the rural South when it has been virtually abolished across the rest of the United States? Han suggests several reasons. First, Han speculates that a "Southern culture of violence" may help explain why the rural South is more tolerant toward the physical discipline of children than other regions of the United States. Moreover, evangelical Protestants favor corporal punishment more than other religious groups, and a high percentage of Southerners (34%) are evangelical Protestants. Thus, Han reasons,
schools in conservative religious communities probably have more support for corporal punishment than schools where conservative religious views are not so prominent.
Finally, corporal punishment in Southern schools may be self-perpetuating as generation after generation of rural Southerners experiences physical discipline during childhood and simply passes the practice on to succeeding generations. Han cited research finding that teachers who received corporal punishment as children were more tolerant of it than teachers who did not. (Learn more.)
This resource provides an overview of state instructional time requirements for kindergarten through 12th grade - including days or hours per year, hours per day and start and end date parameters where they exist in state law.
There are many exceptions to instructional time requirements across states and not all of them are indicated in this 50-State Comparison. Unless otherwise indicated, states that have hours per year and days per year require both.
Key Takeaways:
- Twenty-nine states plus the District of Columbia require at least 180 days of instruction.
- Twelve states place parameters around school start and/or finish dates.
- Thirty-five states differentiate the hours in a day or year, or the days in a year based on grade levels. (Learn more.)
Fifty suggestions on how to check what you are doing to improve recruitment and retention in your groups and associations.
1. Provide current members with a referral bonus or award.
Leveraging your current members' networks is one of the best ways to nd prospective new members. Ordering current members some kind of incentive, even if it's small, can get them out there preaching from on high for you without you having to spend any additional time or resources.
2. Recognize current members for their recruitment efforts.
If you have members that are active in bringing in new members to your association, celebrate them! Whether it's in your newsletter or on your website, this will show your members that you appreciate their recruitment e orts.
3. Get social!
Find out where your ideal members are hanging out on social media, and be active there. You don't need to be on every social network-just where your members are. (and 47 more ideas).
Experts already have deemed bullet points in presentations and speeches a big no-no, and rightly so. It's hard for your audience to concentrate
both on a bullet point and what you're saying, so listeners aren't as likely to remember your information. And there's the fact that
the brain remembers better with images
, too. But neuroscience has just laid out another hugely compelling reason to ditch the little black dots for a good
story
.
Your brain on bullets
In his
article
on Buffer, Leo Widrich explains that, when you listen to a typical Powerpoint presentation with bullet points, Broca's area and Wernicke's area of the brain both activate. Both of these areas are associated with producing, processing and understanding language. So it's clear that audiences who get bullet points are trying to understand the content and meaning within those points. (
Learn more.)
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Recently, any number of education funders, nonprofits, and associations have climbed aboard the personalized learning bandwagon - e.g., the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Gates Foundation, Digital Promise, AASA, and many others. And at first glance it looks compelling enough: Let's organize adult activities around children's interests, needs, and strengths; let's assess them on their progress toward agreed-upon standards and give them the time they need to reach those standards, and let's use the latest software to make ongoing, real-time adjustments so that each student is learning the right material for them, at the right time.
But, and to repeat what has been said by other critics of this movement, I don't see anything new here but the brand name. Sure, computers have become more sophisticated and "adaptive" to individual students. But the concept of personalization itself is anything but original. Educators in the Progressive tradition have spent decades advocating for schools to be more responsive to children's individual needs and interests.
School boards set the curriculum for schools, and they have the legal right to decide what materials and speech are appropriate for the classroom.
Teachers face particular challenges when they are teaching political or controversial topics in classrooms. They must navigate a narrow passage between delivering the curriculum as required by their local board of education and sharing their own personal views and other information, while also abiding by board regulations regarding content and delivery. In addition, they must deliver the curriculum without attempting to indoctrinate students with their own personal beliefs, particularly on religious, political, and controversial topics.
In K-12 public schools, the local school board has the authority to set the curriculum, and teachers must adhere to it, as well as following all state and school board regulations.
Simply put, K-12 teachers do not have the broad academic freedom that is usually afforded to their counterparts in higher education. Courts have made a distinction between university faculty and K-12 teachers in the area of free speech, noting "a special concern of the First Amendment" in higher education because of the university's unique role in participating in and fostering a marketplace for ideas. (
Learn more.)
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The Education Cartoon of the Week.
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The Superintendent's Special topics:
(Please share your ideas. Contact Jack McKay
)
Sponsor a Professional Colleague for membership
in
the Horace Mann League.
Click here to download the "Sponsor a Colleague" form.
On the Art of Teaching by Horace Mann.
The book, On The Art of Teaching by Horace Mann has been presented to new teachers as a welcome gift by a number of
schools district
. For orders of 50 or more, the district's name is printed on the front cover.
Ordering Information
Cost per copy: $12.50
Orders of 50 to 99: $11.00
Orders of 100 or more: $10.00
Send orders to: (include name of district, P.O. #, and address)
The Horace Mann League of the USA
560 Rainier Lane
Port Ludlow, WA 98365
or
email: Jack McKay
FAX (866) 389 0740
About Us
The Horace Mann League of the USA is an honorary society that promotes the ideals of Horace Mann by advocating for public education as the cornerstone of our democracy.
Officers:
President:
Dr. Eric King, Superintendent, (ret.) Muncie Public Schools, IN
President-elect:
Dr. Laurie Barron, Superintendent, Evergreen Schools, Kalispell, MT.
Vice President: Dr. Lisa Parady, Exec. Dir. Alaska Assoc. of School Admin., Juneau, AK
Past President:
Dr. Martha Bruckner, Exec.Dir., MOEC Collective Impact, Omaha, NE
Directors:
Dr. Ruben Alejandro, Supt.
of
Schools, (ret.) Weslaco, TX
Dr. David Berliner, Professor Emeritus, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
Dr. Talisa Dixon, Supt. of Schools, Cleveland Heights - University Heights, OH
Mr. Jeffery Charbonneau, Science Coordinator, ESD 105 and Zillah HS, WA
Dr. Carol
Choye
, Instructor, (ret.) Superintendent, Scotch Plains Schools, NJ
Dr. Brent Clark, Executive Director, Illinois Assoc.
of
School Admin. IL
Dr. Ember Conley, Supt.
of
Schools, Park City, UT
Dr. Linda Darling Hammond, Professor of Education, Stanford U. CA
Dr. James Harvey, Exec.
Dir
., Superintendents Roundtable, WA
Dr. Steven Ladd, Superintendent, (ret.) Elk Grove USD, Elk Grove, CA
Dr. Stan Olson, President, Silverback Learning, (former supt.
of
Boise Schools, ID)
Dr. Martin Brook, Executive Direcctor, Tri-State Consortium, Satuket, NY
Dr. Kevin Riley, Superintendent, Gretna Community Schools, NE
Executive Director:
Dr.
Jack McKay, Professor Emeritus, University of Nebraska at Omaha,
560 Rainier Lane, Port Ludlow, WA 98365 (360) 821 9877
To become a member of the HML,
click here to download an application.
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