History offers us the ability to see what has been accomplished and learn from it.
WCPSS is devoted to teaching all our kids that diversity is something to respect and appreciate, therefore creating a learning environment where each child has equal opportunity for success in school. Learning from each other is a part of being on your way to being a responsible adult. This is how we prepare our children for an increasingly global world.
Raising expectations and standards in ways such as increasing the quality of the school leadership and teachers, staff training, aligning state standards to curriculum and accountability, and parental involvement are some ways that improve education.
Schools in more affluent communities, where parents and community members help to raise additional funds, are able to provide enrichment programs such as music, the arts, well-stocked school libraries, that less affluent schools generally can't afford. Look at different schedules and teaching styles that saves money and improves the learning experience. Explore green vocational technical course programs in existing high schools or create a magnet high school for this movement. This would allow non college-bound students to graduate with a trained skill. To improve drop out rates, a program similar to Wake Early College of Health and Sciences (WECHS), a Learn and Earn High School would work well in teaching students a curriculum focused on “green” trade skills with an emphasis on energy efficiency so that they can become contributors to our changing communities.
We should take this down turn in growth and our economy to explore, have dialogue, and implement in whatever small ways to advance academics in all Wake schools.
Wake’s success in attracting high-paying jobs is based on its competitive advantage. We need to nurture and feed this success by constantly raising the academic bar, looking at creative ways to teach, and finding new ways to make our schools even better so the children succeed.
Article by Harris Cooper
Harris Cooper is professor and chairman of the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience at Duke University.
The long summer break is a longstanding part of our culture, but should it be? Thanks to air conditioning, schoolchildren no longer need long summer breaks because classrooms get too hot. And because the family farm is largely a thing of the past, there's no need for the kids to be off to work in the fields.
President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have made increasing the length of the school year a cornerstone of their proposed education reforms. There is good evidence to support their effort.
But it is not only the summer schedule that needs rethinking. The length and organization of the school day don't serve our children well either. Look outside a school building as the day ends and you see a queue of buses and vans waiting to transport children to empty homes or to afterschool programs.
For the past 15 years, my graduate students and I have reviewed research on school time and calendar issues. We've looked at summer learning loss, summer school, year-round calendars, afterschool programs and homework. For nearly all these reforms, the evidence suggests that more learning time would have positive effects for kids - especially for poor kids and those struggling in school. But each effect is generally small, on its own.
The increases in time have to be substantial enough that educators can adopt new curricula - and new expectations about what students should know and when they should know it. Don't add 15 minutes a day, add an hour. Don't add five days to the calendar, add 20. And, simultaneously, change how that time is used.
But let's entertain even broader reforms, ones that draw from all the research on time and learning and would also fit well with the needs of today's American families.
Let's construct a school day that provides educational opportunities that start at 6 a.m. and end at 6 p.m. No, not just more hours of the same old thing. Instead, from 6 to 9 a.m. and 4 to 6 p.m., make remedial, enrichment and accelerated instruction available, in small groups. Participation is chosen, smorgasbord style, by parents and teachers to meet the unique needs of each child. Proposing such a daily arrangement is not new; in fact it was highlighted in a 1990s report titled "Prisoners of Time" commissioned by the U.S. Senate.
This instructional time outside the "regular" school day could include the "pull-out" programs for children with special needs, only now they would be "pull-in-an-hour-early-so-your-child-doesn't-have-to-miss-science" programs.
Afterschool programs - karate, dance, etc. - could be held on campus.
And let's do away with the long summer break. Research clearly shows that children doing poorly in school fall further behind over summer. Educators at year-round schools often point to the opportunity for timely intervention as one of its most important features.
Here's a "radical" scenario: Children could go to school 40 weeks a year in four sessions of 10 weeks, with three two-week intersessions in fall, winter and spring, and a six-week summer break. Those two-week intersessions could offer a variety of supplemental instruction, including intense remediation for children falling behind.
Throughout American history, the school day and calendar have been dictated not by the needs of children but by the economic needs of families and communities. The current schedule is anachronistic.
Education Week produced an interactive timeline digs deep into the Education Week archives to tell the story of U.S. education and the changing policies, theories, and perspectives that have influenced it since 1981, the year the publication began.
To see clearly where we want to go, we need to first understand how we have come to this point. "Contemporary issues cannot be reasonably discussed outside the context of history. "
A recent report by the National Center on Education and the Economy
The report shares soild ideas how we can remake American schools. They found strategies that work in Ontario, Canada; Shanghai, China; Finland, Japan and Singapore.
Recruiting the best teachers requires competitive compensation and quality professional training.
Perdue was elected Monday at the board's annual meeting at The Greenbrier resort. She will succeed West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, who has been the board's chairman since 2009. Former Virginia Board of Education president Mark Emblidge was re-elected as vice chairman.
The 16-state organization is based in Atlanta and helps education and government leaders work together to advance education in the region.
According to this story from WRAL, coordinated efforts through "professional learning teams" have succeeded in lowering the WCPSS dropout total from 1,600 in 2007-08, to under 1,403 in 2008-09. However, one of the first actions of the new BOE majority last Fall was to end designated PLT meeting time. An alternative has yet to materialize that gives teachers the professional learning time they lost.
This website compiles elementary and secondary education data collected by organizations other than NCES and serves as a general resource on that topic, describing major developments in state-level education policies
"Education is an economic issue and a moral issue. It's the civil rights issue of our generation. We have an obligation to give every child in America an education that helps them succeed in their career and fulfill their role as active and involved citizens." ~ Arne Duncan
