Carol’s Summary:

Columnist Elisabeth Rosenthal asks “what makes a test feel like an interesting challenge rather than an anxiety-provoking assault?” Obviously, the test needs to be age-appropriate, which the Race to the Top program plans to put in place. Also, “high-stakes” testing – tests that define a students future off results from one day of testing – is shown to create anxiety and may not be reflective of the students overall abilities.

Rosenthal lived in China with her young children, 6 and 8, who were enrolled in a blended class environment, a mostly Western curriculum with an emphasis on discipline and testing.  10 years later and back in the U.S., when she asks them about the testing, all they remember was having fun since testing was commonplace. Rosenthal says, “the tests felt like so many puzzles; not so much a judgment on your being, but an interesting challenge.”

President Obama’s Race to the Top educational competition encourages more test taking. Instead of taking a long, intimidating test once a year, like was enforced with No Child Left Behind, these tests will be smaller and more frequent, allowing teachers to view students’ progress and help students throughout the semester. LifeBound has curricula that features true/false, fill in the blank, oral review, essay as well as the much-relied but overused multiple-choice questions.

Article: Testing, the Chinese Way

When my children were 6 and 8, taking tests was as much a part of the rhythm of their school day as tag at recess or listening to stories at circle time. There were the “mad minute” math quizzes twice each week, with the results elaborately graphed. There were regular spelling quizzes. Even today I have my daughter’s minutely graded third-grade science exams, with grades like 23/25 or A minus.

Read the entire article at: nytimes.com

CAROL’S SUMMARY:

Stacy Smith, CFO of Intel, notes in the CFO.com article below that education of the U.S. workforce has been steadily deteriorating. “Math and science curricula in primary-school systems in the United States are comparatively weak, he said, and the population of university students pursuing math, science, and engineering has dropped.” According to Smith, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 focused on public works and was a good step, but doesn’t come close to China’s stimulus bill, which focused on broadband and wireless infrastructure to close the digital divide.

Technology as a national agenda is crucial to creating a knowledge-worker economy. That is why our revision of Making the Most of High School includes two new chapters, including one on technology in the 21st century. If students learn to work effectively with the technologies of today they will become more versatile and it will be easier to adapt to the frequent advances in technology. To request a free copy of Making the Most of High School call our toll free # at 1.877.737.8510 or email contact@lifebound.com.

ARTICLE:

Intel CFO Sees U.S. Losing Battle for High-Tech Jobs
by Vincent Ryan
CFO.com
April 22, 2010

In the fourth quarter of this year, chipmaker Intel’s new wafer-fabrication plant in the city of Dalian in Northeast China, a $2.5 billion capital investment three years in the making, will come online. The factory will produce chipsets to support Intel’s microprocessor business and will boast a workforce of 1,200 people.

Intel received a typically rich package of grants and tax incentives from China in order to build the plant there, according to Stacy Smith, the company’s CFO. “When we are thinking about building a factory, almost every government of a sizable, mature economy reaches out to us and provides financial incentives,” he told CFO.

To view this entire article visit www.cfo.com

Carol’s Summary:

There’s more dismal news for America’s schools as international benchmarks show the U.S. lagging behind its global counterparts. According to the New York Times article below, “a greater proportion of students in more and more countries graduate from high school and college and score higher on achievement tests than students in the United States.” In yesterday’s address to a panel of U.S. policy lawmakers who plan to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act – the main law governing federal policy on public schools – Andreas Schleicher, a senior education official at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development OECD, and one of the foremost experts on comparing national school systems in the world’s 30 richest countries, presented these facts to the Senate education committee:

• Canada’s 15-year-old students are, on average, more than one school year ahead of American 15-year-olds
• Finland has the world’s “best performing education system,” partly because of its highly effective way of recruiting, training and supporting teachers.
• Only New Zealand, Spain, Turkey and Mexico now have lower high school completion rates than the U.S (about 7 in 10 American high school students earn a diploma).
• South Korea has achieved a 96 percent high school graduation rate, the world’s highest.
• Poland, Mr. Schleicher said, is improving its education system most rapidly. In less than a decade, it raised the literacy skills of its 15-year-olds by the equivalent of almost a school year. “If the U.S. would raise the performance of schools by a similar amount,” he said, “that could translate into a long-term economic value of over 40 trillion dollars.”

The committee also heard from Charles Butt, chief executive of a supermarket chain in Texas, who said employers there faced increasing difficulties in hiring qualified young workers. “The blame for America’s sagging academic achievement does not lie solely with public schools,” Mr. Butt said, but also with dysfunctional families and a culture that undervalues education. Schools are inheriting an overentertained, distracted student,” he said.

LifeBound’s comprehensive approach to helping students achieve college and career success includes programs for parents that help them value education and give them the tools to communicate this to their children. Additionally, we offer books and curriculum for Summer Academies and year-long programs in districts across the country that help students grow their critical and creative thinking skills and develop emotional and social intelligence. Until districts adopt a rigorous model of learning that challenges students to think and plan for future success, we will continue to lose ground in education and ultimately our competitive edge in the world’s marketplace.

How can districts create new standards and curriculum that help American students catch up to their global counterparts?

How can we instill a sense of what is possible into the hearts and minds of our students?

How can we transform our nation’s entertainment culture into a culture of learning?

Article

New York Times
Many Nations Passing U.S. in Education, Expert Says
By SAM DILLON
March 9, 2010

One of the world’s foremost experts on comparing national school systems told lawmakers on Tuesday that many other countries were surpassing the United States in educational attainment, including Canada, where he said 15-year-old students were, on average, more than one school year ahead of American 15-year-olds.

America’s education advantage, unrivaled in the years after World War II, is eroding quickly as a greater proportion of students in more and more countries graduate from high school and college and score higher on achievement tests than students in the United States, said Andreas Schleicher, a senior education official at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, which helps coordinate policies for 30 of the world’s richest countries.

To view this entire article visit www.nytimes.com

The term “millennials” was coined by Neil Howe and William Strauss in their 2000 book, Millennial Rising. Although each generation has its own unique characteristics, the schism between millennials and other generations centers on technology. While demographers debate just how influential digital technology has been on the millennial personality, no one doubts its profound impact. It is certainly the great unifier of millennials from places as diverse as Geneva, Japan, and Jersey. More than any other factor, it has united the generation, even globally.

Today’s article from the Chronicle of Higher Education offers several opinions by people who have studied this new breed of young people. The researchers who study them propose findings that contradict each other, perhaps because the experts themselves are a product of their own generation. The reporter, Eric Hoover, writes: “Depending on the prediction, this generation either will save the planet, one soup kitchen at a time, or crash-land on a lonely moon where nobody ever reads.” Such contradicting arguments should make us wonder whether an entire generation can be effectively stereotyped. With colleges and corporations spending immense amounts of money on experts to tell them how to attract today’s twenty somethings, what implications will these stereotypes have on our higher education institutions?

Following are statistics of millennials that do not stereotype:

• Referred to as the “Internet Generation,” they speak digital as a second language: 94% use the Internet for school research and 78% believe the Internet helps them with school work (National Center for Education Statistics, 2008).
• The vast majority of young people are not in college full time. Only an estimated 25% of 18-24-year-olds attend a four-year college full time (U.S. Department of Education).
• 44% of college students are male (For the first time in history more girls attend college than boys; Newsweek, January 30, 2006).

While it’s useful to determine patterns to help us understand trends, when it comes to students, learning is dynamic. The advent of a new generation of students and increasingly sophisticated technology has left many teachers separated from their students. Similarly, most faculty teach their students in ways they were taught, and these methods may not be reaching today’s students. Indeed, technology has emerged as the salient characteristic of the millennial generation, but like all students, they are as individual as their fingerprints.

• What unique characteristics can make millennials successful in the academic and economic world of the 21st century?
• How might we better understand these characteristics and translate them into specific pedagogical practices?
• What important principles from cognitive science and pedagogy should faculty know and utilize in their teaching?

ARTICLE:

October 11, 2009
The Millennial Muddle
How stereotyping students became a thriving industry and a bundle of contradictions
By Eric Hoover

Kids these days. Just look at them. They’ve got those headphones in their ears and a gadget in every hand. They speak in tongues and text in code. They wear flip-flops everywhere. Does anyone really understand them?

Only some people do, or so it seems. They are experts who have earned advanced degrees, dissected data, and published books. If the minds of college students are a maze, these specialists sell maps.

Ask them to explain today’s teenagers and twentysomethings. Invite them to your campus to describe this generation’s traits. Just make sure that they don’t all show up at the same time. They would argue, contradict one another, and leave you more baffled than ever.

Figuring out young people has always been a chore, but today it’s also an industry. Colleges and corporations pay experts big bucks to help them understand the fresh-faced hordes that pack the nation’s dorms and office buildings. As in any business, there’s variety as well as competition. One speaker will describe youngsters as the brightest bunch of do-gooders in modern history. Another will call them self-involved knuckleheads. Depending on the prediction, this generation either will save the planet, one soup kitchen at a time, or crash-land on a lonely moon where nobody ever reads.

To view this entire article visit www.chronicle.com