Elementary » Carol J. Carter

Developing Thinking & Behavioral Skills to Reduce Youth Crime Rates

Could developing a kids’ thinking and behavioral skills cut crime among youth?

It’s a very good possibility, found a new study from the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab. In the study, about 1400 kids in 7th through 10th grade from high-crime neighborhoods in Chicago were chosen to participate in the 30-week program Becoming A Man. A similar group was tracked who did not go through the course. Researchers found students who had been through the Becoming A Man program were 44% less likely to have been arrested by the end of the year.

Read the rest of this entry »

Share this Article with Your Friends:

Looking Back: How Have Students’ Reading Competencies Changed Over Time

When you visualize the 21^st century classroom, what do you see? A smartboard on the front wall, iPads in every studentâ€™s hands, individualized learning programs on the computer, setting the pace of a lesson while a teacher stands by for questionsâ€¦

Some classrooms have moved into the digital age, however, the 21^st century classroom is more commonly described as overcrowded and underfunded. The student demographic is diverse with disabled, gifted, English language, impoverished, and enriched learners. Teachers are faced with having to teach to all levels of the classroom, and due to lack of time, resources, and bandwidth, they teach to the students in the middle; often leaving those who are falling behind behind and those who are gifted unchallenged.

In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education released the report â€œA Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reformâ€ inspired by â€œa rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.â€[i] This report, though controversial, did bring to light educational issues we are still fighting today.

The following are some noteworthy statistics from the 1983 report:

Â· Functional illiteracy among minority youth may run as high as 40 percent.
Â· The number and proportion of students demonstrating superior achievement on the SATs have dramatically declined.
Â· Many 17-year-olds do not possess the â€œhigher orderâ€ intellectual skills we should expect from them.
Â· There was a steady decline in science achievement scores of the U.S. 17-year-olds as measured by national assessments of science in 1969, 1973, and 1977.
Â· Between 1975 and 1980, remedial mathematics courses in public 4-year colleges increased by 72 percent.
Â· Too many teachers are being drawn from the bottom quarter of graduating high school and college students.

Sound familiar? Three decades later, minorities are trending toward becoming the majority, while the achievement gap continues to grow; college students are graduating with weak critical thinking skills; studentsâ€™ competency in STEM subjects arenâ€™t keeping up with the amount of job openings in STEM fields; and teachers are now said to come from the bottom one-third of their class.[ii]

[i] â€œA Nation at Riskâ€ By The National Commission on Excellence in Education

[ii] â€œAchievement Gapâ€ http://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/achievement-gap/

Share this Article with Your Friends:

The Education Gender Gap: From Grade School to Grad School

Since the 1980s, more women than men have been attending college. Since 1996, more women have been attending and graduating from college.¹ A study in 2008 found the male to female ratio for attending college was 43.6 and 56.4, respectively. The gender gap in education continues to widen in favor of women, but why?

The 2011 PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) found a consistent difference between girls’ and boys’ academic achievement in most countries. Â Fourth grade girls have a much higher average reading achievement than boys, and their 2011 results continue to show this pattern. In the United States, recent research found that girls had an advantage in reading at all grades, from kindergarten through twelfth grade. Â Another study conducted by PISA in 2009 showed that 15-year-old girls performed consistently better in reading than boys.³

Read the rest of this entry »

Share this Article with Your Friends:

Growing Class Sizes: Creative Solutions for Challenging Times

What could cause a student to go from Student of the Month one year to nearly failing the next? Family problems, class size, social changes, and a more challenging workload could all be indicators of a rough academic year. For Shania, a third grade student at P.S. 148 in New York who was profiled in a recent Huffington Post article, a combination of these factors brought her grades so low she came close to repeating the third grade.Â Â She is not alone, especially among low-income, urban, and rural students in the United States.

Read the rest of this entry »

Share this Article with Your Friends:

Career Readiness Evaluated by a Test? The ACT Career Series

ACT Inc. just announced they are developing new assessments aimed at students between 3rd and 10th grade to test their college and career readiness skills. Many states are pushing for more students to leave school with the skills they need to succeed in college and career and ACT believes their new series, to be launched in 2014, will be the answer.

Read the rest of this entry »

Share this Article with Your Friends:

Leadership from the Medical Community for Low-Income Students: LifeBound and La Casa/Quigg Newton Family Health Center Promote Reading, Literacy and Opportunity

Summer learning losses are a real threat to all students entering the summer months. Providing kids with educational games, activities, materials, and experiences during their summer vacation is crucial in retaining information learned during the school year and preparing them for the transition into next year.

Read the rest of this entry »

Share this Article with Your Friends:

Opportunities for Low-Income Students: Summer Learning and Work Which Turns to Gold

For low-income kids, the oncoming summer vacation can bring forth different feelings than it does for privileged students. Due to a lack of accessibility, availability, and financial resources, low-income students often don’t have equal summer learning opportunities as privileged students, which contributes to increased summer learning losses and puts them at a disadvantage at the start of each new school year. Some of these students care for younger siblings all summer. Others play the role of parent to parents who may struggle with addiction or other issues. Others are in foster families or are raised by a grandparent because their parents are in prison or not fit to raise them.

This year, teen unemployment rates are soaring between 23.2 – 23.8 percentÂ ¹, which may prove to be even more problematic for low-income teens looking to work more hours to contribute to the family, make money for the upcoming school year, or to simply keep busy and off the street.

Read the rest of this entry »

Share this Article with Your Friends:

Cyberbullying Ends When Students Bring Social Sense to Social Media

The classroom bully is not a new character, but technology has given the bully new shape. The Internet and the accessibility of handheld devices for younger and younger kids has afforded the bully to be more elusive and far-reaching, both in audience and victims.

Findings of a new cyberbullying study illuminates the changes and challenges well. According to the study, physical bullying decreases as children get older, but cyberbullying increases. The study also found:

Almost 90 percent of students are online by third grade.
83 percent of middle school students have a mobile device.
35-40 percent of elementary students report being targets of bullying, and 50-53 percent of middle and high school students say they have been victims.

Â (“One-Fifth of Third-Graders Own Cell Phones” — CNET)

Read the rest of this entry »

Share this Article with Your Friends:

Bringing Art to the Classroom for Engaging and Relevant Lessons

Is it mandatory that educators use technology to engage young minds in the digital age?

For many schools and individuals, the terms “student” and “education” have become redefined — and undefined — by digital tools. For example, “students” can still be teens who attend a brick and mortar high school, but they might also be a retired lawyer who takes advantage of Stanford’s free online classes. Some students attend a “flipped-classroom” where they take a lesson at home on YouTube and come to class to do their homework. Some students master activities through gaming, answer tests on their cellphones, and collaborate with peers by developing computer software.

Read the rest of this entry »

Share this Article with Your Friends:

Promoting Nonfiction Literacy Standards Is a Collaborative Effort

Most states are adopting the new Common Core Standards, requiring that students’ reading curriculum include more rigorous and nonfiction materials. In fact, the goal is to have 70 percent of a student’s reading come from informational texts by graduation, according to the article “New Literacy Standards Could Challenge Even Passionate Readers.”Â This shift in reading content is aimed at helping build reading skills students will need in college, career and throughout their lives.

Read the rest of this entry »

Share this Article with Your Friends: