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In the spring, a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. A teacher’s turns to leaving. TMAO, the earnest if occasionally sanctimonious blogger behind Teaching in the 408 files a first-rate post with the best kicker ending since The Sixth Sense (HT: Alexander Russo). Over at Eduwonkette, the link between NCLB and leaving the classroom is discussed. Yours truly posted at length in the comment section there; I’ll spare you the cross-post here.
Readers of certain age probably remember with fondness The Electric Company on PBS. At the very least, it was acceptable “educational” TV for 6 to 9-year olds who had outgrown Sesame Street. The New York Times reports PBS is reviving the show, although it will have to work harder to find an audience in the increasingly crowded, (if content-free) kids media arena:
“Refitted for the age of hip-hop and informed by decades of further educational research on reading, the 2009 version of “The Electric Company” is a weekly, more danceable version of its former daily self. The series, which is expected to make its debut in January, faces challenges the original never did (trying to stand out amid so much children’s programming and to shake the stigma of educational television) as well as familiar ones (trying to make reading a positive experience for youngsters).”
Now if someone would only revive Schoolhouse Rock, which probably did more to get me interested in social studies than any of my teachers. More than 30 years later, I still know all the words to those songs.
“Concern is spreading among parents and mental-health professionals that the exploding popularity of computer and video games has a deeper dark side than simple couch-potatohood,” reports U.S. News [Hat tip Joanne Jacobs]. “According to the Media Research Lab at Iowa State University, about 8.5 percent of 8-to-18-year-old gamers can be considered pathologically addicted, and nearly one quarter of young people—more males than females—admit they’ve felt addicted.”
A more nuanced take on video games is offered by Cheryl Olson, a psychiatry lecturer at Harvard Medical School, and the author of “Grand Theft Childhood.” Olson, who has conducted research on video games and their impact on children, says in an interview with the Australian website The Age, “that games can be both healthy and problematic, but in ways that are hard to convey in a few sound bites on the news.”
“For most young teens, video and computer games are a routine part of life, like TV, recorded music and books,” Olson says. “The average teen boy routinely plays video games with violent content; a not inconsiderable number of girls do, too. Teens often play violent games to cope with feelings such as stress and anger; they also play for creative reasons and to learn new things. It’s not normal for teens (especially boys) to play video games alone all the time.”
Her research notes that young teens who play any Mature-rated (age 17+) game on a routine basis are at higher risk than teens who play other types of games for behaving aggressively (for example, beating up someone, damaging property for fun) or having school problems (for example, poor grades, getting in trouble with a teacher) at least once over the course of a year. They are also more likely to report being threatened by someone with a weapon. The risk of problems increases if young teens play mostly mature-rated or violent games. “These relationships between violent game play and behavior/school problems are statistically significant correlations, very unlikely to occur by chance,” Olson observes. “But correlations don’t tell us about cause and effect. For example, children with aggressive personalities may play more violent games, or children who get poor grades may express their frustration by playing violent games.”
A sobering look at the intersection of policy and reality courtesy of the Associated Press. Juliet Williams visits Las Palmitas Elementary School and the Coachella Valley Unified School District in Southern California, where “99 percent of students live in poverty and fewer than 20 percent speak English fluently.” Las Palmitas and other schools in are just the type policy makers had in mind when Congress passed the federal No Child Left Behind Act in 2001 to shed light on the disparities facing poor and minority children, she writes.
Nineteen of the district’s 21 schools — including Las Palmitas — have not met the federal law’s performance benchmarks for four years. Now the entire district faces sanctions for the first time. “We have hardworking, dedicated, trained teachers like everybody else. They’ve got to teach a language, they’ve got to teach the content, and they’ve got to counter poverty,” adds Foch “Tut” Pensis, the district’s superintendent. “We are the poster child for NCLB.”
“Over the next few years, hundreds more districts are destined to enter the next phase that California already has begun. The state has ordered districts to undergo everything from reporting how they are implementing the federal law to having a team of specialists assess every aspect of their operations. In the most extreme cases, California districts could be subject to a state takeover,” Wiliams reports. “How California and the other states will turn around those struggling districts is unclear.”
According to the AP, California has 97 school districts that failed to meet their goals under the law for four years, more than twice as many failing districts as any other state so far. Kentucky has the next highest number facing sanctions, with 47. Nationwide, 411 school districts in 27 states now face intervention.
“No one, on a large scale, has figured out how to solve the achievement gap,” Pensis said. “Everybody’s looking for that answer.”
