Building a Better Education System in the United States

According to the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) report, the United States ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science, and 25th in mathematics. Ranking the knowledge of 15-year-olds in 70 countries, the report demonstrates the need for the U.S. to make improvements in how it's educating its students.

The new report from The National Center on Education and Economy (NCEE), an organization that researches education systems around the world, says that America can solve this educational crisis by looking at it like it looked at manufacturing at the turn of the 20th century.

"We took the best ideas in steelmaking, industrial chemicals and many other fields from England and Germany and others and put them to work here on a scale that Europe could only imagine," the report says. By using the educational strategies of successful nations, NCEE says, the U.S. can catch up.

"The most effective way to greatly improve student performance in the United States is to figure out how the countries with top student performance are doing it, build on their achievements and then, by building on our unique strengths, figure out how to do it even better," Marc Tucker, NCEE's CEO, said in a statement.

Read the full article here.

How do you think we can build a better education system in the United States? 

New Documentary Zeros In on the Realities of Teacher Life

In an advanced screening on Tuesday in Washington D.C., Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and other government officials previewed a new documentary titled, “American Teacher,” produced by Dave Eggers and Nínive Clements Calegari. The documentary follows five K-12 educators from different parts of the country as they navigate the life of being a teacher. 

At the heart of “American Teacher,”  lies the question, “Why are teachers in the United States so undervalued and lately even disparaged?” Narrated by Matt Damon, the film seeks to counteract popular misconceptions about the teaching profession and present a picture of what teachers actually do and what their lives are really like.

Read more about “American Teacher” here.

Using Blogs to Teach Writing in the Classroom

The art of writing instruction has never been simple. Teaching a student when to use a comma or the definition of a metaphor is one thing, but facilitating expression through words is a much more complex undertaking. In an interview with Michael F. Shaughnessy, Education News.org Senior Columnist, Jon Schwartz, a teacher at Garrison Elementary School in Oceanside Unified School District, CA, explained why using blogs can be such a powerful tool in teaching his students to write.

One key element to motivating students to express themselves through writing is giving them a topic they care about personally. Schwartz relates a story where a college professor of his gave him a specific book to read for a book report after assessing his personal interests and it made all the difference to Schwartz’s interest in writing the report. In addition to the personal nature of writing assignments making a difference, Schwartz also addresses other elements of using student blogs, such as confidentiality, parent and principal support, and tailoring the entire blog writing experience to the particular grade level teachers are instructing.

Read the full interview here.

Is the Professional Development in Your District Preparing You to Teach Today's Students?

"If you try to teach students today in the way they were taught before, you’re going to have disengaged students. Dropouts today are not because students aren’t interested in learning; it’s because schooling has not changed to fit the needs of today’s students," said Curtis Linton in his interview with Ken Royal on the topic of on-demand professional development. 

In today’s episode of The Royal Treatment, Ken Royal discussed Tablet-Age Professional Development with Curtis Linton, Vice President at School Improvement Network. Curtis shared insights into the need for a type of professional development (PD) that demonstrates best practices accessible at the exact moment when the PD is needed, not only at a designated time in the future. Here are more highlights: 

On-demand professional development really requires that we support teachers in the way we know good teaching of students also occurs:

What does the teacher need to know?
How do we know if the teacher knows it or not?
How do we support the teacher if they don’t know it?

The support provided to a teacher in terms of professional development needs to happen at the moment, not be pushed off until later on.

Listen to the entire interview here or download the podcast for free on iTunes here.

Has your professional development changed to fit the needs of today's students? 

President Obama Delivers Commencement Speech at Booker T. Washington High School

Today, President Obama delivered the commencement speech at Booker T. Washington High School in Memphis, Tennessee. Competing against schools across the country, Booker T. Washington High School demonstrated an incredible increase of graduating students from 4% in 2005 to 70% in 2010, and was selected based on their entry video. Here are some highlights from the president’s speech:

“Well, we are here today because every single one of you stood up and said, ‘Yes we can.’ Yes we can learn. Yes we can succeed. You decided that you weren’t going to be defined by where you came from, but by where you want to go – by what you want to achieve, by the dreams you hope to fulfill.”

“Today BTW is a place that has proven why we can’t accept any excuses when it comes to education; that in the United States of America, we should never accept anything less than the best our children have to offer. As your teacher Steve McKinney, a.k.a. Big Mac, said in the local paper, ‘[W]e need everyone to broaden their ideas about what is possible. We need parents, politicians, and the media to see how success is possible, how success is happening every day…’”

“Education also teaches you the value of discipline – that the greatest rewards come not from instant gratification, but from sustained effort and hard work. It’s a lesson that’s especially important today, in a culture that prizes flash over substance, that tells us the goal in life is to be entertained, that says you can be famous just for being famous.”

Read the full speech

Booker T. Washington Entry Video

And the Winner Is . . .

iPad 2 Winner - Valerie Kirklin

In the month of April, School Improvement Network asked PD 360 users to participate in a survey to help us improve their experience with PD 360 and all of our professional development products. Thank you for your honest feedback and for assisting us to produce tailored professional development to help all students succeed. Congratulations to Valerie Kirklin from Oak Park Elementary School in Pine Bluff, AR for winning the iPad 2!

A Learning Community of 700,000 Educators

Today, best practices and effective teaching methods are constantly changing and advancing. As educators search for ways to stay up to date with new innovations in education, PD 360 provides a central, secure location to not only learn best practices from leading educational experts, but also to learn from and collaborate with a community of 700,000 other educators.

Community participants have the ability to create their very own forums with links to content they have found most useful in their everyday practices and upload files from external resources, all in a place where their peers can comment and discuss. With the ability to search by topic, teachers can easily find answers to their questions such as “What is the best way to deal with misbehavior in the classroom?” or “What are some methods of differentiation that have worked for you?”

The PD 360 Learning Community really is that—a community. Collaboration has never been so powerful and far reaching. Even outside of the actual community forums, users can create profiles in PD 360 and connect and share directly to other users through the Colleagues feature. Once teachers and administrators join the community they will have access for life, whether or not they decide to continue utilizing the rich PD 360 resources after the 30-day trial.

Click Here to Join the PD 360 Learning Community

As Teacher Appreciation Week concludes we just want say, “thank you” for continually learning so that you can continue to enlighten the minds of the students in your schools!