Link to Education Week Blog Post: "Five Words and Phrases that Sound Different to Teachers"

Five Words and Phrases that Sound Different to Teachers
Roxanna Elden, Education Week Blog. 1/10/10


"Failure is not an option"
"Research-based"
"Rigor"
"Status Quo"
"Paradigm Shift"


Be sure to read the heart-felt comments!

Ninth Grade Tipping Point: What happens in the first year of high school impacts graduation and dropout rates.

A recent set of articles in Education Week, Diplomas Count: School to College, supported in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, discusses the need to "bridge the divide between precollegiate and higher education".

The article goes on to say that "despite the vital importance of education to young people’s job prospects, Diplomas Count 2008 projects that 1.23 million students will fail to graduate from high school this year. The lowest graduation rates are among African-American, Hispanic, and Native American students."

Powerpoint Presentation
Press Release
Contacts:
Robert Johnston, (202) 955-9450, ext. 313, rjohnston AT commworksllc DOT com
Kari Hudnell, (202) 955-9450, ext. 324, khudnell AT commworksllc DOT com

I was planning on posting about this topic several weeks ago. With the latest news about the persistence of our nation's low graduation rate, I thought it would be important to take a few minutes and share what I worked on during the first several months of this year.

Last semester, I took a Visualization and Visual Communication course in the computer science department at UNCC, taught by Dr. Robert Kosara. My team originally focused on the topic of school violence and related risk factors. After looking at a variety of data sets, we discovered that young people who fall within the ninth grade age range have high rates of problems across a variety of factors and indicators.

We quickly learned that risk factors related to violence, adolescent mental health, and school dropout are studied and analyzed by a variety of agencies and organizations, and the data is culled from many sources.

The problem for information visualization is to make this data meaningful, so that it can be easily understood by decision makers who are responsible for implementing procedures and policies that result in positive outcomes.

At the time that we completed our work, we did not have the information included in the Diploma Counts 2008 report. One data set we did not consider at the time relates to the level of experience of ninth grade teachers. An article written in Education Week, after the semester ended, highlights this problem in the Philadelphia high schools. Ninth grade students are taught by the least-experienced teachers.

My hunch, given the data we covered last semester, is this is the case in many school districts nation-wide.

Having worked in high schools for many years as a school psychologist, in several districts, I think this might be true. More experienced teachers wind up teaching Advanced Placement, Honors, and IB courses. Fresh-out-of-college and lateral entry math teachers end up teaching algebra to ninth grade students. Many of these students previously failed the subject.

For our project, we took data sets and ran quite a bit of the data in ManyEyes, part of IBM's Collaborative User Experience research group, to experiment with the different forms of data visualization and to see if we prepared the data appropriately.

(I will post some pictures and of our final project soon, along with a reference list.)

Below are some graphs we found as we were gathering information for our project:


Graduation Project, 2007 EdWeek Maps EPE Research Center



Annual Study of Suspensions and Expulsions, 2006-07 Report to the Joint Legislative Education Oversight Committee, Public Schools of North Carolina State Board of Education Department of Public Instructions

Alternative Learning Placements




Expulsions by grade level

"The ninth grade short-term suspension totals in the chart reveal a definite upward trend over the last five years. The total of 71,494 short-term suspensions received by ninth graders in 2006-07 is 22.6% higher than the 58,335 received in 2002-03."

"Students who are expelled from a school and who fail to return to school are coded with “Expulsion” (EXPL) as a reason for dropping out. These students are not included in the official counts or rates that appear in this report. In 2006-2007, there were 72 dropout events coded with EXPL, 69 of which were in grades 9 through 12."


Report to the Joint Legislative Education Oversight Committee Annual Report on Dropout Events and Rates Public Schools of North Carolina, State Board of Education
Department of Public Instruction





Here is something from the Milwaukee Public Schools:




A few references:

Collins, L., Fruth, L., Sessa,M., Laird, E. The Right Data to the Right People at the Right Time: How Interoperability Helps America's Students.
June 2007

Data Quality Campaign
http://www.dataqualitycampaign.org/

Linking Education and Social Services Data to Improve Child Welfare October 2007
http://www.dataqualitycampaign.org/files/Meetings-DQC_Quarterly_Issue_Brief_091807.pdf

Age Distribution of Dropouts
NC Annual Report of School Violence 2006-07
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=704133

Report on the Implementation of the Gun-Free Schools Act in the States and Outlying Areas 2003-04

Short Term Suspensions, Long Term Consequences, Real Life Solutions pdf
(Action for Children, N.C.)

Dismantling the School to Prison Pipeline (pdf)
NAACP

Learning, Arts, and the Brain: The Dana Consortium Report on Arts and Cognition

I came across an interesting article Education Week, written by Debra Viadero, that reviews some of the findings of a report by the Dana Foundation. The report is the result of three years of research conducted by a variety of neuroscientists and psychologists who investigated the impact of training in art, music, and dance on thinking abilities.

Here is the link:
Learning, Arts, and the Brain (pdf)
(Organized by Michael Gazzaniga, Edited by Carolyn Asbury, ScM.P.H., Ph.D. and Barbara Rich, Ed.D.)

I noticed that two of the researchers were people who were strong influences on me when I an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan. John Jonides, Ph.D., was a professor for one of my psychology courses, and introduced me to the work of Michael Posner, Ph.D, another contributor to Learning, Arts, and the Brain. Dr. Jonides is currently the Daniel J. Weintraub Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, and co-director of the fMRI Center at the University of Michigan. Dr. Posener is currently Professor Emeritus at the University of Oregon and the Adjunct Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry at the Weill Medical College of Cornell.

Cooperation between Special Educators and Regular Education Technology Coordinators is Vital!

In many school districts, there is a disconnect between special education departments, responsible for overseeing assistive technology, and the educational technology and IT support departments, within the domain of regular education. Since most students who receive special education and related services receive most of their instruction in regular education classes, a high level of collaboration, communication, and coordination between regular education and special education is essential.

These issues are discussed in detail in an article written by Michelle R. Davis, in Education Week's Digital Directions: Technology Cooperation Vital in Special Education

"New software, advanced technology, and computerized devices can help special education students talk to their teachers, write out their thoughts and feelings, and understand a printed page. But schools are finding that many of the high-tech devices can’t open those doors for students without direct and ongoing assistance from information-technology specialists."

Some thoughts:

With the movement towards technology integration in regular education classrooms that supports Universal Design for Learning, RTI (Response to Intervention), and "21st Century Schools", the need for professional development related to technology is fundamental. Continued professional development that focuses on skills related to collaboration, communication, and data-driven decision making is also important.

With new technologies and applications come additional questions that might not have been previously anticipated. Solutions vary between classrooms, schools, districts, regions, and states, as evidence by the lively discussions and information shared online at Classroom 2.0. and information available on websites sites such as Edutopia, CAST, CITEd, and NCTCI.

There are many questions that need to be asked, now, and in anticipation of future technology innovations.

The questions we ask, and the answers we receive, are influenced by many factors, such as our personal level of technological knowledge and expertise, the "technology IQ" of key decision-makers within our school districts, state departments of education, and influential university researchers, and support from our schools receive from our respective communities.\

How do we prepare ourselves for new technologies?

For example, there has been an increase in the number of classrooms that have interactive whiteboards. In the future, teachers might find themselves figuring out how to create co-operative group lessons for use on interactive tables, such as Microsoft's Surface or the TouchTable. These tables are WiFi and BlueTooth enabled, so they can interact with mobile and handheld devices. They can support applications that track student interaction and progress, and most likely can support activities that are consistent with the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

How do we measure the effectiveness of educational practices and interventions that involve technology?

Do the data systems in place, or planned for the near future, support and integrate all of the tasks required to plan, implement, monitor, and evaluate evidence-based education and prevention/intervention "best practices"?

• Some school districts still rely on DOS-based student data management systems, or use systems that do not allow for much flexibility.

How do we track educational materials? Software? Hardware? Assistive technology devices and applications?

Some educational software programs generate a vast amount of data. How is this data integrated electronically in a way that is meaningful to all "stakeholders"?

What is the quality of the data? Who has access to this data? Is the database management system in place useful and easy-to-use?

How is this data shared between regular education and special education departments, for those students who require additional specialized support?

Who is responsible for ensuring the privacy and security of data obtained during progress monitoring for students who are involved in the RTI process? What do school leaders know about trends towards "educational data mining"?

What are the responsibilities of the local school district regarding technology integration, implementation, staff development, and evaluation, and what are the responsibilities of the universities and state departments of education?

How do we share information about technology grant opportunities? How do we learn and share "what works" - within and beyond our own school districts? How do we ensure that everyone is on board?


Short List of Resources

(I've posted about most of these resources in the past. For additional information, do a "search" on this blog, as well as on the Interactive Multimedia Technology blog.)

Classroom 2.0 is a social network for educators using collaborative technologies, with an related Wiki for sharing resources and strategies. Members can also join smaller groups, according to their interests. For example, there is a Classroom 2.0 group of educators who discuss how technology supports inclusion.

Edutopia is an organization funded by the George Lucas Foundation
"We publish the stories of innovative teaching and learning through a variety of media -- a magazine, e-newsletters, DVDs, books, and this Web site. Here, you'll find detailed articles, in-depth case studies, research summaries, short documentary segments, expert interviews, and links to hundreds of relevant resources. You'll also be able to participate as a member of an online community of people actively working to reinvent schools for the twenty-first century."

NCTI:
"The National Center for Technology Innovation (NCTI) advances learning opportunities for all students, with a special focus on individuals with disabilities. Funded by the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) at the U.S. Department of Education, NCTI offers technical guidance to facilitate growth and sustainability of assistive and learning tools by fostering innovative technology solutions."

CAST
(Resources for Universal Design for Learning)

CITEd
Center for Implementing Technology In Education
CITEd Online WebTour

TECHMATRIX
Tool for finding assistive and learning technology products for students with special needs.

Data Quality Campaign:
The Data Quality Campaign (DQC) is a national, collaborative effort to encourage and support state policymakers to

• improve the collection, availability, and use of high-quality education data, and
• implement state longitudinal data systems to improve student achievement.

CASTLE
UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education

If you need a good opener for a technology workshop, take a look at this thought-provoking video that was originally used for a staff development activity at a high school:

SHIFT HAPPENS: Did You Know?




Shift Happens WikiSpace

Karl Fichs's Fischbowl

If you are working on a team that is focused on coordinating technology efforts between special education and regular education, please leave a comment, as well as links to information and resources you've found to be helpful.