IEA Newsletter for Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Welcome to the Institute for Education and the Arts weekly newsletter for March 28, 2007. The newsletter is published each Wednesday morning to the IEA listserv and is archived here on the IEA blog.

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REPORTS AND PUBLICATIONS
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PARA NUESTROS NINOS: EXPANDING AND IMPROVING EARLY EDUCATION FOR HISPANICS
National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics
Reported in EdNews, 3/8/07
“Hispanic children, especially those from disadvantaged circumstances, continue to lag behind non-Hispanic Whites on measures of school readiness and school achievement, including in reading and mathematics. At the same time, there is growing evidence that large state-funded prekindergarten (pre-K) programs are producing valuable school readiness gains for Hispanic youngsters who have the opportunity to attend them. Head Start also is beneficial. In addition, high quality infant/toddler programs can contribute to greater school readiness. Thus, the earlier Hispanic children have access to high quality educational programs, the better.”
Read the EdNews article: http://www.ednews.org/articles/8718/1/Hispanic-Children-Gain-an-Academic-Edge-When-Their-Education-Starts-Early/Page1.html
Read the Para Nuestros Ninos report: http://www.ecehispanic.org/

STUDIES MIXED ON NATIONAL CERTIFICATION FOR TEACHERS
Debra Viadero, Education Week, 3/7/07
”Does having a teacher who is nationally certified make a difference when it comes to boosting student test scores? Yes and no, according to a set of working papers published online by the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, or CALDER. The four reports draw on statistics from Florida and North Carolina. One paper found that North Carolina students in classes taught by nationally certified teachers learned significantly more over the course of a school year than students of teachers without that distinction. But a separate study of Florida students concluded that teachers with the credential seemed to be more effective only in some grades, some subjects, or some tests. Apart from the national-certification question, center researchers found that: teacher experience mattered in both states; Florida teachers who had taken more pedagogical-content courses produced better learning gains than teachers who had taken fewer such courses; and North Carolina students learned significantly more when their teachers held regular teaching licenses, as opposed to emergency or other kinds of state certification, and from teachers who had scored higher on state licensing exams.”
Read about it in Education Week (free subscription required): http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/03/07/26teach.h26.html
Read the report: http://www.caldercenter.org/research/publications.cfm

THE COSTS AND BENEFITS OF AN EXCELLENT EDUCATION FOR ALL OF AMERICA’S CHILDREN
Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, 2007
“The U.S. taxpayer could reap $45 billion annually if the number of high school dropouts were cut in half, according to a new study conducted by a group of the nation’s leading researchers in education and economics. The savings would be achieved via extra tax revenues, reduced costs of public health, crime and justice, and decreased welfare payments. Even a one-fifth reduction would result in an annual $18 billion public savings, according to the study, whose figures do not even include the private benefits of improved economic wellbeing that would accrue to the new graduates themselves. The study identifies five cost-effective educational strategies already shown to boost high school graduation rates and estimates that the country could save a net of $127,000 per each new graduate added through “successful implementation of the median” of the five interventions.”
Read the report: http://www.cbcse.org/pages/cost-benefit-studies.php

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KEEPING THE ARTS IN SCHOOLS
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EDUCATORS CHARGE ARTS LAG UNDER NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND
Chris Roberts, Minnesota Public Radio, 3/13/2007
"No Child Left Behind, the massive education reform act that President Bush signed into law in 2002, is up for re-authorization this year. The program has garnered praise in many circles for bringing more accountability to public schools. But some say it elevates certain subject areas at the expense of others. One subject critics say the act has "left behind" is arts education. . . . According to the Minnesota Music Educators Association, there's been a 6.5 percent decrease in the number of public school music teachers in the state since 2000. Many elementary schools now offer arts programs for just nine weeks out of the year. Nationally, arts education time in the classroom has dropped 22 percent since No Child Left Behind was enacted."
Listen and read more: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/03/13/nclbandarts/

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COMMENTARY: NATIONAL EDUCATION STANDARDS
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THE CASE FOR NATIONAL STANDARDS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION
Commentary by Rudy Crew, Paul Vallas, and Michael Casserly, Education Week, 3/5/07
“In the absence of a clear and consistent set of national academic standards for what should be expected of all children, each state instead sets its own standards for what kids should know and be able to do. Sometimes these standards are high; often they are not. Either way, they drive the teaching and learning in America’s classrooms and serve to perpetuate the nation’s educational inequities at a time when we should be working to overcome them. It’s as if we are telling all our students to climb a mountain to get a high school diploma, yet while some work hard to reach a 9,000-foot peak, others are asked to scramble up a 3,000-foot hill. The disparities in what schools expect of students and teach them are profound, and they play out daily in the nation’s classrooms. To meet standards in one state, a student may not have to distinguish integers as even or odd until 4th grade, add fractions until 6th grade, or multiply and divide fractions until 7th grade. Meanwhile, a child attending school in another state is expected to calculate the perimeters and areas of basic shapes in 4th grade, and multiply and divide fractions in the 5th grade. No matter when these skills are taught, students are often expected to know them at very different levels of depth and rigor.”
Read the commentary: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/03/05/26crew.h26.html

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SUPPORT FOR EDUCATION
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SHIFT IN REGIONAL EDUCATION LABS’ ROLE STIRS CONCERN:
NEW MISSION BALANCES RIGOROUS STUDIES WITH CONSTITUENT SERVICES
Debra Viadero, Education Week, 3/14/07
“Since the mid-1960s, a far-flung system of regional laboratories has served as the federal government’s bridge between research and practice in education. Until recently, many of those labs had been run by the same organizations since the program’s inception. Education administrators had long called on the labs for professional-development programs, management help, research reviews, and various other expert services. Those long-standing relationships were jolted last spring, however, when the Institute of Education Sciences, the arm of the U.S. Department of Education that oversees the labs, announced the results of its latest laboratory competition. Under the new five-year contracts, the 10 regional labs received new missions, and in four cases, new operators. Their new charge is to spend more time doing slow, careful, and rigorous education research and less time on some of the constituent services that some educators in the field had been used to getting. Now, nearly a year later, the shift in focus is prompting complaints from some longtime customers.”
Read more (free subscription required): http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/03/14/27labs.h26.html

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GRANTS, FUNDING, CONTESTS, AND AWARDS
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NEA FOUNDATION LEARNING & LEADERSHIP GRANTS
Grants support public school teachers, public education support professionals, and/or faculty and staff in public institutions of higher education for one of the following two purposes: Grants to individuals fund participation in high-quality professional development experiences, such as summer institutes or action research; or grants to groups fund collegial study, including study groups, action research, lesson study, or mentoring experiences for faculty or staff new to an assignment. All professional development must improve practice, curriculum, and student achievement. “One-shot” professional growth experiences, such as attending a national conference or engaging a professional speaker, are discouraged. Deadline: June 1, 2007
Learn more: http://www.neafoundation.org/programs/Learning&Leadership_Guidelines.htm

“CREATING ORIGINAL OPERA” TRAINING AT WASHINGTON NATIONAL OPERA, 7/27 – 8/3/07
Washington National Opera press release, 3/15/07
“This year Washington National Opera will take a national leadership role in The Metropolitan Opera Guild’s innovative program, “Creating Original Opera” (COO) in which students develop, produce and create an original opera/music theater work as part of their classroom curricula. In a weeklong program from July 27 – August 3, 2007 will train elementary through high school teachers from across the nation giving them the necessary skills, information and methodologies to guide their students in creating an original opera. Training will be held at Washington National Opera’s Costume and Rehearsal Studio in Washington, D.C. COO is a professional development program developed by The Metropolitan Opera Guild where partnerships are formed between educators of various disciplines to enable students to write, compose, design, build, promote, manage, document, and perform an original work … As a direct result of this training, participating teachers develop an in-school opera with their students, incorporating COO into their school curricula … The Metropolitan Opera Guild will not offer COO Training this summer, but has licensed Washington National Opera to present it on its behalf.” Application postmark deadline: 5/30/07.
Learn more: http://www.dc-opera.org/experience/education/educationcommunityprograms/schoolbasedprograms.asp#COO

NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS ACCESS TO ARTISTIC EXCELLENCE GRANT
”To encourage and support artistic excellence, preserve our cultural heritage, and provide access to the arts for all Americans. This category supports projects that provide short-term arts exposure or arts appreciation for children and youth as well as intergenerational education projects.” Amount: up to $150,000 each. Deadline: Aug. 13 or March 12, depending on project type.
Learn more: http://www.arts.gov/grants/apply/Artsed.html

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