IEA Newsletter for Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Welcome to the Institute for Education and the Arts weekly newsletter for April 18, 2007. The newsletter is published each Wednesday morning to the IEA's listserv and is archived here.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
REPORTS
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

STUDY GIVES TEACHERS BARELY PASSING GRADE IN CLASSROOM
Greg Toppo, USA Today, March 2007
“The typical child in the USA stands only a one-in-14 chance of having a consistently rich, supportive elementary school experience, say researchers who looked at what happens daily in thousands of classrooms. The findings, published today in the weekly magazine Science, take teachers to task for spending too much time on basic reading and math skills and not enough on problem-solving, reasoning, science and social studies. They also suggest that U.S. education focuses too much on teacher qualifications and not enough on teachers being engaging and supportive. Funded by the National Institutes of Health, educational researchers spent thousands of hours in more than 2,500 first-, third- and fifth-grade classrooms, tracking kids through elementary school. It is among the largest studies done of U.S. classrooms, producing a detailed look at the typical kid's day.”
Read more from USA Today
Read the abstract from Science Magazine (full article requires membership)

EVERYBODY READY FOR SCHOOL:
HOW CAN WE ENSURE HIGH QUALITY EARLY CHILDHOOD PROGRAMS?
Public Agenda, 2005
“Many families choose to place their children in some sort of preschool program. Perhaps they need childcare while they work. Or, they believe that children have social and learning experiences in preschool that are important to their development. Finally, many educators, parents and researchers agree that high quality ‘school readiness’ programs can help youngsters be more successful later on in school and in life. But preschool programs vary widely in quality. How can we make sure that all preschool programs provide safe and enriching environments that do a good job preparing children for school? In other words, how can we make sure all preschool programs are of the highest possible quality? To help get our conversation started, we’ve created a framework describing several approaches to ensuring quality for all preschool programs.”
Read more

STUDENTS ARE BORED, MANY SKIP SCHOOL, LACK ADULT SUPPORT:
HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS FROM 110 SCHOOLS IN 26 STATES PARTICIPATE IN IU STUDY
High School Survey of Student Engagement (HSSSE), Indiana University, 2/28/07
“Today's high school students say they are bored in class because they dislike the material and experience inadequate teacher interaction, according to a special report from Indiana University's High School Survey of Student Engagement (HSSSE). The findings … show that 2 out of 3 students are bored in class every day, while 17 percent say they are bored in every class. More than 81,000 students responded to the annual survey. HSSSE was administered in 110 high schools, ranging in size from 37 students to nearly 4,000, across 26 states. According to the director of the project, the reasons high school students claim they are bored are as significant as the boredom itself. Ethan Yazzie-Mintz, HSSSE project director for the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy (CEEP), says the finding that nearly one in three respondents (31 percent) indicate he or she is bored in class due to "no interaction with teacher" is a troubling result.”
Read the press release from Indiana University
Read the survey results
Learn how to administer the survey at your school

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
SUPPORT FOR NEW TEACHERS
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

SUCCESS FOR NEW TEACHERS
Hal Portner, American School Board Journal, 10/06
“It’s the same old story, year after year. Your district spends thousands of dollars to recruit, hire, and train new teachers. Then, after a year or two, the district has to repeat the process because those same teachers have left their jobs. How much does this cost? It’s been estimated that each teacher who is recruited, trained, and lost can cost districts up to $50,000 … One proven way to improve teacher retention is through induction and mentoring programs, a professional development process that supports new staff.”
Read more

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
ARTS IN THE CURRICULUM
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

STUDENTS REQUIRE ARTS SMARTS
Rick Martinez, Columnist, Charlotte (NC) News Observer, 3/28/07
“Nowhere is creative thinking, and the communication skills needed to convey it, better taught than in the arts … Under North Carolina's proposed plan, arts education would be relegated to second-class status -- just one of many "endorsements" or suggested courses of study. This lack of vision reflects just the dearth of innovative thinking the state's proposed core would instill in generations to come. Too many of us think of the arts strictly in terms of the medium, such as a painting, a play or concert. We forget about the conceptualization that's required before an artist picks up a brush. We don't appreciate the mental rigor an actor must exercise to memorize lines and interpret a script. We overlook the discipline and hard work required for a recital. We undervalue the attention to detail shown by directors, lighting technicians, makeup artists, set designers and scene builders. These traits are often glorified when displayed on the high school athletic field, yet for some reason are often marginalized when they show up on a stage or a canvas.”
Read more

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
IMPORTANCE OF CREATIVITY IN EDUCATION AND BUSINESS
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

CREATIVITY’S ESSENCE EXPLORED
Pawtucket (RI) Times , 3/27/2007
”A high-powered panel discussing creativity in education seemed to conclude Tuesday that while it's not something easily defined, creativity is something you know when you see it and they'd like to see more of it in schools' daily curriculum. Orchestrated by the Arts & Business Council of Rhode Island, an offshoot of the A&BC of Americans for the Arts, the forum, moderated by Rhode Island School of Design President Roger Mandle, is among 40 being sponsored around the country by the MetLife Foundation as part of its National Arts Forum Series to better link the arts and business."
Read about the panel’s conversations

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

LEARNERS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

A PRIMER ON DYSLEXIA
PBS Parents
“Most people think of dyslexia as a problem in which people see letters backwards. It is commonly believed that people with dyslexia see "b" as "d" and "was" as "saw." Decades of research have begun to dispel this myth. People with dyslexia do not see letters backwards. In fact, they see things in the same way as other people. Dyslexia is simply a term used to describe a specific kind of reading difficulty in which children have unexpected difficulty learning to read. This is because they have trouble perceiving differences among sounds and remembering how letters and sound go together. Having dyslexia does not mean that children are not bright or can't learn; in fact, many children with dyslexia possess above average intelligence. This … article will help you learn the facts about dyslexia, how it is diagnosed, and how it can be treated. In addition, this update provides you with resources, including books for children, books for parents, Web sites, and organizations so that you can learn more about dyslexia.”
Learn more

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

MAKING ART “FINDABLE”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

ONE PICTURE, 1,000 TAGS
Pamela LiCalzi O’Donnell, New York Times, 3/28/07
”Strolling through a museum, a painting of a shipwreck catches your eye. You are struck by the dominance of blue in another work. Yet another painting, featuring a silvery moon, seems sad. If you try to find those paintings on the museum’s Web site you will probably fail unless you know the title or artist. You can’t search based on what you see … [M]useums are rethinking their online collections. They are experimenting with one of the hottest Web 2.0 trends: tagging, the basis for popular sites like Flickr. In social tagging, users of a service provide the tags, or labels, that describe the content (of photos, Web links, art), thus creating a user-generated taxonomy, or folksonomy, as it’s called. Museums plan to encourage the public to annotate their collections by supplying descriptive tags that could exist alongside professional documentation, creating a new shared vocabulary. Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night,’ for example, could elicit tags like ‘stars,’ ‘planets,’ ‘swirls’ or ‘insanity.’
Read more

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
GRANTS, FUNDING, CONTESTS, AND AWARDS
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS TO EXAMINE EFFECTIVENESS OF DIFFERENT WAYS OF DELIVERING PUBLIC SUPPORT TO U.S. MUSEUMS
Institute of Museum and Library Services
“The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) invites proposals for a cooperative agreement to examine the effectiveness of different mechanisms of delivering public support to museums in the United States. The Institute is supporting this study to provide data that can be used to help enhance current methods of delivering federal and state funds to the nation's museums. For thirty years, federal funds have increased the capacity of the nation's museums to provide educational, cultural, and civic benefits to the American people. The Institute has developed an array of national discretionary grant programs to fulfill its statutory role. There is currently no program in place to leverage the federal investment in museums by encouraging similar efforts at the state and local level. This study will identify a representative sample of states and identify and assess the impact of current methods of delivery of state and federal funds in those states.”
Learn more

- ### -