Education News
How did we ever learn to read without robots?
From The Guardian
An army of Red the Robots is being deployed in schools and nurseries to help pupils as young as three learn to read. The 40cm-high toy can read stories and quiz pupils on their ABCs. Its manufacturer says it captures the imagination of children put off by traditional classes at a time when the government is desperately worried about children’s literacy skills.
Margaret Spellings on The Colbert Report
I must point out the wildest of her statements:
OK, don’t use the word ’sanctions’ anymore, because let me say what a sanction is, sometimes the school people call it that, but a sanction is extra help for the kids…
There’s a good reason to use that word, even if you just “school people”. After a quick google search, you can find the word in the NCLB law, as in
“include sanctions and rewards, such as bonuses and recognition, the State will use to hold local educational agencies and public elementary schools and secondary schools accountable for student achievement”
and she’s sort of responsible for administering them, according to the NCLB Executive Summary,
Creates Sanctions for Low-Performing States. The Secretary of Education will be authorized to reduce the amount a state may use for administration of ESEA programs if a state fails to meet its performance objectives.
READING FIRST GETTING CUT?
In Education week, on June 19th, Alyson Klein writes:
The controversial federal Reading First program would be eliminated under a fiscal 2009 spending measure approved unanimously today by a House Appropriations subcommittee.
In explaining the decision to zero out the program, Rep. David R. Obey, D-Wis., the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, cited the results of a preliminary federal evaluation of Reading First, released May 1, which found that the program has had no impact on students’ reading comprehension.
Reading First “has been plagued with mismanagement, conflicts of interest, and cronyism, as documented by the inspector general,” Rep. Obey said, referring to a series of reports by the U.S. Department of Education’s watchdog that suggested conflicts of interest had occurred among officials and contractors who helped implement the program
The rest of the article is available at Education Week Online.
READING FIRST IMPACT STUDY: INTERIM REPORT
This study brought the discussion on Reading First back into the major media, albeit briefly. A summary is available through the Institute for Education Sciences. Please note the line:
on average across the 18 study sites, Reading First did not have statistically significant impacts on student reading comprehension test scores in grades 1-3.