This past week a young female student did something no one ever would have imagined. While sitting in her seat in her classroom at Marulamantsi Junior Secondary School in Botswana, she stood up and pulled out her sanitary pad while announcing to classmates that she wanted to eat her own blood off it.

After her classmates went into a frenzy, running out of the classroom, a pastor was called to come to the school and help the troubled young girl. Before the pastor arrived and after the children had left the room, teachers entered the room trying to hold the girl down and stop her from eating her own sanitary pad. In the midst of all the commotion, she bit one teachers thumb and knocked another teacher down before being restrained and confined to an office with some teachers. A female pastor arrived followed by a male pastor soon thereafter.

During this time, students were allowed to be picked up by their parents as well as some teachers, who requested to leave as a result of shock from the episode. For the students that stayed, they loitered around the school building while the pastors prayed with the girl. For the teachers that stayed, a meeting was gathered by representatives of the Ministry of Education in order to discuss how to handle the aftermath for the school.

After the pastors calmed the girl down enough to allow her out of the office, they took her to a local church.

The Director at the Department of Secondary Education, Benson Rauwe, knew nothing about the chaos until hours later but once he heard about the event he stated, “whoever called the pastors to come to school was wrong as the correct procedure was to take the student to hospital or wherever her parents recommended. A school is a learning institution and students who go there come from different religious denominations. However, we will get all the information from the school head’s report today, to get a better understanding of what transpired on the day.”

Additionally, Rauwe said, “if the report indicates that students were emotionally affected, we will then take action to assist them.”

The young girl has claimed that she is a Satanist and has wanted to kill her father for some time now.

Even though her parents’ were called during episode, they failed to show up.

The girl is now receiving the counseling she needs.

The article Student Tries to Drink Her Own Blood: Shocks School appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Nearly one in four American children attend rural schools and enrollment is growing at a faster rate in rural school districts than in all other places combined, according to ‘Why Rural Matters 2011-12’, a biennial report by the Rural School and Community Trust.   In addition, rural schools show increasing rates of poverty, diversity, and students with special needs.

These widespread trends are most evident in the South, Southwest, and parts of Appalachia. ”As the evidence mounts that rural education is becoming a bigger and even more complex part of our national educational landscape, it is becoming impossible to ignore in the quest to improve achievement and narrow achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged groups.

The day of closing our eyes and hoping rural education will just go away are ending,” said Jerry Johnson, a co-author of ‘Why Rural Matters 2011-12’. More than 9.6 million students are enrolled in rural school districts in the United States, which is over 20 percent of all public school students in the United States.

An additional 1.8 million students are enrolled in rural schools in districts not classified as rural by the federal government.  Together, these 11.4 million students who attend rural schools comprise more than 23 percent of all public school students, according to the Rural School and Community Trust, a respected national nonprofit organization.

Of those students attending schools in a rural district, two in five live in poverty, a rate that has increased by nearly a third in nine years.  One student in four in rural areas is a child of color, and one in eight has changed residence in the past 12 months.

Between the 1999-2000 and 2008-2009 school years, rural districts’ enrollment increased by well over 1.7 million students, showing a growth rate of more than 22 percent.  In comparison, non-rural enrollment increased by only 673,000, or by a 1.7 percent increase, for the same time period.  As a result, the rural districts’ share of national public school enrollment increased from 17.4 percent to 20 percent over the decade, according to federal data in the report.

These enrollment gains were particularly strong in the most rural states in the South and Southwest.  Ten states are among the top 13 in both the number and the percentage of rural enrollment growth — Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.

The top five states with rural enrollment increases — Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arizona — had a total gain of over 1.1 million, more than half the gain for all states that gained rural enrollment.

“Rural minority students are concentrated in certain states, and that concentration is increasing,” said Jerry Johnson. Over 69 percent of all rural minority students now attend school in states where they represent more than one third of the rural student enrollment.  That is up from 58 percent as reported in ‘Why Rural Matters 2009’.

The report uses 25 statistical indicators grouped into five “gauges” to take the measure of rural education in each of the 50 states.  The five gauges are then combined to produce a “rural education priority” gauge.  The higher the ranking, the more important and challenging rural education is in a state’s overall education system and the more urgent it is for policy makers to pay attention to it.

The 13 highest priority states are all in the South, Southwest, and Appalachia, except Alaska, and all, but three, of the 12 next highest priority states are adjacent to them with the exception of Idaho, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

The report notes that rural education ranks high in importance in many Northern states, including Iowa, Maine, Montana, North Dakota, and Vermont.  However, these states tend to rank low on other measures such as student poverty, diversity, or poor student performance and low graduation rates.

“These states symbolize rural education to many people. They are the basis for a myth that all of rural America is uncomplicated, stable, and reasonably well-off. That myth is part of what keeps rural education on the margins of the national debate about education policy,” said Marty Strange, the policy director for the Rural School and Community Trust and co-author of the report.

“But these classic Yankee and Prairie-Plains states are simply an important part of a much more varied, complex, and challenging rural America that education policy makers must better understand,” said Strange. The report found that states most responsive to rural schools have above average fiscal capacity.

For example, the report points out that of the 13 states with the lowest expenditures for rural teachers, all but Nebraska and South Dakota are below the national average in state fiscal capacity.  On the other hand, states with the highest rural teacher salaries are primarily in the Northeast, the West, and the Mid-Atlantic. All these states are above the national average in state fiscal capacity per capital.

The article Rural Student Poverty Rates, Diversity, and Enrollment Increasing Fast appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell announced on January 9 an expansive education reform agenda for the 2012 legislative session that is poised to significantly expand educational options through creation of a scholarship tax credit program for the state’s low-income families.

The American Federation for Children—the nation’s voice for school choice—praised the governor’s plan, which places a strong emphasis on providing all children with educational opportunities, including  private school choice and robust charter and virtual school options.

McDonnell has long been a strong supporter of expanding educational options for children.  The scholarship tax credit program has also been championed in the legislature by Delegate Jimmie Massie and Senator Mark Obenshain in recent years.

“We’re grateful that Gov. McDonnell has included scholarship tax credits for children in low-income families in his 2012 legislative agenda. The Governor and legislative supporters are putting children first by offering hope to thousands of struggling students throughout the Commonwealth,” said Betsy Devos, chairman of the American Federation for Children. “The governor and legislative leaders have pledged to stand with parents and reformers to ensure that every child in Virginia has access to a quality education.”

Called “an effective choice” by the governor, the scholarship tax credit program would allow businesses to donate money to non-profit organizations that provide scholarships to children from low-income families to attend the school of their parents’ choice.  Last year, legislation for a scholarship tax credit program passed the House 54-45 before failing in the Senate.

In addition to scholarship tax credits, the education reform package focused on creating an “opportunity to learn agenda” through expanded charter and virtual school opportunities. These initiatives include making it easier for charters to form and operate in the state, ensuring local school boards make unused buildings available to charter schools, clarifying the funding formula so that funding “follows the child,” and allowing additional accreditation options for virtual schools.

Governor McDonnell also pledged to focus on raising standards of college and workforce readiness, reducing mandates on local school districts, and enhancing teacher quality.

Virginia residents have expressed strong bipartisan support for school choice, with 64 percent of Democrats, 68 percent of Republicans, and 66 percent of Independents favoring creation of a scholarship tax credit program, according to a 2009 poll conducted by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice.

Image Courtesy of   http://www.flickr.com/photos/vadot/

The article Virginia Governor Announces Education Reforms appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

While K-12 schools around the country search for funding to provide iPads to every student, an education researcher in North Carolina has found that even a single iPad can make a huge difference in the classroom.

The results of her experience with student teachers at Wake Forest University appear in the December/January issue of Learning & Leading With Technology, the magazine of the International Society for Technology in Education.

“Because they’re truly part of the digital generation, our pre-service teachers and the K-12 students they teach have a natural aptitude for tablet devices,” said Kristin Redington Bennett, an Assistant Professor of Education at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C.

Though iPads can cost more than $500 with 3G access and a budget for apps, Bennett said, “Don’t discount the device because of its price. We found that just one iPad allowed teachers to design creative lesson plans tailored to individual learners.”

One of her pre-service teachers even used the iPad to solve a problem with a disruptive student who made trouble in the reading center every morning. When the teacher showed the student how to download books on the iPad, he read with focus for 20 minutes each morning – a goal he had not achieved until then.

“Anything new and different is engaging for kids,” said Nancy Davidson, a senior elementary education major at Wake Forest who used an iPad in her student teaching last semester. “Tracking student growth through apps, pictures, and videos became more efficient for me and more interesting for the children. Using the iPad in class started as a luxury, but quickly became a normal part of their learning process.”

Bennett’s pre-service teachers used the iPads in three ways:

*Comparing students’ progress on identical tasks using the iPads, interactive whiteboards, and desktops to see if the less-expensive iPad would work as well.

*In groups of two or three, working out a problem together. This approach required a set of rules (only one set of fingers on the iPad) and specific tasks for each team member. The group would capture an image of their work and store it in the iPad’s photo album for teacher review.

*For the teacher only, taking the place of other digital displays. One teacher took photos around the school and flipped through as she explained geometric shapes occurring in the school and in nature.

“What often happens in schools is that they purchase this new technology and expect teachers to use it with little training in how to design successful instruction with it,” Bennett said. “My goal is to train our elementary education candidates to graduate from our program with the skills and fluency in the use of mobile technology to support teaching and learning. This has allowed many of our graduates to be leaders in their schools even as a first-year teacher.”

Based on her experience, Bennett recommends these top 10 apps for use with elementary-school students:

1. Google Earth: (all ages) Take a virtual field trip to anywhere through this app that uses global satellite and aerial imagery with a swipe of a finger.

2. DoodleBuddy: (all ages) Students and teachers can use this across all content areas as a whiteboard equivalent to paint, draw, sketch, and write.

3. Story Buddy: (K-2nd) This app allows kids to create, read, and share stories that they create with the iPad.

4. Stack the States: (2nd-6th) An animated, game-based way to learn state locations, capitals, shapes, abbreviations, and nicknames.

5. Geocaching: (3rd-6th) In this global treasure hunting game, participants hide and seek containers, called geocaches, outdoors, then share their adventures online.

6. Numberland HD: (PK-1st) Twin heroes teach numbers using the Montessori Method.

7. Corkulous: (2nd – 6th) This app allows students to collect, organize, and share ideas through notes, labels, and photos.

8. iThoughtsHD: (3rd-6th) This mind-mapping tool can be used to sequence ideas, write mind-maps, organize thinking, and assess interrelatedness.

9. Coin Math: (K-3rd) Students learn both sides of a coin, how to add them, and how to pay for something with the correct coins.

10. StarFall ABC’s: (PK-1st) Students learn to recognize letters and develop skills as they begin to learn to read.

The article Teaching is Improved with iPads appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Three-fourths of preschool-age children in the United States attend child care, and many are not getting enough outdoor physical activity, which may be due in part to parental and societal values about injury prevention and kindergarten readiness.

A team led by Kristen Copeland, MD, division of General and Community Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Faculty Scholar, conducted a focus-group study of 53 child care providers from 34 child care centers in Cincinnati to examine their perceptions of potential barriers to children’s physical activity in child care.

Researchers identified three main barriers to children’s physical activity: injury concerns, a focus on academics over outdoor play, and financial constraints. Because many children spend all daylight hours in care, and because some lacked a safe place to play near their home, these barriers to physical activity in child care may limit children’s only opportunity to engage in physical activity, according to Dr. Copeland.

The child care providers who were interviewed for the study said that they felt pressure from parents to make sure that their children did not get injured while playing outside and, at times, were asked to keep children from participating in vigorous activity to keep them from being injured.

Similarly, child care providers noted that recent stricter licensing codes have resulted in playgrounds being less physically challenging and interesting to children. The new play equipment that was safe according to these standards soon became boring to the children as they quickly mastered it. Teachers noted that children would then start to use equipment in unsafe ways for which it was not intended such as walking up the slide.

“Child care providers mentioned that they appreciated having state inspections of their playground equipment and strict licensing codes because it helped them feel confident about the safety of the equipment,” says Copeland. “But several of them expressed how overly strict standards had rendered some of the equipment unchallenging and uninteresting to the children, which hampered the children’s physical activity.”

Another issue discovered during the study was that care providers felt pressured by parents (both upper- income and lower-income) and early-learning state standards to prioritize academic classroom learning over outdoor and active playtime.

“Several of the care providers agreed with this goal in principle, but they also recognized that children learned through active play and that the energy release and creative stimulation of outdoor activities helped place children in a better mindset to learn and concentrate later either indoors or outdoors,” says Copeland.

“We were surprised to find such a strong focus on academics for children as young as 3 years old. At this age, most children do not know how to skip and are still learning how to share and negotiate peer relationships. Yet teachers told us that many parents wanted to know what their child ‘learned’ that day, but were not interested in whether they had gone outside or had mastered fundamental gross motor skills.”

Many of the participants also cited budgetary reasons for why their centers could not offer children optimal physical activity opportunities. Most centers had tight operating margins and could not afford equipment for the children to play on. Yet Copeland does not feel the financial barriers present an insurmountable barrier to children’s physical activity in child care.

“There are plenty of things centers can do to encourage physical activity that cost little to no money—such as putting on a dance CD, taking nature walks, running races on the playground, or learning how to skip.” Copeland and her team say that these findings show that there may be a need to reset the balance of the priorities of injury prevention and kindergarten readiness with physical activity promotion.

She says, “Given that childhood obesity is a national epidemic and a major cause of childhood morbidity and that time in child care may be the child’s only opportunity for outdoor play, licensing standards may need to explicitly promote physical activity in as much detail as is devoted to safety.

“An important message from this study is that well-intentioned policies may have unintended consequences for preschool-aged children’s physical development. Daily physical activity is essential for preschool-aged children’s development and for preventing obesity, yet parents’ and teachers’ concerns about injury and school-readiness may be keeping children from being physically active.

In essence, in ensuring that young children are smart and safe, we may also be keeping them sedentary.”

The article Parental Values Create Obstacles for Children’s Outdoor Activities appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Wisconsin has forced the debate nationally on teachers’ salaries as more and more states are cutting spending for education, claiming austerity measures.   Although there is no clear correlation that better paid teachers produce more educated students, there are certainly some valid reasons why teachers should be paid better in the United States.

According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), many people do not join the teaching profession because of its low starting salary, which trails the pay of educators around the world.  The average starting salary for a teacher is $32,642.  The maximum salary for teachers with master’s degree is $60,036.  Teachers have also been “losing ground” to other professions for years, EPI says. A 2008 report by the Economic Policy Institute argues that teachers with bachelor’s degrees earned about 12.2 percent less than their peers in 2006, while the gap between teachers and non-teachers with a master’s degree was 11.3 percent.

The National Education Association, the largest teacher’s union, believes that teachers should receive more compensation for receiving a master’s degree.  “People who improve their skills should get paid more,” says Bill Raabe of the NEA “Wouldn’t you want that adult work with your children to be the best that money can buy. It’s a no brainer.”

A few schools are fighting these trends by paying teachers six-figure salaries. A New York City charter school earned headlines in 2008 for its plans to pay teachers $125,000 in exchange for working longer hours and assuming additional duties. A voluntary program instituted in Washington, D.C., last year could raise total compensation for some teachers to $140,000.  Some teachers in Wisconsin and Illinois are also reportedly as handsomely compensated along with other states. According to the NEA, about 1 percent of teachers are paid that well.

Though teachers’ unions and their political allies argue that educators are underpaid, fiscal conservatives argue that given the amount of work they do and the hefty benefits they receive, that is not the case. Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, says he is not against paying well.  “I don’t think that all teachers should earn six figures,” Hess says in an interview. “The best teachers should earn six figures and the worst teachers should be fired.”

The states that teachers are the lowest paid are generally not known for high quality education.  The states with the lowest paid teachers are Kansas, Tennessee, New Mexico, North Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Utah, Missouri, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

Throwing more money at a broken education system may not solve the problem.  But, teachers in the United States are significantly underpaid, suggesting that the nation may not value education as it once did.  This will negatively impact future generations.

The article Teachers in the United States: Are They Underpaid? appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

With the recent attacks being leveled on teachers around the United States, it may be of interest to compare how American teachers stack up against teachers in other countries.  If the U.S. wants to remain a superpower, it seems essential that the education system is comparable to other countries.  The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (O.E.C.D.) report from 2009 may be the best data to compare teachers globally.

American teachers work longer hours than those in other countries.  Educators in the United States spend on average 1,080 hours teaching each year. Across the O.E.C.D., the average is 794 hours on primary education, 709 hours on lower secondary education, and 653 hours on upper secondary education general programs.

It is difficult to compare salaries globally.  Cost of living is widely different between regions of countries much less between continents.  Not to mention, higher education costs much less in many other countries so educators are not faced with the crippling debt that many in America deal with.  But, generally the salaries of teachers in America appear to be above the global average.  The average public primary-school teacher who has worked 15 years and has received the minimum amount of training, for example, earns $43,633, compared to the O.E.C.D. average of $39,007.  However, a more accurate comparison can be seen if you compare teachers’ salaries to the amount of wealth that a country has.  In that regard, America is lagging behind.  In the United States, a teacher with 15 years of experience makes a salary that is 96 percent of the country’s gross domestic product per capita. Across the O.E.C.D., a teacher of equivalent experience makes 117 percent of G.D.P. per capita. At the high end of the scale, in Korea, the average teacher at this level makes a full 221 percent of the country’s G.D.P. per capita.  This is perhaps the most startling statistic and the meaning behind it cannot be ignored.  America does not put a priority on educating the youth.

The Program for International Student Assessment, a group that compares schools around the world, has a message for America– Train teachers better and pay them more.  Top-scoring countries like Korea, Singapore and Finland recruit only high-performing college graduates for teaching positions, mentor them and take steps to raise respect for the profession, said Andreas Schleicher, who oversees PISA.  “Teaching in the U.S. is unfortunately no longer a high-status occupation,” Schleicher wrote in a PISA report.  “Despite the characterization of some that teaching is an easy job, with short hours and summers off, the fact is that successful, dedicated teachers in the U.S. work long hours for little pay and, in many cases, insufficient support from their leadership.”

On the most recent PISA reports, Finland and Singapore were tops in science, Korea and Finland in reading and Singapore and Korea in math. American students are ranked 15th in reading, 19th in science and 27th in math.   Schleicher also said that America may spend a lot on education; they just aren’t spending it on the necessary areas.   He noted that Americans spend much more in other areas, such as busing and sports facilities.  “You can spend a lot of money on education, but if you don’t spend it wisely, on improving the quality of instruction, you won’t get higher student outcomes,” Schleicher told The New York Times.

The article The American Teacher appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

In the state of Florida, newly elected Republican Governor Rick Scott is proposing huge cuts to education spending in a state where teachers are already among the lowest paid in the country.  Scott’s announcement was met with statewide protests as educators, parents, and students fear cutting education that drastically will mean big changes for an already floundering school system.

Scott is proposing a K-12 budget for the coming year that is $1.75 billion less than the current education budget.   Nearly half of that reduction, according to Scott, is because the federal government won’t be sending the $873 million stimulus for education that it sent last year.  Claiming austerity measures and the need to balance the budget, Scott urged GOP lawmakers, “don’t blink” when faced with stares from critics.  However, Scott’s slashing of education will not benefit the state in any way.  In his proposed budget, he will gash education funding by $1.75 billion and then give away nearly the same amount on corporate and property tax breaks.  It is reverse Robin Hood.  The money potentially saved by killing education would not close the state budget gap at all.

Under Scott’s proposed budget, teachers would receive a pay cut certainly. But, students would also be affected.  Scott’s $16.5 billion K-12 budget proposal would cut per-student spending to $6,196, $703 less than this year’s $6,899.  The governor’s budget also projects $209 million less from discretionary taxes that school boards are allowed to raise additionally. Overall, that has Scott’s plan delivering $867 million less in property taxes for education.

Some Florida residents accuse Scott of reneging on a campaign pledge to hold education harmless. “Every candidate who ran in this last election ran on a campaign saying, ‘I support education,’ ” said Palm Beach County schools lobbyist Vern Pickup-Crawford. “Nobody ran on a campaign saying, ‘Elect me. I’m going to cut schools 10 percent.’ Including the governor.”

Teachers resent that they are the new scapegoat.  Roosevelt Middle School civics teacher Mike Dowling said he can weather a 5 percent salary reduction even though he, like other Palm Beach County teachers, hasn’t had a pay raise in three years.  But he worries about other teachers who are trying to survive on a tight budget.  “I don’t know that we can afford to make much less than we make,” Dowling said. “We’re talking about teachers not being able to pay the light bill, the phone bill. It scares me that Gov. Scott is trying to balance the budget and give tax breaks to wealthy people on the backs of the teachers.”  Dowling also said he’s concerned that respect for teachers is at an all-time low since he became an educator 18 years ago.  “When did teachers become the enemy?” he asked. “We are the people that you trust your children’s future to.  Society trusts me with their most precious resource, their children. And I’m wondering what we value.”

The article Florida Governor Suggests Slashing Education Funding appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.