This annotated bibliography is reformatted and customized by the Center for Positive Practices. Some of the authors featured on this page include Anne C. Moore, Marcy P. Osgood, Melissa Axelrod, Gary Ivory, Vaishali Honawar, John N. Berry, H. Prentice Baptiste, Colorado Children's Campaign, Michael Milone, and US Department of Education.
(2008). Unions Battle for Democrats in Swing States, Education Week. Teachers' unions around the country have shifted into high gear in the countdown to the presidential election next week, and nowhere is the fervor more evident than in the battleground states. In Florida, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, affiliates of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers have been campaigning with every tool at their disposal, including newsletters, fliers, postcards, and volunteers to reach out to more than 4 million members and their families. The two national unions, which have both endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, have raised and spent large sums of money on this election, including on radio advertisements in those areas being closely contested by their candidate and Republican nominee John McCain. The unions' unequivocal support for Senator Obama comes despite the fact that he does not see eye to eye with them on some core issues. His support for teacher performance pay and charter schools, for instance, has not been greeted enthusiastically by the unions. Some leaders of state affiliates that have struggled with such issues as charter schools say, however, that they believe they can work out their differences if Obama is elected. [More] Descriptors: Unions, Teacher Associations, Political Attitudes, Elections
(2008). Authority Grab Eroding Stature of State Boards, Education Week. This article reports on the eroding power of state school boards in the U.S. as lawmakers and governors are seeking to expand their authority over K-12 education and, in some cases, reverse education policy set in motion by elected or appointed panels. This year alone, state boards in Florida, Ohio, and Vermont are targets of legislation that would either eliminate them outright or reduce their authority, while the governor in Idaho is considering ways to seize greater control over the panel in his state. Members of those boards may have good reason to worry. In Minnesota, the legislature abolished the state board of education in 1998. New Mexico did essentially the same thing in 2003, when the board was stripped of its authority and relegated to advisory-only status. Governors, meanwhile, are well aware of the political, fiscal, and moral responsibility they bear for K-12 education, and eager for ways to enhance their authority to set policy. And state legislators, who shape education policy by crafting budgets and passing laws, also want to have a say, while some are still worried about vesting full authority with the governor. [More] Descriptors: Elementary Secondary Education, Legislators, State Boards of Education, State Officials
(2008). LJ Q&A "ALA Candidates": Library Advocacy x 2, Library Journal. Library advocacy in one of two directions is the top priority of both Camila Alire and J. Linda Williams, the candidates campaigning to capture the 2009-10 term as president of the American Library Association (ALA). Alire, dean emeritus of the libraries of both the University of New Mexico and Colorado State University, will push for enhancements to what she calls "grassroots advocacy" by front-line librarians. Williams, coordinator of library media services for Anne Arundel County public schools in Annapolis, MD, will focus her presidency on conveying the value of school library media centers to state and federal legislators. She will eye the opportunity to restore them to a higher priority when No Child Left Behind (NCLB) comes up for reauthorization next year. Both candidates are confident that their initiatives fall well within the goals set by the ALA Strategic Long Range Plan, as has been required in recent years in an effort by ALA leaders to curb the more ambitious presidential initiatives common in the past. This article details several areas where these two excellent candidates exhibit small differences from each other. [More] Descriptors: Federal Legislation, School Libraries, Professional Associations, Administrators
(2008). Seeing like a Teacher, English Education. As coeditor of the April 2006 issue of this journal, Tara Star Johnson wrote an eloquent essay in which she explored "the increasing bureaucratic pressure to mass-produce, homogenize and monitor students" as manifested in the No Child Left Behind Act and the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) accreditation process. The story the author wishes to tell in this article parallels Johnson's, and, he hopes, adds to it in useful ways. In the fall of 2007, his professional life was influenced by three experiences. One was a class he taught for teachers in a small New Mexico town. The second was preparing for the visit of an NCATE team to his university. The third was reading James C. Scott's "Seeing Like a State" (1998). The first two showed the author how completely educators now live and work in the policy-saturated world Johnson described; the third helped him understand the underlying purpose of these policies and how educators might begin to regain control over their work. [More] Descriptors: Federal Legislation, Accreditation (Institutions), Phenomenology, Teaching Experience
(2008). Beyond Social Justice: The Threat of Inequality to Workforce Development in the Western United States, Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. This report focuses on the 15 states of the West (Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming), their ability to educate minorities, and the resulting impact on their workforces and economies. The foundation of the Western U.S. economy rests on a workforce that is becoming increasingly diverse, as residents of European descent are growing older and making up an ever-smaller proportion of the workforce, and the economy demands more upward mobility among Hispanic, Black non-Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaska Native populations. The following questions are addressed in this the report: (1) What are the current education gaps between minorities and White non-Hispanics? (2) How well are certain minorities prepared for high-skill, high-wage jobs? (3) What is their status in the workforce as a result? (4) Has their status in the workforce improved for recent generations? and (5) What would be the impact if we improved our ability to educate these disadvantaged populations? The report does not provide solutions: it is intended to expand understanding of the impact of racial and ethnic inequality on the Western United States' ability to compete educationally and economically with countries around the world that have gained ground with respect to educational attainment, and to add some insight into efforts to address the challenges that minority populations face. [More] Descriptors: Human Capital, Labor Force Development, Minority Groups, Students
(2011). What Really Matters: Assessing Individual Problem-Solving Performance in the Context of Biological Sciences, International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. The evaluation of higher-level cognitive skills can augment traditional discipline-based knowledge testing by providing timely assessment of individual student problem-solving abilities that are critical for success in any professional development program. However, the wide-spread acceptance and implementation of higher level cognitive skills analysis has been delayed by the lack of rapid, valid, and reliable quantified-scoring techniques. At the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, we have developed an examination format that can be routinely and sequentially implemented for both formative and summative assessments of individual students in large classes. Rather than providing results in terms of an individual student's knowledge base in a single academic discipline or group of disciplines, this type of examination provides information on performance in the application of specific problem-solving skills, which we term "domains," to a contextual clinical or scientific problem. These domains, derived from the scientific method, are tested across various academic disciplines, and are reported in terms of the following: Initial and sequential hypothesis generation, investigation of these hypotheses, evaluation of newly acquired data, integration of basic science mechanisms with new information to explain the basis of the problem, and reflection on one's own professional development in the context of the examination. The process for criterion referenced quantified grading of the examination is outlined in this paper. This process involves relatively rapid scoring, and permits the timely use of the resulting information for individual student feedback as well as curricular improvement. Data regarding grading consistency and comparison with other measures of student performance is also presented in this paper. An analysis of the performance characteristics of this examination, which has been utilized for over 10 years in a variety of course settings, indicates that it is valid, reliable, and utilizable. As such, the methodology is now routinely used in several undergraduate and graduate level biochemistry classes to monitor the development of individual student problem-solving abilities. [More] Descriptors: Biological Sciences, Problem Solving, Thinking Skills, Formative Evaluation
(2003). The Roles of Literacy and Collaboration in Documenting Native American Languages: A Report from the Jicarilla Apache Dictionary Project, Sign Language Studies. Reports on the progress of a project to produce a dictionary of the Jicarilla Apache language. Jicarilla, an Eastern Apachean language is spoken on the Jicarilla Apache reservation in Northern New Mexico. The project has revealed much about the role of literacy in language standardization and in speaker empowerment. Suggests that many parallels exist between writing such a dictionary and writing a dictionary of sign language. Descriptors: American Indian Languages, Apache, Deafness, Dictionaries
(2008). Examining the Presidential Libraries: Students Find Biases and Recommend a Multicultural Perspective, Multicultural Education. The primary focus of research that the authors have undertaken at New Mexico State University for the past several years can be summed up with the question–are Presidential Libraries educational institutions or are they simply political monuments and messages? The authors have conducted extensive investigations involving visitations to ten Presidential Libraries, telephone inquiries, email correspondences, searches of the presidential websites, and most recently a critical analysis of the Presidential series on C-SPAN and the published Presidential Timelines. In all of this, they set out to gather some answers to the following questions: What if anything are the Presidential Libraries doing for education? Is the information being disseminated through the Libraries appropriately multicultural in its perspective, or is it more narrow and biased? What can be done to enhance the educational programs of Presidential Libraries so that they are "more accountable to the diverse public" and "a fair equitable message about the Presidents of the United States" is sent out to students young and old? In this article, the authors describe the results of their investigations. [More] [More] Descriptors: Presidents, Libraries, Library Role, Institutional Mission
(2008). Making Charter School Facilities More Affordable: State-driven Policy Approaches. Innovations in Education. Securing appropriate facilities can be a significant challenge for those intending to open a charter school. Although, like all public schools, charter schools receive per-pupil dollars from the state, they generally receive considerably less. Additionally, because traditional public schools rely on their district to provide their school facilities, they can spend 100 percent of their per-pupil operational funding on their instructional program, whereas most charter schools must stretch operational dollars to cover facilities costs as well. This guide profiles policy interventions from eight states (Arizona, California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Texas) and the District of Columbia that have been developed to help charter schools address various facilities-related challenges. By adapting the models described to local contexts as well as generating new models, it is hoped that states across the nation can lay the groundwork for offering all public school students the facilities needed to reach their education goals. Three appendixes include: (1) Research Methodology; (2) Statutes Pertaining to State-level Funding, Finance, and Provision of Charter School Facilities; and (3) Resources. A Glossary of Finance-related terms is included. [More] Descriptors: Charter Schools, Educational Innovation, Educational Facilities, Educational Facilities Improvement
(2008). 2008 KidsCount in Colorado!. "KidsCount in Colorado!" is an annual publication of the Colorado Children's Campaign, which provides the best available state- and county-level data to measure and track the education, health and general well-being of the state's children. KidsCount in Colorado! informs policy debates and community discussions, serving as a valuable resource for policymakers, community leaders, advocates and citizens. This year's report focuses on an issue that impacts almost every other factor: children living in poverty. Poverty is the biggest obstacle to opportunity for children, and between 2000 and 2006, the number of children living in poverty in Colorado increased by 73 percent–the highest increase by far of any state in the nation. At the same time, the total number of children in the state only increased six percent. While Colorado and much of the rest of the nation are experiencing a rise in the percentage of children living in poverty, some states, including neighboring states like Wyoming and New Mexico, experienced decreases. Understanding the data and the impact of this issue on children are important steps to making sound policy and community decisions about the problem of children growing up in poverty. [More] Descriptors: Well Being, Poverty, Child Health, Public Policy
(2011). Crisis/Opportunity: 2011 Annual Report. If there's one quality that WICHE's home region, the West, is famous for, it's endurance in the face of crisis. And if there's another, it's the ability to find–and make–opportunities even in tough times. Over the last fiscal year, WICHE has done just that. The organization has been highly successful in terms of developing new projects and securing funding for them from a variety of foundations and other organizations. States have received excellent value for their support over the last year. It has worked directly with a number of them–including California, New Mexico, Oregon, and North Dakota–to help them find solutions to challenges in a number of areas, including higher education finance, performance-based funding, governance structures, and accountability. In addition, WICHE has seen a record number of students participating in the Student Exchange Program: over 28,000 enrolled in the Western Undergraduate Exchange, Professional Student Exchange, and Western Regional Graduate Program last year. Its research efforts were particularly strong in fiscal 2011. It advanced its work on the multistate longitudinal data exchange project and helped to launch another multistate initiative, the Predictive Analytics Reporting Framework project. The organization secured resources for a new project, the North American Network of Science Labs Online, and continued its efforts on the College Access Challenge Grant Consortium and Network. It wrapped up its work on the Non-traditional No More project–and thanks to the depth of experience it gained through it, WICHE was selected as the national administrator for the Adult College Completion Network. It launched a new partnership, the Western Alliance of Community College Academic Leaders, a companion to its four-year-college-focused Western Academic Leadership Forum. And the Mental Health Program initiated and worked on many projects in a wide range of areas last year, from behavioral health training to meet the needs of returning soldiers to rural mental health and mental health first aid. Over the last fiscal year, the work of its commission–under the leadership of Chair Joseph Garcia, Vice Chair Bonnie Jean Beesley, and Past Chair Thomas Buchanan–has been a major assist in helping shape the organization's agenda so it can achieve its goals in five focus areas: finance, access and success, workforce and society, technology and innovation, and accountability. [More] Descriptors: Academic Achievement, Educational Technology, Accountability, Governance
(2003). A Teacher Takes on the Challenges of Deaf Literacy: An Interview with Jennifer Herbold, Reading Online. Interviews Jennifer Herbold, a deaf teacher of deaf students at the New Mexico School for the Deaf. Discusses important factors in determining Deaf students' success at learning to read. Notes that technology has enormous potential with deaf students because it provides increased exposure to English, it is often fun to use for deaf students, and it provides tools in which students learn to read and write better. Descriptors: Academic Achievement, Deafness, Elementary Education, Reading Strategies
(2003). Do Hispanic-Serving Institutions Have What It Takes To Foster Information Literacy? One Case, Journal of Latinos and Education. Surveys of 111 faculty at 3 campuses of New Mexico State University indicated that respondents had medium-high levels of information literacy and realized that students needed information literacy education. However, respondents were not committed to promoting information literacy in students. Recommendations for promoting Latino students' information literacy are offered to content-area faculty, librarians, higher-education leaders, and researchers. (Contains 29 references.) Descriptors: College Faculty, College Students, Educational Needs, Higher Education
(2008). Sports Drove Silva to Teach Wellness, Tribal College Journal of American Indian Higher Education. This article profiles teacher Leroy Silva (Laguna), 27, a.k.a. "Buster". Silva describes himself as an active guy who stays busy working out, playing basketball, softball, and more recently golf, soccer, and lacrosse. He teaches personal wellness and sports (not physical education), a job he began in 2006. Before that he was a trainer at the Laguna Pueblo Wellness Center, his first job after graduating from Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas. He earned two degrees at Haskell: an Associate Degree in Health, Physical Education, and Athletics in 2003 and a Bachelor's Degree in American Indian Studies in 2005. Although he didn't plan to become a teacher, Silva says he has always known he wanted to make a difference with youth. When he began exploring the Native American Community Academy (NACA) position he spent two weeks deliberating before finally taking the leap at the urging of his mother, Joan Silva. Since he didn't major in education, Silva is working on alternative licensure by developing a portfolio that addresses New Mexico state teaching competencies. Kara L. Bobroff (Lakota/Navajo), the founding principal of NACA, says Silva is a strong role model for the students. He emulates the core values, mission, and vision of the school: college success, knowing his own culture and language, practicing personal wellness, and being committed to community and service. [More] Descriptors: Role Models, American Indians, American Indian Education, Wellness
(2011). Lessons for Tennessee from Florida's Education Revolution, Foundation for Educational Choice. Jeb Bush campaigned for governor on a clear and bracing set of education reforms in 1998. Having won office, he immediately pursued a dual-track strategy for reforming Florida's K-12 education system: standards and accountability for public schools, choice and options for parents. Florida lawmakers followed those reforms with additional measures. They enacted instructional-based reforms, curtailed social promotion, introduced performance pay for teachers, and expanded school choice for families. A decade of bold reforms led to dramatic achievement gains in Florida, while academic improvements in Tennessee were held back by a lack of strong policy changes. Ten years after Governor Bush's election and subsequent work to improve K-12 education, this study lays out the cumulative impact of his reforms, using data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Looking particularly at NAEP's reading test, 47 percent of Florida's fourth-grade students scored below Basic in 1998, meaning they were unable to master "fundamental skills." By 2009, however, 73 percent of Florida's fourth graders scored Basic or above–a remarkable improvement. What's more, after a decade of strong improvement, Florida's Hispanic students now have the second-highest reading scores in the nation; Florida's African Americans rank fourth-highest when compared to their peers in other states. Compared to Tennessee, the average Florida Hispanic student scored higher than the average score for all "Tennessee students" on NAEP's fourth-grade reading test in 2009. Tennessee's students are not alone. Florida's Hispanic students also outscored the statewide averages for all students in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. In addition, Florida's African American students went from being far behind their peers in Tennessee to being significantly ahead of them. This paper lays out Florida's reforms, and suggest how Tennessee policymakers could emulate the Sunshine State. Florida's work wasn't easy, but the academic success that has occurred should make it easier for other states to follow, including Tennessee. (Contains 6 figures and 22 notes.) [This report was released by the Foundation for Educational Choice and the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.] [More] Descriptors: Educational Change, Strategic Planning, Public Officials, State Standards