Our school hears Dr. Anthony Muhammad on Transforming School Culture

We sent one teacher from each grade team and our Principal. They found his presentatin powerful and inspiring.
Here's what his web site has to say about him:
Anthony Muhammad is one of the most sought after educational consultants in North America. As a practitioner of nearly twenty years, Dr. Muhammad has served as a middle school teacher, assistant principal, middle school principal, and high school principal. His tenure as a practitioner has earned him several awards as both a teacher and a principal.

Dr. Muhammad’s most notable accomplishment came as principal at Levey Middle School in Southfield, Michigan, a National School of Excellence, where student proficiency on state assessments was more than doubled in five years. Dr. Muhammad and the staff at Levey used the Professional Learning Communities at Work (PLC) model of school improvement, and they have been recognized in several videos and articles as a model, high-performing PLC.

As a researcher, he has published articles in several publications in both the United States and Canada. Dr. Muhammad is a contributing author to the book The Collaborative Administrator published in 2008. He also authored Transforming School Culture: How to Overcome Staff Division, published in 2009.

My state lags in funding education

California is number 47th in spending per pupil.

From Google Alerts: Tracking the budget cuts.

High-ranking jobs are targeted for cuts
Press-Enterprise - Riverside,CA,USA
Brown said his district has to make cuts because it faces the prospect of $6.2 million in midyear cuts in state revenue through the California budget crisis ...
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Students, communities pay when schools cut busing
CNN - USA
School districts all over the nation -- from San Diego County, California, to Walden, New York, to Collier County, Florida, and myriad locales in between ...
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Economics Sore Subject for Public Schools
Kansas City infoZine - Kansas City,MO,USA
When the South Carolina Legislature met in October to plug a $488 million budget gap, lawmakers cut elementary and secondary school funding by 3.6 percent ...
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District's contingency funds helping it weather state cuts
Orangeburg Times Democrat - Orangeburg,SC,USA
Dr. David Longshore said the district has used approximately $1041000 from its contingency fund this year as a result of the budget cuts. ...
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Kermit King: A school devoted to creating a family atmosphere
Paso Robles Press - Paso Robles,CA,USA
Parent support, and especially the school’s Parent-Teacher Association, has been crucial in the navigating recent budget cuts that have plagued schools ...
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HUSD seeks to save $2.5 million by offering special education ...
Hesperia Star - Victorville,CA,USA
At their January 5 meeting, the HUSD school board approved $4.2 million in budget cuts, in an attempt to rein in the district's budget crisis. ...
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Districts Scrounge for Low-Pain Budget Cuts
Education Week News - Bethesda,MD,USA
When the 15000-student Capistrano Unified School District in Southern California sent out 266 pink slips last spring to teachers, threatening to drive up ...
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State indecision stymies school budget planning
Gilroy Dispatch - Gilroy,CA,USA
But based on proposals, the district will have to cut about $3 million from this school year's general fund budget of about $86 million, $5.5 million next ...
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Next cuts: The deepest?
Manteca Bulletin - Manteca,CA,USA
By Vince Rembulat Sacramento’s failure to stop the current state budget hemorrhaging means Manteca Unified must now cut $9.5 million for the current school ...
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Willows teachers on chopping block
Willows Journal - CA, United States
Among the major cuts tentatively approved by the WUSD board last week were class-size reductions in the elementary school grades of kindergarten through ...
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California Math Wars

The Chronicle has an article up on Superintendent of Education's response to the new algebra standards pushed by the governor:
O'Connell to Schwarzenegger: Here's the bill, where's the cash?
O'Connell estimates the bill for this failed policy decision at 3.7 Billion dollars.
In my eyes, this is just a continuation of the math wars of the nineties; it appears that the power of the small band of fundamentalist fanatics who run the Mathematically Correct: website still outweighs the opinions and wishes of the math teachers actually in the trenches...

We went to the beach

A demonstration of what the kids could do when asked "What did you do over the summer?
We took eight kids and ten adults to the beach last weekend...

State Senator Jeff Denham's District 12 :266 more layoffs in Modesto

More here about how to contact Jeff Denham
From the Modesto Bee

More than 200 school jobs in danger

Modesto board will decide about issuing layoff notices

By MERRILL BALASSONE
mbalassone@modbee.com



Pink slips will be on the way for more than 200 classified employees in Modesto City Schools next week if the Board of Education votes tonight to issue a round of layoff notices.

About 266 full- and part-time support staff positions may be cut or face a reduction in work hours, including classroom aides, book room clerks and library assistants. Sixty-three of those 266 positions are already vacant and will remain vacant, said Chris Flesuras, associate superintendent of human resources. If people who are facing layoffs have experience in another district job, they may be "bumped" to another position. Read more

Senator Jim Battens District 37 :School Closure at Wildomar

WILDOMAR: Trustees plan to discuss school closure Tuesday

Parents, teachers oppose shutting Jean Hayman

By RANI GUPTA - Staff Writer | Friday, April 18, 2008 7:02 PM PDT ∞

Principal Nori Chandler reads to second-graders at Jean Hayman Elementary School on Friday. Lake Elsinore Unified School District administrators will meet Tuesday to discuss the possible closure of the Wildomar campus. (STEVE THORNTON / Staff photographer)

WILDOMAR ---- School trustees are scheduled to vote Tuesday on whether to close Jean Hayman Elementary in the fall to bridge an expected budget gap. Lake Elsinore is in State Senate District 37. Read more...

Steve Lopez from the L.A. Times speaks out on the California elementary school budget cuts..

Steve Lopez:
Schools begging, and we're all the poorer for it
Los Angeles Times - CA,USA
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez13apr13,1,7896493.column
April 13, 2008

My column Wednesday about the growing cost of public education seems to have touched a nerve in a state where we've moved way, way beyond candy sales and pancake fundraisers.

If you missed it, I wrote about a meeting at the L.A. Unified elementary school my daughter will attend in the fall. More than 200 people attended, and leaders of the parents group asked us to reach for our checkbooks and help fill an anticipated $180,000 budget gap so the school doesn't lose the literacy coach, math coach and computer guy.

"Welcome to the club," wrote Mitch Lane, who said he has been asked since 1997 to donate to his daughters' public schools in La Cañada Flintridge. Without parental support, he said, "our schools would be seeking disaster relief. . . . Best wishes on shedding light on one of our state government's most embarrassing blunders -- not making education funding a priority."

And what about schools where parents can't come up with the dough, as they can at my school and Lane's?

"Our fundraising was not as fruitful," said Cynthia Santos-Decure, whose son is a student in Long Beach. "We will lose our computer instructor, librarian and only have a nurse one or two days a week. Those are just the preliminary cuts. . . . I ask myself, what's next?"

It's anybody's guess. What happened to the days when public education was not just valued, but was seen as a great equalizer in American society, offering a pathway to upward mobility for even the least fortunate students?

And there's nothing to guarantee that districts won't cut deeper at schools where they know parents can afford to make up the difference. David Tokofsky, a former Los Angeles Unified board member, predicted a civil war if middle-class and upper-middle-class schools get hit harder than low-performing schools that can't afford to get by with less.

Tokofsky said he warned district leaders there should have been a parcel tax on the ballot this year to cover massive slashing by Sacramento -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed a $4.8-billion fleecing of the state's children -- but no one had "the guts" to tell the public the truth.

And what is that truth?

The truth is that political leaders love lying to us about what a civil society costs. They're even willing to trade our children's futures for their political futures, and California is now plummeting toward the bottom tiers in funding per pupil in the United States.

Though it might be hard for Sacramento's pols to understand, sometimes you've got to find the courage to tell yacht owners you're closing their tax loopholes, tell drivers there's a stiff price to pay for a break on the car tax, or do what Reagan and Wilson did, and raise taxes temporarily to avoid draconian cuts.

Darrin James, a teacher in Santa Ana, said teachers could be laid off by the hundreds in his district.

"State and federal governments are trying to get out of the education business. They try to blame it on teachers, students, immigration, whatever they can think of. The truth is that the pillar of free education in the world, the United States, is failing its children."

And Malcolm Sharp, president of the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified board, said 60 layoff notices have gone out and parents are being asked to come up with $1.2 million by May 15.

Sharp said parents, teachers and students in his district will march to Sacramento this week to protest budget cuts and screwy funding formulas that are virtually impossible to figure out.

Sharp isn't the only one I heard from who wanted to shake a fist at Sacramento. Others were ready to start a recall of Schwarzenegger, who of course once referred to 2008 as the "year of education."

Not that he's the only target of angry teachers, parents and administrators. It is not possible to write about public education without some readers arguing that balancing budgets is as simple as eliminating bureaucracy or deporting illegal immigrants.

I'm not going to tell you there aren't a few slugs wandering the halls at L.A. Unified headquarters and other district shops. Nor would I suggest that illegal immigrants don't pose huge challenges at great cost.

As for bureaucratic and administrative fat, there's always room for a little more trimming, but nowhere near enough to offset the kind of shortages districts are looking at.

As for illegal immigrants: They're here, hell will freeze over before Washington produces a reform bill -- and until that time, the cost of educating illegal immigrants is lower than the alternative.

One more subject came up in response to my column:

Is it legal, a handful of readers asked, for parents at my daughter's school or any other to raise money that is not shared with the rest of the district?

I checked with two attorneys, former LAUSD general counsel Kevin Reed and the ACLU's Mark Rosenbaum, a member of the governor's committee on academic excellence. Both have investigated the legalities of parental support, both have written checks at public schools attended by their children, and both say there is no constitutional prohibition against it.

They both also said it's a sad state of affairs when all schools are left begging, and parents in middle-class neighborhoods, where the students already have huge advantages, are writing checks to pay for what their tax dollars once covered.

Amen.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

1,800 more school district staff in Orange County receive layoff notices..

From the OC Register in Orange County comes this upsetting headilne

Capistrano layoffs bring O.C. teacher terminations to 1,867
District approves plan to cut 270 full-time teaching jobs during late Monday meeting.
By FERMIN LEAL and SCOTT MARTINDALE
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Comments 62 | Recommend 12

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO – Capistrano Unified trustees on Monday approved the issuance of layoff notices for 306.8 certificated staff jobs – teachers, administrators, education support staff and others – in preparation for state budget cuts.
Read more....

Some people don't seem to understand the gravity of the problem

Take the Sacramento Bee's Dan Walters. In a column entitled " Budget gap spotlights public school funding "

starts out:

Inevitably, every debate about California's deficit-riddled budget morphs into a fight over how much money we should be spending on public schools and how that money should be spent.
It's happening again as the Capitol's political figures wrestle with a deficit that's worse than usual and as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposes – semiseriously – a $4.8 billion whack in state aid to schools.

I'm don't know where he got the idea that Arnold was semiserious in his budget. But the best(or worse) of this column comes at end

Cutting school financing, as Schwarzenegger proposes, certainly doesn't make the task of improving performance any easier but, as the Stanford researchers implied, merely spending money doesn't, unto itself, guarantee a better outcome. There is virtually no statistical correlation between a state's level of per-pupil spending and its standing in national academic tests or high school graduation rates.

Other factors such as poverty, peer and familial pressure, and cultural values all play roles in academic outcomes that merely spending more money doesn't alter. Unfortunately, however, the Capitol is incapable of debating education in any terms other than money.

Words fail me. Across California, School Districts(and, more importantly, the children they serve) are facing disastrous cuts in services, and Mr. Walters, one of the most widely read columnists in Sacramento, is ignoring the fact that we are already ranked 47th in the country in spending per pupil. Arnold's cuts would put us seriously below Mississippi in spending per pupil.
His email address is dwalters@sacbee.com. I encourage everyone to write him and encourage him to consider moving to Mississippi where educational spending is more to his liking.

Continuing to track the effect of school budget cuts state wide

School district to examine budget cuts
The Desert Sun - Palm Springs,CA,USA
Long after the final bell rang at Agua Caliente Elementary School in Cathedral City on Monday, about 30 students huddled in the cafeteria, ...


State leaders visit to discuss education cuts
Whittier Daily News - Whittier,CA,USA
Hittelman said he is unwilling to accept any cuts to the education budget, regardless of the state's budget woes. "California is 46th in the nation in ...

District may lay off 54 teachers
Hesperia Star - Victorville,CA,USA
"Without exaggeration, I did not sleep Thursday night," after he first saw the proposed cuts. The cuts include 40 elementary school teaching positions, ...

County's School Cuts Could Total $276M
NBC Sandiego.com - San Diego,CA,USA
"I am convinced the people of California want better for California's children." Teachers from all over the county showed up Monday at San Altos Elementary ...

Banning Unified district to lay off 25 people
Press-Enterprise - Riverside,CA,USA
Ten elementary school teachers, instead of 23, will receive layoff notices. "That number may go down as well," said board President Amy Herr. ...

Riverside Unified's historic Grant school like a family heirloom
Press-Enterprise - Riverside,CA,USA
Named after the former Union Army general and 18th president, Ulysses S. Grant, the campus first served as an elementary school, as well as Riverside's ...

Tracking the state wide disaster in Education budget cuts...

This week, I begin to track the state wide crisis in school funding brought on by the Governor's budget proposal. Novato is not alone in facing disastrous cuts in programs if the governor and the legislature cannot find a better solution to the current budget crisis.


Teachers caught in middle of state deficit debate
San Jose Mercury News - CA, USA
But an elementary school program that teaches kids to play string instruments could be eliminated, he said, as well as counselors who work with troubled ...
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An unhappy math exercise
Napa Valley Register - Napa,CA,USA
Asano is one of six elementary science teachers in Napa who could lose their jobs during a time of statewide budget cuts to public education. ...
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Local schools prepare for big budget cuts
Daily Review Online - CA,USA
Meanwhile, San Leandro district trustees recently rejected a recommendation to cut 18 elementary teaching positions. All positions are in art, ...
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North County Times - Escondido,CA,USA
SAN MARCOS -- Parents and drivers say San Marcos Unified School District's recommendation to cut busing from next year's budget could be a big mistake, ...
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Schools may rely on layoffs
Record-Searchlight (subscription) - Redding,CA,USA
The Red Bluff Joint Union High School District is bracing for a $900000 hit in fiscal 2008-2009, while the Red Bluff Union Elementary School District ...
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Spring Haiku time

As we were walking on the mountain today, I remembered these lines from Nikos Kazantzakis in Report To Greco:

As I turn over the yellowed pages of my journal, it becomes clear that nothing died. Everything was simply asleep inside me. Look how all has awakened now, how everything rises from the worn, half-indecipherable pages to become monasteries, monks, paintings, and the sea once more! And my friend, he too rises from the soil as he was at that time, handsome, in the flower of youth, with his Homeric laugh, his blue eagle-eye, his breast filled with poems! He gave men more than they were able to receive, he sought from them more than they were able to give, and he died forsaken and sorrowful, having been left with nothing but the bitter smile of a proud, wounded soul. A meteor, he conquered the darkness for an instant and then perished. Such is the way we all shall perish, such the way the earth too will perish; but this fact offers no consolation, nor is it any justification for He who begets and then destroys us.
We had toured the Holy Mountain for forty days. When, completing our circle, we finally returned to Daphne on Christmas Eve in order to depart, the most unexpected, most decisive miracle was awaiting us. Though it was the heart of winter, there in a small, humble orchard was an almond tree in bloom!
Seizing my friend’s arm, I pointed to the blossoming tree.
“Angelos,” I said, “during the whole of this pilgrimage our
hearts have been tormented by many intricate questions. Now, behold the answer!”
My friend riveted his blue eyes upon the flowering almond tree and crossed himself, as though doing obeisance before a holy wonder-working icon. He remained speechless for a long moment. Then, speaking slowly, he said, “A poem is rising to my lips, a tiny little poem: a haikai.”
He looked again at the almond tree.

I said to the almond tree, “Sister, speak to me of God.” And the almond tree blossomed"

Mount Tamalpais is truly one of the greatest places on the face of the earth. Just saying.

A mid-year look at Accelerated Reader

I thought it might be useful to post links to two on-line articles about implementing Accelerated Reader in the classroom in an effort to better inform our practice, and insure that we are best serving our students.
Both articles are sponsored by the International Reading Association, and take two different points of view.
The first is by Keith Topping- " Formative Assessment of Reading Comprehension by Computer: Advantages and Disadvantages of The Accelerated Reader Software " Professor Topping concentrates on best practices:

The characteristics of good implementation suggested by the Sanders and Topping (1999) report described under Research on The Accelerated Reader imply that teachers should do the following:

* Have students read as much as possible -- but guide those above fifth grade away from reading a large number of very easy books
* Monitor student progress carefully
* Check that students' percentage of correct answers is at 85 percent or higher
* Generate and study at-risk reports
* Intervene when the above goals are not being met -- especially with low ability students, and probably also with high ability students
* Increase the challenge level slowly and gradually
* Monitor carefully to ensure that challenge does not become so great as to begin to depress percentage of correct answers

Experience suggests that to these might be added the following general guidelines to good implementation:

* Teachers should be trained in implementation
* Participation must be voluntary for students
* There should be a large number of AR books available for students to choose from
* Books should be coded for readability to enable students to manage challenge on their own
* Extra opportunities for reading practice should be provided at school (in and out of class) and encouraged at home and in the community
* Student access to computers for the purposes of AR test taking should be easy, frequent, and immediate
* Students should be encouraged to reflect on the implications for action provided by the feedback they receive, with self-management encouraged
* Less able readers should be permitted to test on books read to and with them, as should their peer helpers
* Parents should be aware of the program, regularly receive AR reports from the school and respond to them, and be encouraged to ensure that their children have opportunities to read at home
* Peer tutoring should be incorporated, in support of reading, testing, or both
* Extrinsic rewards should be used only if necessary, effective, and culturally appropriate, and then the rewards offered should be books or reading-related items
* Retesting should be allowed only in exceptional circumstances
* Criteria for “Model Classroom” status should be met (even if certification is not applied for)

Practitioners might want to create a checklist for self-assessment of AR implementation quality in their own school by printing these points or copying and pasting them into a word-processing

The second is by Linda Labbo- "Questions Worth Asking about The Accelerated Reader: A Response to Topping". From her introduction:

I agreed to write this response primarily because, after reading Topping's commentary, I agreed with his observation: “Like any other educational tool, how it [AR] is used might be more important than if it is used.” It is interesting to note that much of the research Topping cites as evidence of the effectiveness of the AR program is based more on studies that look at if it is used rather than how. It is clear that statistical analyses of large-scale standardized-test scores from schools where AR is used provide interesting data; however, such studies do not shed light on the myriad, uncontrolled-for variables within the cultural context of a classroom or school.

In schools across the United States, educators are involved in multiple initiatives intended to do everything from integrate computers into the curriculum to decrease the potential for school violence. The Accelerated Reader may be perceived by some as an easy way simultaneously to meet goals related to computer use, to support students' development of reading comprehension, and to improve scores on standardized reading tests. The purpose of this article is to raise some questions worth asking about the AR program and to highlight the importance of studying how it is used.

Linda takes a more critical view of the effectiveness of A/R:

Educators, parents, business partners, and administrators wonder if the AR program is consistently effective in helping meet goals in these areas. For a program whose design is intended to free teachers from spending time and effort reading children's book reports, from keeping logs of books children have read, and from scoring comprehension questions about those books (How AR Works, 1995), it appears to cause many teachers to spend a great deal of time and effort on figuring out how to achieve “good” program implementation.

Between the two articles, every issue that any staff member has raised about Accelerated Reader is touched upon.

Fads in Education-here's an example

The New York Times has an article describing a new fad among Japanese parents: Indian Education. This makes me laugh, because I remember all the discussions(still going on Today, I might add)various pundits have had about the faults of our educational system versus the virtues of Japanese teaching techniques.

January 2, 2008
Losing an Edge, Japanese Envy India’s Schools
By MARTIN FACKLER

MITAKA, Japan — Japan is suffering a crisis of confidence these days about its ability to compete with its emerging Asian rivals, China and India. But even in this fad-obsessed nation, one result was never expected: a growing craze for Indian education.

Despite an improved economy, many Japanese are feeling a sense of insecurity about the nation’s schools, which once turned out students who consistently ranked at the top of international tests. That is no longer true, which is why many people here are looking for lessons from India, the country the Japanese see as the world’s ascendant education superpower.

Bookstores are filled with titles like “Extreme Indian Arithmetic Drills” and “The Unknown Secrets of the Indians.” Newspapers carry reports of Indian children memorizing multiplication tables far beyond nine times nine, the standard for young elementary students in Japan.

And Japan’s few Indian international schools are reporting a surge in applications from Japanese families.

At the Little Angels English Academy & International Kindergarten, the textbooks are from India, most of the teachers are South Asian, and classroom posters depict animals out of Indian tales. The kindergarten students even color maps of India in the green and saffron of its flag.

Little Angels is located in this Tokyo suburb, where only one of its 45 students is Indian. Most are Japanese.

Viewing another Asian country as a model in education, or almost anything else, would have been unheard-of just a few years ago, say education experts and historians.

Much of Japan has long looked down on the rest of Asia, priding itself on being the region’s most advanced nation. Indeed, Japan has dominated the continent for more than a century, first as an imperial power and more recently as the first Asian economy to achieve Western levels of economic development.

But in the last few years, Japan has grown increasingly insecure, gripped by fear that it is being overshadowed by India and China, which are rapidly gaining in economic weight and sophistication. The government here has tried to preserve Japan’s technological lead and strengthen its military. But the Japanese have been forced to shed their traditional indifference to the region.

Grudgingly, Japan is starting to respect its neighbors.

“Until now, Japanese saw China and India as backwards and poor,” said Yoshinori Murai, a professor of Asian cultures at Sophia University in Tokyo. “As Japan loses confidence in itself, its attitudes toward Asia are changing. It has started seeing India and China as nations with something to offer.”

Last month, a national cry of alarm greeted the announcement by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that in a survey of math skills, Japan had fallen from first place in 2000 to 10th place, behind Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea. From second in science in 2000, Japan dropped to sixth place.

While China has stirred more concern here as a political and economic challenger, India has emerged as the country to beat in a more benign rivalry over education. In part, this reflects China’s image in Japan as a cheap manufacturer and technological imitator. But India’s success in software development, Internet businesses and knowledge-intensive industries in which Japan has failed to make inroads has set off more than a tinge of envy.

Most annoying for many Japanese is that the aspects of Indian education they now praise are similar to those that once made Japan famous for its work ethic and discipline: learning more at an earlier age, an emphasis on memorization and cramming, and a focus on the basics, particularly in math and science.

India’s more demanding education standards are apparent at the Little Angels Kindergarten, and are its main selling point. Its 2-year-old pupils are taught to count to 20, 3-year-olds are introduced to computers, and 5-year-olds learn to multiply, solve math word problems and write one-page essays in English, tasks most Japanese schools do not teach until at least second grade.

Indeed, Japan’s anxieties about its declining competitiveness echo the angst of another nation two decades ago, when Japan was the economic upstart.

“Japan’s interest in learning from Indian education is a lot like America’s interest in learning from Japanese education,” said Kaoru Okamoto, a professor specializing in education policy at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.

As with many new things here, the interest in Indian-style education quickly became a fad.

Indian education is a frequent topic in forums like talk shows. Popular books claim to reveal the Indian secrets for multiplying and dividing multiple-digit numbers. Even Japan’s conservative education ministry has begun discussing Indian methods, said Jun Takai of the ministry’s international affairs division.

Eager parents try to send their children to Japan’s roughly half dozen Indian schools, hoping for an edge on the competitive college entrance exams.

In Tokyo, the two largest Indian schools, which teach kindergarten through junior high, mainly to Indian expatriates, received a sudden increase in inquiries from Japanese parents starting last year.

The Global Indian International School says that 20 of its some 200 students are now Japanese, with demand so high from Indian and Japanese parents that it is building a second campus in the neighboring city of Yokohama.

The other, the India International School in Japan, just expanded to 170 students last year, including 10 Japanese. It already has plans to expand again.

Japanese parents have expressed “very, very high interest” in Indian schools, said Nirmal Jain, principal of the India International School.

The boom has had the side effect of making many Japanese a little more tolerant toward other Asians.

The founder of the Little Angels school, Jeevarani Angelina — a former oil company executive from Chennai, India, who accompanied her husband, Saraph Chandar Rao Sanku, to Japan in 1990 — said she initially had difficulty persuading landlords to rent space to an Indian woman to start a school. But now, the fact that she and three of her four full-time teachers are non-Japanese Asians is a selling point.

“When I started, it was a first to have an English-language school taught by Asians, not Caucasians,” she said, referring to the long presence here of American and European international schools.

Unlike other Indian schools, Ms. Angelina said, Little Angels was intended primarily for Japanese children, to meet the need she had found when she sent her sons to Japanese kindergarten.

“I was lucky because I started when the Indian-education boom started,” said Ms. Angelina, 50, who goes by the name Rani Sanku here because it is easier for Japanese to pronounce. (Sanku is her husband’s family name.)

Ms. Angelina has adapted the curriculum to Japan with more group activities, less memorization and no Indian history. Encouraged by the kindergarten’s success, she said, she plans to open an Indian-style elementary school this year.

Parents are enthusiastic about the school’s rigorous standards.

“My son’s level is higher than those of other Japanese children the same age,” said Eiko Kikutake, whose son Hayato, 5, attends Little Angels. “Indian education is really amazing! This wouldn’t have been possible at a Japanese kindergarten.”

One of the things school computer labs compete against

One of the things we compete against is commercial online ventures that target kids. Parents tend to manage their kids "screen time"-by which they mean the time they spend on computer games, video games, television shows, and the internet. When a kid spends four hours a day on screens, what's it do to his development? Some parents worry about this, as well they might, and try to limit the amount of time their kid spends on screens. Kids fight back. Compromises are made. Kids wind up spending a more limited period of time on the computer doing things that they and their parents can agree on. I'd like them to be doing something constructive-writing in their blog, looking at cool educational sites, or sharing what they did in school with their parents. This article (NY Times; registration may be required) reminded me of why it's so hard to compete for screen time:

Web Playgrounds of the Very Young
By BROOKS BARNES

LOS ANGELES — Forget Second Life. The real virtual world gold rush centers on the grammar-school set.

Trying to duplicate the success of blockbuster Web sites like Club Penguin and Webkinz, children’s entertainment companies are greatly accelerating efforts to build virtual worlds for children. Media conglomerates in particular think these sites — part online role-playing game and part social scene — can deliver quick growth, help keep movie franchises alive and instill brand loyalty in a generation of new customers.

Second Life and other virtual worlds for grown-ups have enjoyed intense media attention in the last year but fallen far short of breathless expectations. The children’s versions are proving much more popular, to the dismay of some parents and child advocacy groups. Now the likes of the Walt Disney Company, which owns Club Penguin, are working at warp speed to pump out sister sites.

“Get ready for total inundation,” said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst at the research firm eMarketer, who estimates that 20 million children will be members of a virtual world by 2011, up from 8.2 million today.

Worlds like Webkinz, where children care for stuffed animals that come to life, have become some of the Web’s fastest-growing businesses. More than six million unique visitors logged on to Webkinz in November, up 342 percent from November 2006, according to ComScore Media Metrix, a research firm.

Club Penguin, where members pay $5.95 a month to dress and groom penguin characters and play games with them, attracts seven times more traffic than Second Life. In one sign of the times, Electric Sheep, a software developer that helps companies market their brands in virtual worlds like Second Life and There.com, last week laid off 22 people, about a third of its staff.

By contrast, Disney last month introduced a “Pirates of the Caribbean” world aimed at children 10 and older, and it has worlds on the way for “Cars” and Tinker Bell, among others. Nickelodeon, already home to Neopets, is spending $100 million to develop a string of worlds. Coming soon from Warner Brothers Entertainment, part of Time Warner: a cluster of worlds based on its Looney Tunes, Hanna-Barbera and D. C. comics properties.

Add to the mix similar offerings from toy manufacturers like Lego and Mattel. Upstart technology companies, particularly from overseas, are also elbowing for market share. Mind Candy, a British company that last month introduced a world called Moshi Monsters, and Stardoll, a site from Sweden, sign up thousands of members in the United States each day.

“There is a massive opportunity here,” said Steve Wadsworth, president of the Walt Disney Internet Group, in an interview last week.

Behind the virtual world gravy train are fraying traditional business models. As growth engines like television syndication and movie DVD sales sputter or plateau — and the Internet disrupts entertainment distribution in general — Disney, Warner Brothers and Viacom see online games and social networking as a way to keep profits growing.

But more is at stake than cultivating new revenue streams. For nearly 50 years, since the start of Saturday morning cartoons, the television set has served as the front door to the children’s entertainment business. A child encounters Mickey Mouse on the Disney Channel or Buzz Lightyear on a DVD and before long seeks out related merchandise and yearns to visit Walt Disney World.

Now the proliferation of broadband Internet access is forcing players to rethink the ways they reach young people. “Kids are starting to go to the Internet first,” Mr. Wadsworth said.

Disney’s biggest online world is Club Penguin, which it bought in August from three Canadians in a deal worth $700 million. At the time, more than 700,000 members paid fees of $5.95 a month, delivering annual revenue of almost $50 million.

Still, one world, even a very successful one, does not alter the financial landscape at a $35.5 billion company like Disney. So Disney is pursuing a portfolio approach, investing $5 million to $10 million per world to develop a string of as many as 10 virtual properties, people familiar with Disney’s plans said.

Tinker Bell’s world, called Pixie Hollow, illustrates the company’s game plan. Disney is developing the site internally — creative executives who help design new theme park attractions are working on it — and will introduce it this summer to help build buzz for “Tinker Bell,” a big-budget feature film set for a fall 2008 release.

Visitors to a rudimentary version of Pixie Hollow, reachable through Disney.com, have already created four million fairy avatars, or online alter egos, according to Disney. The site will ultimately allow users to play games (“help create the seasons”) and interact with other “fairies.” When avatars move across the screen, they leave a sparkling trail of pixie dust, a carefully designed part of the experience.

“We wanted to come up with a way to make flying around the site feel really good,” said Paul Yanover, executive vice president and managing director of Disney Online.

Disney’s goal is to develop a network of worlds that appeal to various age groups, much like the company’s model. Preschool children might start with Pixie Hollow or Toon Town, another of Disney’s worlds, grow into Club Penguin and the one for “Cars” and graduate to “Pirates of the Caribbean” and beyond, perhaps to fantasy football at ESPN.com.

“All the stars are aligning for virtual worlds to become a mass-market form of entertainment, especially for kids and families,” Mr. Yanover said.

If virtual worlds for adults are about escaping from run-of-the-mill lives, sites for children tap into the desire to escape from the confines of reality as run by mom and dad. “I get to decide everything on Club Penguin,” said Nathaniel Wartzman, age 9, of Los Angeles, who also has a membership to a world called RuneScape.

But shopping is a powerful draw, too; most sites let children accumulate virtual points or spend their allowance money to buy digital loot. “It’s really fun to buy whatever you want inside the game,” Nathaniel said in a telephone interview. For his penguin, “like for Christmas I bought a fireplace, a flat-screen TV and a Christmas tree,” he said.

Online worlds, which typically have low overhead and fat profit margins once they are up and running, charge a monthly fee of $5 to $15 and require the adoption of an avatar. Some sites are free and rely on advertising to make money; others are advertising and subscription hybrids. Webkinz relies on the sale of stuffed animals, which come with tags that unlock digital content.

The power of the virtual worlds business was shown recently when Vivendi announced a plan to buy Activision, a publisher of video games for consoles like the Sony PlayStation 3. Vivendi owns World of Warcraft, a virtual world for adults with more than nine million members and revenue of more than $1 billion.

Still, the long-term appetite for the youth-oriented sites is unclear. Fads have always whipsawed the children’s toy market, and Web sites are no different, analysts warn. Parents could tire of paying the fees, while intense competition threatens to undercut the novelty. There are now at least 10 virtual worlds that involve caring for virtual pets.

Privacy and safety are a growing concern, particularly as companies aim at younger children. Some virtual worlds are now meant to appeal to preschoolers, using pictures to control actions so that reading is not required.

And critics are sharpening their knives. “We cannot allow the media and marketing industries to construct a childhood that is all screens, all the time,” said Susan Linn, a Boston psychologist and the director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, a nonprofit group that has complained of ads for movies on Webkinz.com.

Operators shrug off worries about fads and competition. “Are features like creating an avatar a long-term advantage for anyone? Probably not,” Mr. Yanover said. “The viability and sustainability of this business comes from the shifting behavior of kids and how they spend their leisure time.”

As for privacy and safety, companies point to a grid of controls. For instance, Neopets restricts children under 13 from certain areas unless their parents give permission in a fax. Several Neopets employees patrol the site around the clock, and messaging features are limited to approved words and phrases.

“Parents know they can trust our brand to protect kids,” said Steve Youngwood, executive vice president for digital media at Nickelodeon. “We see that as a competitive advantage.”

PAY ATTENTION: to the kids

Here's another good video to remind us to consider how we engage 21st century students in what are mostly antiquated classroom settings. You'll notice many of the statistics are old - yet still shocking. (When the clip starts to play you can click on the little box to the right of the loading bar and play it full screen.)

Low Tech Telephone to the Rescue

When we're thinking about ways to use technology to enhance the excitement of content we shouldn't forget the telephone. In one 8th grade class I was in recently the students were working on year long research projects including interviews of experts in their area of study. One student is doing his research on the Tuskegee Airmen from WWII. To help students share what they're learning as well as help them develop interviewing skills we hooked up a speaker phone and the student interviewed an 85 year old Tuskegee Airman veteran during the class. After the initial interview, members of the class asked additional questions. It turned into a high interest lesson.

Getting a speaker phone hooked up wasn't trivial. The wall phone was wired into the wall with no speaker, but we took the jack from the handset and plugged it into an old speaker phone and "lo and behold" we pushed the speaker button and there was a dial tone. We also videotaped the conversation so we'd have an audio record. It's easy to forget that just using the telephone to bring experts into the classroom can create a memorable experience for the students.

What we do in the lab

A parent tour came through the lab yesterday. One of the parents asked me if I taught lessons. Just what did I do?
My answer was that what I do is support the teachers. I don't think she believed me, but its true. Every year, in every grade, there's a sprint to teach all the standards before testing begins in the spring. There's a lot to cover, there are a lot of different learning styles, and different levels of motivation. It's a huge job.
Over the years, the teachers here have found the software that they feel helps their students the most in advancing them through all the different subjects they have to learn. One of the reasons I like working here is that I agree with all of their choices. Here are some of the main pieces of software we work with:

1) Math Arena by Daren Carstens-, transformational geometry, circle graphs, Venn diagrams, symmetry, percents, money and percent of change, number sequences, and probability. One of Margo's favorite math programs because it teaches concepts that are difficult to teach without the manipulation of figures that this program allows.


2) Math Blaster: the original ultimate drill and practice math software. Mathblaster has math facts drills that the kids actually think are fun. Days that they do either of these programs in the lab, we have to pry them out of their seats when class is over.



3) Type to Learn: We start teaching the kids some keyboarding skills in 2nd grade It's difficult for them, because their hands are too small for the keys. By 5th grade, the more skilled ones are already touch typing.




4) Kid Pix-it's a great tool to get kids enthusiastic about experimenting with what a computer can do. Book covers are a favorite project.






Colonial Williamsburg-This is actually a website, but it's a crucial part of the fifth grade curriculum. Electronic field trips, slide shows, interactive flash games-it's an amazing place to visit.




We have more software (Graph club, Inspiration, Google Earth, etc.) that I'll cover another day.

Shift happens updated

A few months ago, our friend Anne Bubnic told us about a great video piece on Youtube called Shift happens. Today, I saw the new version on the Dangerously Irrelevant Blog. It's worth watching and thinking about it(Even though it came out June 22,more than three months ago. What can I say? I don't have the time to blog as consistently as I'd like.)