ASCD EDUCATION BULLETIN

The biweekly online newsletter of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

• REPORT REVEALS NEED FOR MORE TEACHER PREPARATION - Only one in five teachers told a national survey that they felt well-prepared to work in a modern classroom. Specifically, only about 20 percent of teachers said that they were confident in using modern technology or in teaching students from diverse backgrounds, with limited proficiency in English, or with disabilities.  Overall, fewer than half of U.S. teachers reported feeling "very well prepared" to meet many of the challenges facing the nation's public school classrooms.  The U.S. Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics prepared the report, "Teacher Quality: A Report on the Preparation and Qualifications of Public School Teachers," which focused on several indicators of teacher quality: preservice learning and teaching assignment, formal professional development, work environment, and teachers' feelings of preparedness. Report findings include:
  • * Teachers gave short-term professional development activities (less than eight hours) low marks. However, teachers engaged in more than eight hours of training were far more likely to conclude that their teaching ability was improved "a lot."
  • * Although only 19 percent of teachers said that they had been formally mentored by another teacher, 70 percent of them said that mentoring at least once a week helped their teaching "a lot."
  • * New teachers were less likely than more experienced teachers to have regular certification.
  • * Two-thirds of U.S. teachers had not participated in a formal induction program when they first began teaching, although participation rates were higher for new teachers than for more experienced ones.
  • * Eighteen percent of math teachers in grades 7-12 did not major, minor, or receive a graduate degree in math.

  To read a copy of the 74-page report visit http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=1999080 or order a single print copy by calling 877-4ED-PUBS (877-433-7827).

• NAEP REPORTS U.S. STUDENTS SCORING HIGHER ON READING Reading scores have improved significantly at all three grades tested in a national reading assessment, marking a "first" for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).  According to the 1998 NAEP reading "report card," average scores increased since 1994 for students in grades 4, 8, and 12. Lower performing 4th-graders and most middle school students made especially significant progress. The "1998 Reading Report Card for the Nation," highlights what students know and can do in reading in the 4th, 8th, and 12th grades nationally. In addition, performance trends since 1992 are reported. State-level results will be presented next month. Among its findings, the report notes:
  • * across all three grade levels students who wrote long answers to questions involving reading at least once a week had higher average scores than students who did so only once or twice a year, or hardly ever;
  • * 4th- and 8th-graders in the Northeast and Central regions outperformed their counterparts in the Southeast and West; among 12th graders, students in the Southeast had lower average scores than those in the other three regions;
  • * across all three grade levels, females had higher reading scores than males. Known as the Nation's Report Card, NAEP has monitored trends in academic achievement since the 1970s and is the only continuing, nationally representative assessment of academic performance. The reading assessment marks the third time the subject has been assessed since the framework was updated in 1992.

Single copies of the report are available by calling 877-4ED-PUBS  (877-433-7827), or by visiting http://nces.ed.gov/.

• CELEBRATE POETRY IN APRIL April is the cruelest month, according to T.S. Eliot, but it's a wonderful time to celebrate National Poetry Month and Young People's Poetry Week, April 12-18, 1999. * National Poetry Month involves tens of thousands of individuals and organizations in a broad array of communities throughout the United States. The event has been credited with "making poetry accessible to everybody" and for bringing "poetry into the cultural conversation." For information on National Poetry Month, visit http://www.poets.org. Tips for creative and inexpensive ways to make poetry a more important part of school life can be found at the Academy of American Poets' Web site at http://poets.org/npm/teachtip.htm  * Young People's Poetry Week is a new annual event sponsored by the Children's Book Council (CBC) to celebrate poetry for children and young adults and to encourage librarians and educators to include reading and writing poetry in their libraries and classrooms. Plans for Young People's Poetry Week include an inaugural program in cooperation with the Center for the Book and the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress. For more information, visit http://www.cbcbooks.org.
• LEARNING TO READ THE GLOBAL WAY - A new resource for helping children improve their reading skills will also help them learn about the world. The activity book, *Around the World with Western Union,* is designed to help 1st through 3rd graders build their reading skills while increasing their knowledge of the world. The activity book uses engaging activities to help children improve their reading skills while learning about different parts of the world. There are 26 weeks worth of activities, each week corresponding to a letter of the alphabet. For example, in the sixth week, students complete exercises relating to the word "flag." Students read a definition of "flag," color flags of countries, and work with their tutors to make flags for their families. At the top of the activity page is the global fact for that week; "France: A country in Europe. The Eiffel Tower is located in Paris, which is the capital of France." *Around the World* is the primary tool in the Western Union Study Buddies Tutoring Program that is being piloted in Chicago, Atlanta, and Philadelphia. The program is designed to boost reading skills and global education by having children work through the activities in the journal with after-school tutors or parents/guardians at home.  For a free copy of *Around the World,* call 1-877-ST-BUDDY (1-877-782-8339). For more information about the Study Buddies Tutoring Program, contact the Burrell Communications Group at (312)443-8600.
• TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION CHALLENGE GRANTS AVAILABLE - Does your district have a well-defined vision of how computers and telecommunication networks can improve teaching and learning? To make that vision a reality, your district may want to apply to the U.S. Department of Education for a Technology Innovation Challenge Grant. The program seeks applications from districts that have brought together a wide range of partners to demonstrate innovative approaches for integrating technology into schooling and teaching. Programs should be able to be sustained after the grant ends and be replicable in other districts throughout the country. Eligible applications must be developed by a consortium including at least one local education agency with a high percentage of children living below the poverty line. Other members of the consortium may include private schools, state educational agencies, institutions of higher education, software designers, museums, libraries, or other appropriate organizations. Applications are due March 12, 1999. For more information, call 202-208-3882, or fax 202-208-4042. Send an e-mail to ITO_STAFF@ed.gov, or visit the Web site at http://www.ed.gov/Technology.
• NETWORKING AND LEARNING VIA EDUCATIONAL LISTSERVS - Discuss your educational interests with colleagues through moderated listservs--and there are hundreds. Go to http://www.onelist.com/cat7.html or http://www.egroups.com/ for many listservs in education that you can subscribe to through e-mail. You can even start your own listserv. For example, the Distance Learning listservs on Onelist.com are moderated by a contributor to this bulletin, Arun Tripathi. E-mail Arun (edresouce-owner@makelist.com or tripathi@amadeus.statistik.uni-dortmund.de) for more information. ASCD also offers online communication opportunities through its forums, available at http://www.ascd.org. Topics include block scheduling, democratic school, violence prevention, arts  education, problem based learning, integrating technology in the elementary classroom, and more.
• WEB WONDERS: Integrating Technology into the Curriculum--compiled by Betsy Kelaher.  Picture this: You are a principal and have just gotten word that your school will be wired for the Internet--or you are a teacher and will have a computer in your classroom and access to a technology lab for your students. You've probably been eagerly anticipating these resources for some time. Now that you have them, though, how do you learn how to use them? And how can you integrate this technology into your daily lesson plans and classroom activities? Editor's Note: The February 1999 issues of ASCD's magazine, *Educational Leadership*, focuses on integrating technology into the curriculum. To order a copy (each copy costs $6), call 800-933-2723.
• GETTING STARTED: BEHIND THE SCENES AND IN THE CLASSROOM - Link2Learn (http://L2l.ed.psu.edu/) and Teacherzone.com (http://teacherzone.com/) are one-stop resources that you can turn to for information about hardware, software, and the World Wide Web, as well as for accounts of how different schools have used technology. You can also download lesson plans and projects that use technology to enhance the learning process. For starters, consider Link2Learn's tutorials for using the Internet, creating Web Pages, and using multimedia--or Teacherzone.com's "Knowledge Base" link for background information on computer resources. Once you're ready to weave computer activities into your lessons, take a look at Link2Learn's searchable classroom activities or Teacherzone.com's "Classroom" link to lesson plans, classroom Internet resources, computer curriculum, and ideas for holiday Web activities. Principals may also want to visit Teacherzone.com's "Principal Vision" link, with stories and strategies related to integrating technology into the curriculum.
• USING COMPUTERS ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES - *Math and Science* Interested in seeing how teachers have integrated technology into math and science curriculums? Take a look at *Tales from the Electronic Frontier* (http://www.wested.org/tales/), an account of 10 teachers' classroom experiences with the Internet in K-12 science and math classes. The educators' lively, colorful reports are complemented by a useful sidebar with links to Web sites addressing technology issues, tools, resources, and projects. Along the same lines, the "Projects" link on the Computing Across the Primary Curriculum site (http://www.serct.schnet.edu.au/capc/capchome.htm) shows you how primary schoolteachers have introduced young learners to software projects, from "Introduction to Spreadsheets for Grade 3" to "Multimedia Using *Kid Pix Studio*."  *Social Sciences and the Arts* If you're a social studies educator and you'd like your students to use the Internet for classroom projects or independent research, you can point them to the *CSS (Computers in the Social Studies) Journal* (http://www.cssjournal.com/journal/sites.html). There they'll find a comprehensive index of 17 topics in the social sciences, with multiple links to related Web sites, from Paleolithic painted caves, to forensic psychology, to the Israeli Knesset. If you teach visual or language arts, you can explore intriguing lesson plans, curriculum ideas, online discussion groups, and gallery images in the interactive ArtsEdNet site (http://www.artsednet.getty.edu/). While you're there, take a virtual walk with your students through ancient Greece or Rome in the imaginative "Philosophers Forum: Asking Big Questions About Art."
•  ISSUES IN TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION - Keep up with the latest school-technology issues--or participate in discussions of them. How do you wire your school for Internet access? How do you ensure equitable use of educational technology? How do you meet the challenges of introducing computers to reluctant staff or students? Three Web sites with articles, columns, forums, and links on these subjects are The Electronic School (http://www.electronic-school.com/), Pathways to School Improvement (http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/te0cont.htm), and The Well-Connected Educator (http://www.gsh.org/wce/).
• CLEARINGHOUSES OF ONLINE RESOURCES FOR EDUCATORS - For a thorough list of online resources pertaining to education and technology, go to "K-12 Educational Resources" on The Technology Education Lab site (http://www.techedlab.com/k12.html)--and be sure to bookmark it! This annotated directory has links to Web sites, listservs, newsgroups, and online forums related to curricular applications of technology. Another helpful site to visit is Teachers@Work--in New Zealand--(http://teachers.work.co.nz/), with a searchable database of 1,000 useful Internet sites for educators that have been reviewed and rated. Betsy Kelaher (bkelaher@ascd.org) is an associate editor with ASCD's Editorial Services.

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