COMMUNITY ITINERARIES: 99 Ranch Market Day:
for Their Future is Now!
TODAY: 99 Ranch Market Day
May 12, 2010Give2MySchool
May 9, 2010Give2MySchool is a good idea for any school anytime, but more than ever now for CUSD’s campaign “Their Future is Now“!
For all purchases made through Give2MySchool between April 23, 2010 and May 12, 2010, Give2MySchool will contribute everything to the campaign Their Future is Now!
THEIR FUTURE IS NOW!
April 5, 2010Happy Mother’s Day!
May 6, 2009The San Jose Museum of Art will celebrate its 40th anniversary with a Community Day on Sunday, May 10. Presented by the Koret Foundation, the Community Day will feature free admission to the Museum, gallery tours, and family fun from 11am – 5pm.
Coyote Point Museum Mother’s Day – All moms get in free!
First to Worst: California Public Education
May 6, 2009The PTA Council of Cupertino-Fremont-Sunnyvale presents:
First to Worst: California Public Schools
Do you ever wonder why your kid has to run around the track 30 times so that he can get an education? Do you know why you have to bake 5 pounds of brownies every year just to keep music in the school curriculum? Did you know that California ranks at the bottom of the nation in per-pupil spending? Come to this elucidating event about the state of California public school funding and how it got there.
This event will focus on:
* The history of California education funding
* The legislative process and the laws that govern it
* Structural changes that can fix the holes
* What parents from across the state are doing about it
The evening will be punctuated by excerpts from John Merrow’s award-winning PBS documentary “First to Worst” on California public schools. There will be ample opportunity for audience Q/A. You will come away from this evening feeling educated, entertained, and inspired!
Luminary speakers:
Joe Simitian, State Senator and Champion of Public Education
Michael Kirst, Stanford Professor and Education Policy Expert
Sandra Tsing Loh, NPR Commentator and Celebrated Advocate for Children’s Education
Who, When, Where:
* Parents from all communities welcome.
* This is a FREE event, but you must pre-register. Space is limited, so register early. Register at: http://californiaeducationfunding.eventbrite.com
* Date/Time/Location:
May 7, 2009, Thursday, 7:00-9:30 PM
Monta Vista High School auditorium
21840 McClellan Rd., Cupertino 95014
Thanks to Monta Vista High School for the use of their lovely auditorium and to the PTA Council of Cupertino-Fremont-Sunnyvale for supporting this event.
Everyday Mathematics
May 4, 2009Rave reviews for ‘Everyday Mathematics’
Top Illinois schools report success with program
Teachers and administrators from top school districts in Illinois and one in California report strong results after using “Everyday Mathematics,” the controversial textbook adopted this week by the Palo Alto school district for use in K-5 classrooms this fall.
In Poway, Calif., which used “Everyday Mathematics” for 10 years before dropping it, assistant superintendent Eric Lehew said the recent decision was driven primarily by finances, not by dissatisfaction with the textbook itself.
Steve Viktora, a mathematics teacher at the high-performing New Trier High Township High School, with campuses in Winnetka and Northfield, Ill., said freshmen coming into the school “are extremely well-prepared.”
Everyday Mathematics has been “used in almost all of our six sender districts, including Wilmette, for at least several years. The Glencoe public schools have used the program the longest.
“To be honest, our incoming freshmen are extremely well-prepared. We have not disaggregated those data so we do not know whether the kids who had the most experience with (Everyday Mathematics) do better or worse than the other kids,” Viktora said in an e-mail. “In general, our incoming freshmen have tested at a median of the 92nd to 95th percentile in mathematics.”
In Glencoe, which has used Everyday Mathematics in K-6 classrooms for more than 12 years, Assistant Superintendent Jay Howe said that in every grade evaluated in state tests (grades 3, 4, 5 and 6) both boys and girls consistently score in the mid-90 percentile ranges.
Howe said Everyday Mathematics is “misunderstood only because it is not the traditional kind of program most parents used in their grade-school careers. That’s because it’s better and improved.
“However, to be completely successful, teachers do need support in learning the program so that instruction changes with the program. We have had extensive training — administrators too — over the years so that we can now train one another.
“Most of our families support the program because they have seen results,” Howe said. “The kids understand math better, learn additional ways to solve problems, have better number sense, can explain their operations and answers with more finesse.”
But he said the district has to take special care with students new to the district who have not previously used Everyday Mathematics.
“We have to take some time and be patient with them as they get to know the program,” Howe said. “But within a few months, for the most part, they are well-adjusted and quite successful.” It depends a great deal “on the kid, parents’ attitude, teacher’s level of training, teacher’s patience and extra help,” he said.
In Poway, Lehew said the decision to drop Everyday Mathematics “was not a performance issue.
“We had continuous strong results and student improvement during our years with Everyday Mathematics,” he said. “It gave us a very strong curriculum for application and for real-world problem-solving. We found that teachers did need to supplement the program around numeracy skills. But it’s a lot easier to find support material for basic numeracy skills than to find strong materials for students to use real-world applications.”
It was cost that drove Poway’s decision to drop the program, Lehew said. Everyday Mathematics publisher McGraw Hill was unwilling to structure a deal on materials and the district moved to a lower-cost option.
In Wilmette Public School District 39, Assistant Superintendent Toni Shinners said K-4 students have been “very, very successful” with Everyday Mathematics for the past three years.
“We’ve seen an increase in test scores,” Shinners said. “We’re seeing good scores across the board. We feel our kids have a better understanding of the concepts of mathematics.”
Following this week’s emotional meeting in which the Palo Alto Board of Education adopted Everyday Mathematics by a 3-2 vote, Superintendent Kevin Skelly said professional development and winning the confidence of parents will be his top priorities as the series is rolled out this fall.
“It’s a theoretical question until we have kids in the program and using it,” Skelly said Wednesday night. “When our teachers start using the material and they’re successful, and the kids start coming back excited, that’s when we start to get some momentum.”
Palo Alto schools to get ‘Everyday Mathematics’
- Reviews of UCSMP Everyday Mathematics
- A Critical Review of the New Constructivist Math Program under Consideration for Expansion to Higher Grade Levels by the Oak Ridge School System
The Myth About Homework
November 21, 2008Another old article about homeworks from NY Times . Some quick facts:
• According to a 2004 national survey of 2,900 American children conducted by the University of Michigan, the amount of time spent on homework is up 51% since 1981.
• Most of that increase reflects bigger loads for little kids. An academic study found that whereas students ages 6 to 8 did an average of 52 min. of homework a week in 1981, they were toiling 128 min. weekly by 1997. And that’s before No Child Left Behind kicked in. An admittedly less scientific poll of parents conducted this year for AOL and the Associated Press found that elementary school students were averaging 78 min. a night.
• The onslaught comes despite the fact that an exhaustive review by the nation’s top homework scholar, Duke University’s Harris Cooper, concluded that homework does not measurably improve academic achievement for kids in grade school. That’s right: all the sweat and tears do not make Johnny a better reader or mathematician.
• Too much homework brings diminishing returns. Cooper’s analysis of dozens of studies found that kids who do some homework in middle and high school score somewhat better on standardized tests, but doing more than 60 to 90 min. a night in middle school and more than 2 hr. in high school is associated with, gulp, lower scores.
• Teachers in many of the nations that outperform the U.S. on student achievement tests–such as Japan, Denmark and the Czech Republic–tend to assign less homework than American teachers, but instructors in low-scoring countries like Greece, Thailand and Iran tend to pile it on.
Laptops stolen from school…
November 20, 2008Speaking of laptops in school, here are some stolen from Addison Elementary…
Children warned to walk in pairs following two school burglaries
Teaching technology
November 19, 2008Los Altos District is testing new ways to integrate technology into everyday instruction.
I find this interesting because technology is part of our lives and is better to use them for the the better than blame them for the worst, and I also find the classroom shift “from teacher-centered to student-centered” beneficial albeit a bit convoluted: do we really need one-to-one laptop to have a one-to-one child?
“Technology can change the classroom from teacher-centered to student-centered,”
“Children today are far more visually attuned, even compared to five years ago,” said Jeff Baier, district assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. “You can pine for the good old days when students primarily learned by reading textbooks, or you can accommodate the new learning models and take advantage of those skills and interests students bring with them to the classroom.”
“It’s not enough to hand teachers computers, because they just become a fancy typewriter,” Baier said. “Technology has the potential to give students greater ownership in their education, so they can actually produce knowledge, not just memorize facts and recite them back – but only if the teachers have the skills and the time to enhance their lesson plans.”
The cost to the district for these innovative programs? Not much. The Los Altos Educational Foundation (LAEF), PTAs and parents at the district schools will fund the grassroots projects, including a newly created two-year position of technology specialist.
Funds for the pilot program come solely from the parents who lease the laptops. The parents of students in the program are required to pay $1,500 for a two-year lease. They can make monthly payments or pay all at once. At the end of the lease, when the student is ready to graduate from junior high, the family can purchase the laptop from the district for $10.
