District Administration articles from December 2003

District Administration archives from December 2003

Welcome to the DAAP.(Editor's Letter)
December 1, 2003... I'm always looking for ways to better understand the magazine's readers. I interview administrators while writing stories, I meet readers at trade shows, and I trade e-mails with officials about the magazine's contents. But this month I've...

Paige: U.S. schools like apartheid.(Inside the law: analyzing, debating and explaining No Child Left Behind)
December 1, 2003... As the federal government tries to improve student success under No Child Left Behind, the nation's top educator complains that many minority children are served so poorly it can be compared to apartheid conditions. U.S. Education...

Flex funds for Florida's struggling students.(Inside the law: analyzing, debating and explaining No Child Left Behind)
December 1, 2003... Male black and Hispanic eighth graders in Putnam County School District will be among lucky students who will get needed extra attention under a new federal funding plan. Florida was recently approved to receive federal funds under the new...

States struggle to define top-notch teachers.(Inside the law: analyzing, debating and explaining No Child Left Behind)
December 1, 2003... For almost two years now, administrators have known that trader NCLB, each teacher must be "highly qualified" by 2006. But defining what that means is proving tough, and the federal government won't set national standards. The definition...

The $100,000 teacher: coming soon to Minnesota?(Update: education news from schools, businesses, research and government agencies)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Borrowing a page from other job sectors, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty wants to give performance bonuses to attract and retain "super teachers" for the state's most challenged public schools. As part of a broad new education initiative to...

Georgia struggles to pay top teachers.(Update: education news from schools, businesses, research and government agencies)
December 1, 2003... Georgia officials, facing a severe budget crisis, are scrambling to deal with the soaring costs of a program that pays 10 percent bonuses to teachers who gain national board certification. The bonuses cost about $100,000 three years ago....

Free paychecks in New Orleans.(Update: education news from schools, businesses, research and government agencies)
December 1, 2003... More than 1,000 people who stopped working for the New Orleans school system since 1999 received a paycheck anyway. And about 2,000 others not entitled to benefits had their insurance premiums paid. The estimated loss to the district due to...

Homework, what homework?(Update: education news from schools, businesses, research and government agencies)
December 1, 2003... American students are not inundated with homework every evening, contrary to popular perception, according to the recent report Do Students Have Too Much Homework?, released by The Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institute....

Houston woes continue.(Update: education news from schools, businesses, research and government agencies)
December 1, 2003... Months after the Houston Independent School District was charged with falsifying dropout rates, comes a report that claims the district also misreported violence within its schools. The New York Times reports the district's own police, who...

Cyber ratings range from great to witch-like.(Update: education news from schools, businesses, research and government agencies)
December 1, 2003... "Passionless imposters who only call themselves teachers" reads a banner on the Internet site Rate My Teacher, which threatens to expose and end mediocre teaching. In turn, stellar teachers are rewarded with open and honest feedback. Since...

Jail time is last option for parents of truants.(Update: education news from schools, businesses, research and government agencies)
December 1, 2003... In Philadelphia, parents of truant children could become jailbirds. A year after implementing a program to hire Parent Truant Officers, or PTO's, who inform parents about truancy, the head judge of Family Court vows to imprison some parents to...

Less play = more fat.(Update: education news from schools, businesses, research and government agencies)
December 1, 2003... Children are getting less exercise and gaining more weight than their counterparts in past decades. And schools should be leading the fight to change it, health experts and child advocates say. The number of overweight elementary students...

Fourth time is a charm.(Update: education news from schools, businesses, research and government agencies)
December 1, 2003... The Lawrence, Mass., superintendent who failed part of a state-mandated literacy test required for Massachusetts educators has now passed the exam. The September retest was Iris fourth try. Wilfredo T. Laboy, who is a native Spanish...

"No" to Florida's class size.(Update: education news from schools, businesses, research and government agencies)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Efforts to meet a voter-approved mandate to crunch class sizes in Florida are turning soft, according to the St. Petersburg Times. "The class-size amendment will never be implemented," Florida's Education Commissioner Jim Home was quoted as...

Parents sue over wireless network health concerns.(Update: education news from schools, businesses, research and government agencies)
December 1, 2003... Parents of five children sued the Oak Park Elementary School District in Illinois for installing a wireless computer network, worried that exposure to the network's radio waves could harm children. The parents' complaint, filed in Illinois...

DOE pushes to expand tough courses.(Update: education news from schools, businesses, research and government agencies)
December 1, 2003... The U.S. Department of Education is asking the nation's public high schools to do more. The department recently launched a campaign to prod states to expand rigorous course offerings and demand more of students before they go to college or...

Teacher stress rising, but venting helps.(Update: education news from schools, businesses, research and government agencies)
December 1, 2003... Several surveys in recent years have confirmed what many educators need no survey to tell them: Teachers are stressed out. With standardized tests pressuring teachers to improve student performance, researchers say the problem is getting worse....

Report: smaller is not always better.(Update: education news from schools, businesses, research and government agencies)
December 1, 2003... Small secondary schools may not be better, after all. A new study published in Sociology in Education questions the smaller-schools-are-better theory and entertains the thought that bigger can be better, according to The Plain Dealer, The...

Terrorist shirt gets OK.(Update: education news from schools, businesses, research and government agencies)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... A high school student who wore a T-shirt with President Bush's face on it and the words "International Terrorist" did not break the law, a federal judge ruled. U.S. District Judge Patrick J. Duggan ruled there is no evidence the...

Mississippi Delta renegade: this leading man reinvents a community with a can-do attitude, serious fundraising and a media blitz.(Administrator profile: Reginald P. Barnes)
December 1, 2003... Superintendent Reggie Barnes arrived in Sumner, Miss., in 1994 with a few gray hairs in his beard. The elementary school was especially in need of help academically; it lacked a playground and wasn't connected to the town water or sewers. ...

The long way home: in this country district, the goal is plain and simple: keep homeless children in school. The process is not.(District profile: School District of Lancaster (Pa.))
December 1, 2003... The bucolic Amish country of Lancaster County, Pa., is home to a group that survives with only basic means, minimal possessions and the bare essentials of shelter. But these people are not Amish. They're the homeless of Lancaster, a city with...

Hire power: from enacting wipe-outs and shake-ups to enabling move-ups and move-ons, incoming superintendents have tough choices to make in the name of building effective administrative teams.(Cover Story)
December 1, 2003... The message on the projector slide seemed clear enough: A school board hires the district's chief executive, and then that person selects a team. Presenter Dan Katzir, managing director of The Broad Foundation, paused when the board...

High-tech trends: tablet PCs, multimedia labs and digital video are proving their worth in schools across the country.
December 1, 2003... The digital divide has haunted many school districts in the past 10 years, but laptop distribution programs, wireless technology, artificial intelligence and video-on-demand are chipping away at the problem by increasing computer access for...

Hard hat required: district leaders--even those with limited school construction experience--can successfully manage projects to create the best learning environment. Here's how.
December 1, 2003... Superintendent Alex DiNino got two pieces of advice from a fellow administrator in a nearby district when he initially got involved in his district's multi-school construction program: Your job has yet to begin, and wear old shoes. Whether...

View from the top: executive insights on education leadership.(Special Advertising Section)
December 1, 2003... District Administration magazine exists to help school district leaders make informed decisions on behalf of their students, staff, and communities. One way we accomplish this is by putting you in touch with corporate executives who are leading...

Learning by going backward: Colonial Williamsburg's rich offerings help bring 17th century history to life today.
December 1, 2003... For decades, Virginia's Colonial Williamsburg has given visitors an up-close and personal view of life in 17th century America. More recently, this "living history" museum has created an ongoing series of interactive, electronic field trips...

Helping challenged spellers.(Curriculum update: the latest developments in math, science, language arts and social studies)
December 1, 2003... When spelling errors pop up all too frequently in assignments from secondary students, is it too late to do something about it? Rebecca Bowers Sipe, author of the book They Still Can't Spell? Understanding and Supporting Challenged Spellers in...

The why's of civic education.(Curriculum update: the latest developments in math, science, language arts and social studies)
December 1, 2003... Young Americans are more likely to know that Ruben Studdard won the last American Idol competition than they are to identify the party of their state's governor. But gaps in civic knowledge aside, a recent study identified some important links...

It's a way of life, not a course.(Curriculum update: the latest developments in math, science, language arts and social studies)
December 1, 2003... "We have to remind our students of a lesson taught in ancient Greece: the character of the person is the primary product of education," U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige said recently at the 10th national forum of the Character Education...

Bill would scale down textbook choices.(Curriculum update: the latest developments in math, science, language arts and social studies)
December 1, 2003... Get out the scales. There's a new textbook selection strategy weighing on the minds of administrators these days. In an effort to curb back pain and other health problems that can result from students carrying heavy backpacks, Massachusetts...

Research focus: mathematical learning disabilities.(Curriculum update: the latest developments in math, science, language arts and social studies)
December 1, 2003... Although it's the stuff that excuses are made of, educators and researchers now widely say that there's no such thing as a "math gene," causing some of us to understand math and others to run the other way. However, an upcoming study of 350...

File swapping lawsuits: is your district next? Districts need to create and enforce acceptable P2P trading policies.(The Online Edge)
December 1, 2003... The Recording Industry Association of America recently mounted a get-tough policy against illegal online file swappers. One of the first 261 lawsuits charged a 12-year-old honors student, who lives in a city housing project apartment in New...

Meet Frank Smith: gifts of wisdom for educators.(Speaking Out)
December 1, 2003... Christmas came early to the Stager house when a pre-publication copy of Frank Smith's latest book arrived this summer. I have long admired Smith for his intellect and remarkable ability to make complex ideas accessible. Few intellectuals...

Is Title I helping anyone? New research shows this long-running--and big spending--federal program might not help poor students.(Policy Debate)
December 1, 2003... Title I is the largest federal elementary and secondary education program. For 38 years it has poured more than $200 billion into K-12 school districts nationwide. And yet, there's no statistical evidence in the last 15 years that the program,...

Be strategic to boost family involvement.(Research corner: essentials on education data and analysis from research authority AEL)
December 1, 2003... The joke used to be that getting families involved in their children's education was like the weather: Everyone discussed it, but no one did much about it. That's no longer true. Schools are beefing up their efforts--especially Title I...

Computer graphics bibles.(books used by teacher Javier Rabelo to teach computer graphics)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... High school instructor Javier Rabelo uses several computer literature books as a secondary resource to help teach computer graphics tips to his students in HyperMedia I and HyperMedia II classes. The secondary resource comes in handy when...

Macromedia Fireworks MX: Training from the Source.
December 1, 2003... MACROMEDIA PRESS $44.99 With tips and a checklist of what the reader will learn, this book shows step-by-step how to create a Web site in Macromedia Fireworks MX. Students can build several pages and then export them as HTML files that can...

Adobe Photoshop 7: Classroom in a Book.
December 1, 2003... ADOBE PRESS $45.00 As part of a best-selling series of hands-on software training workbooks, this book helps teach the features of Adobe software quickly. It offers an official training series from Adobe and was developed with the support...

Real World: Bryce 4.
December 1, 2003... PEACHPIT PRESS $54.99 In 940 pages, this books focuses on landscape generation and atmospheric effects combined with an intuitive interface. With this latest version, including dozens of instructive and colorful illustrations, digital...

Digital Multimedia.
December 1, 2003... JOHN WILEY & SONS LTD. $55.00 For the more experienced student, this book touts itself as "simply the best source of technical information and practical know-how on manipulating, combining and delivering digital multimedia content."...

New Forums Press Guilty Until Proven Innocent: Teachers and Accusations of Abuse.
December 1, 2003... www.newforums.com, Book, $16.95 This book looks at the growing trend of educators being falsely accused of student abuse, which could result in job loss and remaining unemployable even after innocence is established. Written by Colorado...

ABC-CLIO Curriculum Trends: a Reference Handbook.
December 1, 2003... www.abc-clio.com, Book, $45 Part of the Contemporary Education Issues series, this book highlights the history of pre-K-12 curriculum development in the U.S. from the 1890s to the present. Author and curriculum studies scholar Valerie...

Qualcomm Eudora 6.0.
December 1, 2003... www.qualcomm.com, Software, $49.95/new purchasers, $39.95/ previously paid, registered users The latest version of this e-mail program includes automatic spam protection, an e-mail thread condenser, automated type formatting tools and...

Educational Activities Software Diascriptive Reading Online.
December 1, 2003... www.ea-software.com, Interact, $795 and up This updated and revised Web-based software is a diagnostic/prescriptive program for comprehension development of students in grades four and up. Diagnostic pre-tests automatically assess students...

Atomica GuruNet Homework Edition.
December 1, 2003... www.atomica.com, Software, $399 per building/year (for up to 100 PCs)-$2, 999 per campus/year (for 301-3,000 PCs) Students and educators can use this study-aid software to sharpen their focus when researching the Web for homework...

Appligent AppendPDF Pro 3.0.
December 1, 2003... www.appligent.com, Software, $3,995 The latest version of this software enables users to assemble sections from PDFs to build a new document with a choice of personalized features, including a cover page and table of contents. New features...

Learning Company Books Reader Rabbit Workbook Series.
December 1, 2003... www.learningcompanybooks.com, Books, $3.99 for single subject and $14.99 for comprehensive Geared toward children ages three to seven, this series includes three 320-page comprehensive workbooks and five 32-page single-subject workbooks....

Spanish 2A.
December 1, 2003... www.class.com, Software, $100-$200 per student This online Spanish course is the third in a series that uses Holt, Rinehart, and Winston's Ven Conmigo! textbook series. Each unit includes a variety of interactive activities to accommodate...

Ulead Systems Ulead in Education.
December 1, 2003... www.ulead.com, Internet $30-$500 This online resource offers K-12 teachers information and tools for incorporating digital media software in the classroom. The service provides online support for teachers using video and imaging software,...

National Geographic World Cultures and World Regions.
December 1, 2003... www.nationalgeographic.com, Books, $460 for each classroom set; $67.50 for individual titles Designed for grades 3-8, these two series combine literacy development with science and social science content correlated to national curriculum...

Pearson Skylight Evaluating Programs to Increase Student Achievement.
December 1, 2003... www.skylightedu.com, Book, $25.95 Authored by Martin H. Jason, a professor of education leadership and organizational change at Roosevelt University, this book provides a framework for schools to plan and evaluate their school improvement...

Absolute Software AbsoluteFirewall.
December 1, 2003... www.absolute.com, Software, $39.95 This new software helps protect remote and mobile PCs against threats from the Interact. Using the browser-based AbsoluteConsole, the software allows users to centrally establish network security policies...

Multimedia Design mPOWER for the Web.
December 1, 2003... www.mmdesigncorp.com, Software, district license (includes desktop version) $1,995, plus $495/school within district This application allows students to create multimedia presentations within a Web browser. The technology includes the same...

AHA! interactive Educator Professional Development Management System.
December 1, 2003... www.ahainteractive.com, Internet, $25-$50 per user/year Administrators can use this Web-based system to align professional development to strategic objectives. Features include an online course catalog, course registration and attendance...

COMPanion Corp. eLunchroom.
December 1, 2003... www.companioncorp.com, Software, $1,495-$2,495 per site This point-of-sale automation software for K-12 cafeterias includes features such as free and reduced lunch program management, customizable reports, recertification letters,...

Lexia Learning Systems Teaching Reading: Stages and Strategies.
December 1, 2003... www.lexialearning.com, Software, $500/5-pack; $ 700/10-pack; add-on CDs $50/each This professional development and reading software provides educators with an introduction to the central concepts in teaching children to read. The program...

Corwin Press The Leadership Brain: How to Lead Today's Schools More Effectively.
December 1, 2003... www.corwinpress. com, Book, $34,95 Authored by David A. Sousa, this book provides a new model for a whole-brain approach to educational leadership. It looks at the differences in learning and retention, left- and right-brain hemispheric...

Rourke Math and My World.
December 1, 2003... www.rourkepublishing.com, Books, $20.95 for individual titles; $119.70 for series Designed for grades 4-6, this series teaches students the practical uses of math across a wide range of disciplines, including science, geography and...

Key Curriculum Press[R]--innovators in mathematics education.(Information Showcase)
December 1, 2003... Supporting innovative educators for over 30 years, Key Curriculum Press publishes award-winning software, textbooks, and supplementary materials for secondary school mathematics. The Geometer's Sketchpad[R] is the world's leading software tool...

A field trip to the stars without leaving your school!(Information Showcase)
December 1, 2003... The STARLAB Portable Planetarium, "the universe in a bag," lets the stars come to you saving the expense, hassle and worry of field trips. In the exciting environment of STARLAB, treat students to interactive, interdisciplinary lessons and...

NEA Professional Library.(Information Showcase)
December 1, 2003... Whether you're a superintendent, curriculum director or classroom teacher, the NEA Professional Library offers books and other resources that speak directly to the challenges you face every day. Each title research based and designed for...

RFB&D's[R] learning through listening[TM].(Information Showcase)
December 1, 2003... RFB&D's[R] Learning Through Listening[TM] memberships are a proven reading accommodation for students with learning disabilities, visual impairments or other physical disabilities. RFB&D memberships offer access to more than 90,000 recorded...

Micrograms.(Information Showcase)
December 1, 2003... Micrograms offers the best in educational software for grades K-6. See our latest award winners, the NEW Mathosaurus, and the NEW Super Science Show! Request a FREE Showcase CD and explore each Micrograms program with features such as our new...

Teacher's interactive whiteboard.(Information Showcase)
December 1, 2003... Interactive Presentation Manager[TM] (IPM) brings your multimedia classroom presentations to life with powerful and easy to use "Softkeys" that link to computer files for "on command launch." Using your PC and an LCD projector, the IPM provides...

Project Wisdom.(Information Showcase)
December 1, 2003... In just one minute a day, you can enhance your school climate while building character, confidence and a more caring community of learners. It's a simple program that gets results. Call us at (800) 884-4974. Or visit our web site for more...

The Performance Series from Scantron.(Information Showcase)
December 1, 2003... Responding to sweeping education reforms, Scantron delivers the new standard in diagnostic assessment technology. The Performance Series is a standards-based, testing and assessment tool that empowers educators with critical data to impact...

Get to know your United Nations.(Information Showcase)
December 1, 2003... This catalogue lists a multitude of attractive and easy to read publications that will assist you in teaching children about the United Nations, human rights and environment. Call (800) 253-9646 or visit us at www.un.org/publications ...

The Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition.(Information Showcase)
December 1, 2003... Classroom Edition is written and produced especially for teens. It supports what you're teaching and puts the world of business into context for your students. Subscription includes thirty copies of the monthly student newspaper, teacher guide,...

Calendar of events.(Calendar)
December 1, 2003... JANUARY 2004 Florida Educational Technology Conference FETC www.fetc.org January 22-24 Orlando, Fla. FEBRUARY 2004 American Association of School Administrators Annual Conference AASA www.aasa.org February 19-22 San Francisco,...

By the numbers: a data bank on education trends for district leaders.
December 1, 2003... THIS MONTH: Technology Inventory Student-to-computer ratio: 3.3/1 Source: QED Instructional Technology Expenditures 1991-92 2.1 1992-93 2.5 1993-94 2.8 1994-95 3.6 1995-96 4.3 1996-97 4.8 1997-98 5.4...