District Administration - April 2012 - (Page 12)

Br iefings Newsupdate PeoPle Watch Disarming america Following the school shooting at Chardon High School in Ohio, former Chicago mayor and gun-control advocate richard Daley told ASI Radio that there are too many guns in America. “People don’t realize what it does to families, children and these schools.” BroaD’s new BoarD Former Pennsylvania gov. ed rendell along with five other prominent national leaders have joined the jury that decides which large urban school district will win the annual Broad Prize for Urban Education, presented by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. FunDs For Philly The William Penn Foundation, a nonprofit supporting the greater Philadelphia region, is donating $1.5 million to the Philadelphia School District. William Penn President Jeremy nowak said the money will go toward a “much needed” management consultant.” For my FrienD, viola Actress Meryl Streep donated $20,000 to education programs in Central Falls, R.I. on behalf of her friend viola Davis, a Central Falls native. The district’s high school was labeled as failing in 2010 and made headlines for firing all teachers and staff. Picking uP the Pieces Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction tony Bennett assured Henryville, Ind. residents that the state was doing all it could to return students to the classroom after a tornado ripped through the town and destroyed two schools. By Marion Herbert u.S. Follows Global Trend to RESPECT Teachers In 2002, Andrew Moore, the science and society program manager at the european Molecular Biology organization in Germany, wrote a report following the first PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) assessment, “Learning from PISA.” Moore writes that to inspire students to remain competitive, our teachers in turn must also be trained with rigor and widely respected, as is the case in many countries around the globe, many of which outperform the U.S. “we must inspire the inspirers, select the best and look after them well,” wrote Moore in his essay. one decade later, Moore’s thoughts are reverberating in washington as U.S. Secretary of education Arne duncan announced a new plan to show teachers a little respect. The program, recognizing educational Success, Professional excellence and Collaborative teaching (reSPeCt), was, true to the obama Administration’s form, introduced as a competitive grant that will award money to states with winning proposals that include reforming teacher colleges and making them more selective, reforming compensation and merit pay performance, creating new career ladders for teachers to develop leadership skills, reform tenure, improve professional development, and build a teacher evaluation system based on multiple measures. The proposal, which is part of the administration’s proposed 2013 budget, is currently slated for $5 billion. “our larger goal is to make teaching not only America’s most important profession—[but also] America’s most respected profession,” said duncan to teachers at a town hall event on Feb. 14. According to Moore, Finland and South Korea are two countries that revere the teaching profession and train them In February, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan proposed a new competitive grant program, dubbed RESPECT, to revamp the entire teaching profession. to be the best of the best. Both Finland and South Korea greatly outperformed the United States in the latest PISA results from 2009. The two countries, along with Shanghai-China, hong Kong-China and Singapore, ranked in the top five. The administration’s plan coincides with a plan put forth by the national education Association last december, called neA’s Three-Point Plan for education reform. The plan, like reSPeCt, calls for more rigorous standards for entry into the profession, as well as for developing systems that help ensure that those who are in the classroom maintain a high standard of practice. “It’s encouraging to me that educators and the Administration are moving in the same direction with the same range of goals for transforming our schools,” said neA executive director dennis Van roekel in a press released on Feb. 15. “neA cannot do this alone and we applaud the Administration. recruiting talented candidates and providing substantive, high-quality preparation is essential in ensuring quality schools.” District Administration 12 April 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - April 2012

District Administration - April 2012
Contents
From the Editor
News Update
Special Ed Update
Facilities Update
District Profile
Administrator Profile
Robust and Safe BYOD
Success Breeds Success
Funding Building Projects in a Tough Economy
Widening Participation to an IB Education
Why All the Chatter about #EdChat?
Supervisor’s Opinion
Going Mobile
New Directions
Crisis Response
Student Counsel
Product Focus
Online Edge

District Administration - April 2012