Oregon Education Reform's topics - tribe.net

The Real Tale of Declining Literacy in America

2007-01-29T18:57:44Z

At the start of WWII millions of men showed up at registration offices to take low-level academic tests before being inducted. The years of maximum mobilization were 1942 to1944; the fighting force had been mostly schooled in the 1930s, both those inducted and those turned away.

Of the 18 million men were tested, 17,280,000 of them were judged to have the minimum competence in reading required to be a soldier, a 96 percent literacy rate.

Although this was a 2 percent fall-off from the 98 percent rate among voluntary military applicants ten years earlier, the dip was so small it didn’t worry anybody.

WWII was over in 1945. Six years later another war began in Korea. Several million men were tested for military service but this time 600,000 were rejected.

Literacy in the draft pool had dropped to 81 percent, even though all that was needed to classify a soldier as literate was fourth- grade reading proficiency.

In the few short years from the beginning of WWII to Korea, a terrifying problem of adult illiteracy had appeared.

The Korean War group received most of its schooling in the 1940s, and it had more years in school with more professionally trained personnel and more scientifically selected textbooks than the WWII men, yet it could not read, write, count, speak, or think as well as the earlier, less-schooled contingent.

A third American war began in the mid-1960s. By its end in 1973 the number of men found noninductible by reason of inability to read safety instructions, interpret road signs, decipher orders, and so on—in other words, the number found illiterate—had reached 27 percent of the total pool.

Vietnam-era young men had been schooled in the 1950s and the 1960s—much better schooled than either of the two earlier groups—but the 4 percent illiteracy of 1941 which had transmuted into the 19 percent illiteracy of 1952 had now had grown into the 27 percent illiteracy of 1970.

excerpted from The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm

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Statewide Student Information System

2006-05-15T13:46:20Z

NY Times reports on the difficulty of building a statewide SIS:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/15/education/15computers.html?hp&ex=1147752000&en=fc46d4cd2e4690cf&ei=5094&partner=homepage

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Topics - ESD Reform, SIS, Technology Standards, E-Portfolios

2006-04-25T20:58:19Z

There are a lot of topics on the table for education reform, but the ones that interest me are:

1) ESD reform. Currently ESD's are in competition rather than working together. IMO, that has to change. Regional ESD should provide technology guidelines and expertise that individual districts and schools cannot afford and the entire educational network should work efficiently as a whole.

2) Information System Consolidation. Nearly every IT manager has agreed that we need a common statewide student system. This is possibly in progress with ODE's KIDS project. I think it should be one of the state's top priorities.

3) Increase teacher and student use of internet based technologies. We should adopt a statewide provisioning and training program for the teachers. There should be a minimum standard for technology resources and skills required for all of Oregon teachers and students. ODE should formally adopt technology standards for tecahers and students.

4) Every student and every teacher should have a state sponsored e-portfolio.

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Oregon Virtual School District

2005-12-12T20:46:12Z

http://www.ode.state.or.us/search/results/?id=326

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Wanted: Better statewide data systems for education

2005-12-05T22:40:14Z

A new organization is seeking to improve the collection and use of high-quality data to drive school reform by encouraging all 50 states to implement statewide longitudinal data systems for education by 2009.
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStoryts.cfm?ArticleID=5991

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Scio Online School - Oregon's First Virtual Public Charter School

2005-12-02T15:36:06Z

Education is changing -- quickly. As the realties of those changes unfold it is going to impact nearly everyone. Virtual Education is the future, how the current systems adapt to that will require everyone to understand the changes and work at their local level to evolve.

This year Scio opened Oregon's First Virtual Public Charter school. Any student in Oregon can attend. They had room for 700 students, they got over 1400 applications and expect twice that many applications next year.

ODE is planning an Oregon Virtual School District:
http://www.ode.state.or.us/search/results/?id=326

Scio's Connection Academy
http://www.connectionsacademy.com/state/home.asp?sid=or

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Losing The Edge

2005-11-30T18:15:45Z

A report from the National Academies—the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council warns that:

"US leadership in science and technology may soon be a thing of the past. The world’s only superpower faces competition from all over the world due to globalisation driven by advances in communication technology"

http://epaperdaily.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=VE9JTS8yMDA1LzExLzE3I0FyMDIwMDI=&Mode=HTML&Locale=english-skin-custom

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A New World View: Education in a Global Era

2005-11-30T15:40:22Z

Phi Delta Kappa International Conlusion:
http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k_v87/k0511st2.htm

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Democrats: Education is the key to reclaiming innovation

2005-11-21T21:37:55Z

Democrats: Education is the key to reclaiming innovation
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStoryts.cfm?ArticleID=5978

I especially like their point:
"Guarantee affordable access to broadband technology for all Americans within the next five years".

I think minimum access levels for all citizens, and especially for our students, is an absolute essential for equality and for participating in the technical society of the future.

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Links

2005-11-21T19:42:39Z

http://del.icio.us/greg_collver/edu.reform

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