Secondary Transition and Common Core State Standards: Tools You Can Use

I recently attended the South Carolina Council for Exceptional Children’s state conference and learned a lot of great things. Over the next few days, I hope to share with you some of the information that I learned.

This session was presented by Jennifer Cease-Cook from the National Secondary Transition Technical Assistance Center

1. Common Core Standards have been adopted by 45 states and Washington DC.

2. New Territory: large scale formative assessment, “through course assessments,” computer based/adapted assessments, emerging technology available, matching testing accommodations to classroom accommodations, single set of testing policies within a consortium.

3. Are college ready and career ready the same: look at academic skills, test proficiency, job-specific/technical skills, business and industry leaders focus on employability skills (soft skills) – problem solving, communication, teamwork, technology, adaptability, increased national focus on Career Pathways, industry certification, alternative pathways.

4. College readiness: key cognitive strategies, academic knowledge and skills, academic behaviors, contextual skills and awareness.

5. Career Readiness: work based learning experiences, self determination

6. Standards-based education does not equal special education

7. What does this mean for students with disabilities? – increased academic rigor, increased focus on college preparedness in education, increased attention that multiple methods of assessment and instruction critical, increased focus on using date for instructional and program decisions increased recognition of importance of alternative pathways.

8. Designing instruction – address real life topics, make curricular content more meaningful and relevant.

Additional resources:

www.corestandards.org – resources and current info on the adoption and implementation of the Common Core State Standards

http://commoncore.org/ - a curriculum mapping project for resources regarding instruction and curriculum design associated with the Core Standards

www.nsttac.org – 101 documents on secondary special ed issues including college and career readiness

www.ideapartnership.org

www.cast.org

www.careertech.org

www.p21.org

www.ncwd-youth.org

www.parcconline.org

www.k12.wa.us/smarter

My big takeaway from this session was that we need to make education relevant and meaningful to our students. There were great examples for doing this in this session.

Image: 'balance-your-stuff-1a--richardstep-unleash-your-strengths'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/63435518@N08/7437996872
Found on flickrcc.net

Frame My Future Scholarship Contest 2014

I was recently contacted by Katie Gargano from Diploma Frame about a scholarship contest that she thought my readers might be interested in so here it is!

“Title: Frame My Future Scholarship Contest 2014

Deadline: March 5, 2014

Website:  http://www.diplomaframe.com/contests/frame-my-future-scholarship-contest-2014.aspx or www.framemyfuture.com

Eligibility: The scholarship contest is open to all students who plan on attending a U.S. college/university as a full-time student for the 2014-2015 academic year and is a legal U.S. resident.

Entering the scholarship: To enter the scholarship, submit an original creation that communicates what you want to do in your personal and professional life after college. Follow the theme: This is how I Frame My Future. Some examples of entry ideas are: photograph, collage, poem, drawing, painting, graphic design piece, short-typed essay and more.

Prizes: We are awarding a total of $6,000 in college scholarships. There will be five winners of the $1,000 scholarships and the Grand Prize Winner, the top vote-getter Finalist, will earn an additional $1,000 donation to their 2014 attended college/university.

More information can be found on www.framemyfuture.com.”

Is College the Answer?

In the article Plan B: Skip College from the New York Times, Mr. Steinberg writes,

“A small but influential group of economists and educators is pushing another pathway: for some students, no college at all. It’s time, they say, to develop credible alternatives for students unlikely to be successful pursuing a higher degree, or who may not be ready to do so.”

This struck home to me for some reason.

Over the past 30 years, I have seen us telling students that college is the be-all and end-all to everything. We (meaning the education system) has told them that they can’t get anywhere without a college degree. Then we have changed “vocational career centers” to “career and technology centers” which encourage only college bound students to attend. I still wonder who in the world is teaching young people about carpentry, brick masonry, electricity, auto mechanics etc. The need for people with these skills is still out there but people can’t really learn these skills until after they graduate or if they quit school.

I also think that colleges have raised tuition until it feels like only the elite get to have a college education. I have friends who really need tuition help but because their parents make too much money, they can’t get financial aid, yet their parents do not make enough to pay tuition. How frustrating that must be! I hear this same story time and time again. Of course, if the tuition wasn’t so high, more students would be able to afford it but I’m not sure that is what colleges want.

We started a state lottery years ago which was supposed to help students pay for college. Isn’t amazing with the extra financial help going to students that the colleges decided to raise tuition! So again, there doesn’t seem to be a positive benefit from this lottery. It became just another political game in the scheme of things.

In today’s economy, with many people losing their jobs and less jobs out there, why in the world would someone want to spend all this money for college? I never thought I would see a day when teachers would be laid off, but that day is here. When that happens, it is time for drastic measures.

Wouldn’t now be a good time to teach students a skill that they could barter with (I’m only talking about legal ones!)? I have noticed a lot of people lately trading services. This will be an advantage for survival during bad economic times. When money is scarce, but there is advantage to having a skill that someone else can benefit from. And if they have some skill that you could use, it would be beneficial for you to have something they need.

I can see that in the future, we will see more bartering for services until this economy turns around. Until that turn around comes, we need to prepare our students for the future that they will actually experience and not the future that we would like for them to experience. I agree that it is time to look at alternatives to college. What do you think?

Posted on the Successful Teaching Blog by loonyhiker (successfulteaching at gmail dot com).

Original image: 'Cambridge Backs at Dawn'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/45086087@N00/3031736334 by: Alex Brown

Balancing and Analyzing

Thanks to Kyle Dunning for sharing this great graphic with me called: College in America (see the graphic below). I found all of the statistics very interesting to see but a couple of them really bothered me more than the others.

· 1 out of 5 students fail to properly balance a checkbook.

· 1 out of 2 students fail to correctly analyze prose like news editorials.

It always bothers me when people can’t seem to manage their money. I have seen too many people get in trouble because they can’t balance a checkbook or manage their money. I hope by the time our students get into college, they will know how to use a checkbook and the scoop about credit cards. I mean, how many of us get tons of credit card applications in the mail every day? This flash tends to excite students who do not have any money. Every year, I spend a couple of weeks and we practice carefully on how to use a checkbook for our class. They take their class salary (which they get every week) and deposit it into their checking account. They write out checks for pencils, paper, breaks for water/restroom, passes to the library, time on the computer etc. Once they get used to using it and feel comfortable with it, I stop doing direct instruction on it. At the end of every month, they have to balance the checkbook and make sure that it matches the bank statement that I have (I enter their amounts in a spreadsheet at the end of every week). This is a great habit for them to get into and they learn the importance of doing this.

As for news editorials, my students think that the “squeaky wheel” must be telling the truth. They need to learn how to take this information and analyze it. This is so important especially around election time. Too many times we are teaching our students to conform and fit the mold, that we forget to teach them to think. They need to figure out what they believe in and why they believe this way. “Just because” and “they say so” is not a good enough reason. I think debates on pros and cons would help students learn how to back up their opinions. The school system needs to work on this skill more than it does. If it doesn’t, when these students get into positions of power and hold our future in their hands, we will be in big trouble.

Please look below and the graphic and enjoy! Thanks again Kyle!

Source: Online Colleges and Universities

What statistics stand out for you and what does it say to you?

Posted on the Successful Teaching Blog by loonyhiker (successfulteaching at gmail dot com).

What Millennial Students Need to Know…Before They Get to College

(Today’s post is by guest writer, Elizabeth O’Neill. She is a contributing writer for EarnMyDegree.com. She holds an MFA in creative writing, and has taught several college courses. )

The world is evolving at a breakneck pace. Teachers are working hard to keep up, and they’re making admirable headway. At the same time, certain shifts in our society have prompted new issues in higher education. Middle school teachers and high school teachers can help their students, by addressing these issues before graduation rolls around.

Beyond Grades

Grade-obsessed parents have created grade-obsessed kids. Good grades used to be part and parcel of dedicated scholarship. These days, especially in high school, GPA is everything. Students view their assignments as the means to a final grade, without much regard for the developmental “through line” – a.k.a. learning.

When students arrive at college unconcerned with their own learning outcomes (beyond grades), they’re more likely to choose an arbitrary major, to coast through easier course offerings, or to practice academic dishonesty when classes become difficult. By the time they reach college (especially given what it costs today), students should have the maturity to actively care about what, why and how they are learning. For their own benefit, they should aim to fuse connections between their studies and the outside world. They should be anticipating their careers, and building their competencies accordingly.

Middle school teachers and high school teachers can help students take ownership of their education by offering praise for “through line” thinking. Try to teach beyond the next test. Encourage kids to talk about their ambitions and individual goals. Integrate more class discussion with textbook chapters. And remember that some of your students will become poets, some will become accountants, some will become veterinary technicians. Regardless of the subject you teach, you should find ways to make your lessons speak to all of them.

Context

A lot of people criticize millennial students for their misuse of grammar and punctuation. Texts, tweets, and nonstop status updates have indeed affected students’ communication habits. But be careful not to squelch all your students’ texting talents and idioms. In the business world, executives are scrambling to teach themselves the e-parlance and netiquette that most of your students have mastered and popularized.

The real concern should be whether or not students are learning to shift gears between online and offline communication strategies. Because even though the Internet can be used as an educational tool and medium (quality online colleges and online universities are proving this point every day), it’s dangerous to assume that students will be able to draw their own distinctions.

Students need to recognize how screen reading differs from book reading, how emails differ from essays, and how Wikipedia differs from the Wall Street Journal. Middle school and high school teachers can help by combining online and offline assignments, which highlight key differences in accessibility and strategy. Teachers should also acknowledge the value of online literacy, for all the skim reading and acronym decoding it requires, because this kind of fluency will generate more and more applications in higher education and the working world.

Original image: 'School Room'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/50115004@N00/2915797223 by: Rob Shenk

The Cost of College

In The Coming Storm from Practical Theory, Chris Lehmann talks about the high cost of college and says, “I don't know where this ends, honestly. I don't know why we've seen the kind of rise in college tuition that is so out of proportion to the rest of the economics of our country. I don't know how we continue to hold college out as the gatekeeper to a middle-class adulthood, and I don't know how it could be when a generation of kids start their life hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt -- and that's assuming that they can still get the loans.”

This may be a little bit of a rant and I’m sorry but this had me thinking about college and professional sports. I think sports are great for kids to learn competition and team work. I feel it is a great way to be fit and some students have great talent for it. So, don’t think that what I’m about to say is a slam against sports. My problem is the amount of money that college coaches and professional athletes get paid. It is totally absurd and I think that as long as people keep paying money to see these sports, the salaries will continue to be paid. If colleges took some of the money paid in coaches salaries and put it toward college expenses, college would be affordable to most students. Why in the world do we (as in society) pay such outrageous salaries to these people? Why do professional athletes need millions of dollars to play a sport? I really think our priorities are way out of whack! Why do we put more emphasis on sports than academics? Will these high paid athletes bail out the banks and the auto industry? Will they give some of their money to support colleges so the tuition can stay low? No.

Then on top of it all, our state finally instituted a state lottery to help fund education. That is a total crock! Apparently a lot of the money goes to colleges and then the colleges turn right around and increase tuition, so how does this money help our students? I keep hearing that the costs of an education is more, so they have to raise tuition. That would be reasonable until we find out that they are paying the football coach thousands of dollars years after they fired him as part of the contract agreement they had when they hired him. When will people say we have had enough?

I agree with Chris that I don’t know what the answer is, but it is time to say enough is enough. I will not buy any souvenirs for professional sports and I can’t tell you when I have gone to see any in person. If enough people stop supporting them, maybe we could bring them back in line. I just know that I’ve had enough and when sports becomes more important than an education, I draw the line.

Original image: 'College Football' http://www.flickr.com/photos/37996589600@N01/2016903