Join KQED Education for a free four-part professional development series designed to support middle and high school STEM educators. Learn to integrate science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education in the classroom while earning up to $250 in educator stipends. Sign up for one workshop or attend all four! Space is limited register today!
To learn more.
September 13, 2012
Written by Barbara Grady
McClymonds High School juniors Starletta Andrews and Astiee Carver remember how tough it was to find a safe place to hang out with friends after school this time last year.
“It’s not safe to hang outside, even outside of the school,” Astiee said about the streets surrounding this West Oakland high school.
But now, thanks to the full service community school strategy of the Oakland Unified School District, McClymonds teenagers have a brightly painted lounge with couches and games and books to hang out in or their choice of a computer room or a dance workout room at the new McClymond’s Youth and Family Center. Moreover, they have access to tutors, counselors and peer mentors all at the place a mere walk across the parking lot from their school.
To read more.
Using audio from the Teacher Town Hall poem written by Arise High School teacher Cesar Cruz and research that the student filmmakers found about the drop out crisis in Oakland they created this thought provoking video.
Sep 13, 2012
Written by Carlyn Bynes
Young. Black. Poor. From Oakland. If someone heard that description, they probably wouldn’t picture someone well-spoken and educated. But I want to change the way the world looks at people like me.
When I was born, according to the U.S. Census, I had a 30 percent chance of being born into poverty because my parents were African-American. And I was poor.
Having no money introduced me to a life of humility. I was constantly borrowing from others and asking for favors. Hunger was no stranger to me, either.
To hear more.
Oakland Tribune
September 4, 2012
Written By Matt O’Brien and Theresa Harrington
As the fall semester begins, thousands of Bay Area high school students now have another reason to graduate, and thousands of young adults have a reason to return to school.
Proof of being in school or having graduated from high school could be a shield against deportation and the key to jobs for an estimated 1.76 million young, illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children if they qualify for the federal “deferred action for childhood arrivals” program announced in June.
Educators hope the lure of protection against deportation and renewable work permits will kindle the academic aspirations of young immigrants.
That hope seems a reality in East Contra Costa County, where one educator said she saw a spike in July enrollments for GED and English as a Second Language programs.
“It’s just constant all day and evening,” said Debbie Norgaard, an adult education coordinator for the Liberty school district.
“There’s just a steady flow of new students wanting either ESL or GED classes. It’s just real unusual. I’m sure it’s because of this new (deferred action) program. We have had a couple of students who have requested verification letters from our GED teacher.”
Current.org
August 20th, 2012
Written by: Dru Sefton
The massive American Graduate project is all about potential — the potential of students who stay in school to graduate, as well as the potential of public broadcasting stations to serve as community conveners working to identify and tackle problems.
The multiplatform five-year initiative, seeded with $15 million from CPB, has expanded in its first year to encompass 600 partners working with 25 hub stations serving markets with some of the worst graduation rates in the country. An additional 41 stations received National Center for Media Engagement community-engagement grants for outreach or productions customized to the education needs in their communities.
Twelve Teacher Town Hall meetings convened by local stations have drawn more than 1,200 educators to discussions of their challenges in the classroom. And with next month’s American Graduate Day, participating pubcasters will bring the discussion to a much wider audience through a seven-hour telethon produced by New York’s WNET.
The Sept. 22 broadcast marathon, offered to stations nationwide, will highlight organizations battling the issue and recruit volunteers to join the cause as reading mentors or tutors by calling a centralized toll-free number. The telethon kicks off a week of related program specials airing on public television and radio stations nationally.
The CPB-backed efforts are all focused on a persistent national problem: One in four students doesn’t finish high school — that’s more than 1 million dropouts per year. The numbers are even more acute for African-American and Hispanic students, whose graduation rates are below 65 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
CPB has high-profile national partners in the fight, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; America’s Promise Alliance, founded by former Secretary of State Colin Powell; and Johns Hopkins University’s Everyone Graduates Center.
The initiative has also prompted many collaborative projects within the system. Frontline is working with three Local Journalism Centers to produce coverage of regional educational issues. The PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs are partnering with stations to get local kids involved in telling their stories. The Independent Television Service is spearheading American Graduate Latino, which will produce Spanish- and English-language versions of the core American Graduate content, as well as two documentaries in both languages.
On the radio side, the Public Radio Exchange and NCME are curating a playlist of education-related pieces; PRX has also contracted with Connecticut Public Radio to produce an hourlong special featuring former NPR correspondent Andrea Seabrook as host. It airs Sept. 22, the same day as WNET’s telethon.
And American Graduate seeded StoryCorpsU, a yearlong high-school curriculum based on the popular oral-history project. It’s being tested now in urban classrooms in St. Louis, New York City and Washington, D.C.
American Graduate: Let’s Make It Happen reaches deeply into the core of public broadcasting’s mission to produce content and educational services that engage and empower citizens to identify problems in their communities and come together to solve them.
“It’s heartening to have organizations come to us saying, ‘We hear you’re doing this, can we get on board?’” said Lee Solonche, director of educational media services at Vegas PBS. “They are knocking on our door to get in on this.”
San Francisco ChronicleAugust 23, 2012
The vast majority of the class of 2012 – 95 percent of the state’s 450,000 seniors – passed the California High School Exit Exam by graduation day, an all-time-high pass rate, according to results released Wednesday.
Not surprisingly, state education officials celebrated the news, noting steady improvement from the 90 percent pass rate in 2006, the first year students were required to pass the math and English test in order to graduate.
“When 95 percent of California students are hitting the mark – despite the tremendous challenges we face and the work we still have to do – there’s an awful lot going right in our public schools,” said state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson.
Yet critics of the Exit Exam have long questioned whether passing the test is anything to celebrate.
The exam, which was adopted by the Legislature in 1999, tests students on eighth- or ninth-grade math and 10th-grade English skills. Students are first required to take the exam in their sophomore year and have several chances to pass it.
Over the years, the state has spent hundreds of millions of dollars administering the test as well as providing remediation, tutoring and test preparation to ensure students who graduate meet minimum standards.
And yet the Exit Exam isn’t much of a gatekeeper. Relatively few students who didn’t pass would have graduated anyway because they didn’t finish required coursework.
In San Francisco, for example, 109 of the district’s 4,058 high school seniors were denied a diploma in the spring solely because they had not passed the Exit Exam.
And those students were eligible to take the test again after their senior year. Those results were not available.
In other words, the Exit Exam is costly, measures early high school skills on a multiple-choice test, and the vast majority of students pass it.
Is it worth the time, energy and money?
BAVC Blog
August 14, 2012
Written by: Chris Runde