short critical analysis

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timer Asked: Nov 22nd, 2015

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Hello dear,


I have an article and I want you to read  tow and write a short article analysis so you tell what you think,  

I also need to come up with 3 discussion questions to ask my classmates  

UEIN_Team 5..docx 

take a look and let me know if you have any questions,

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EDUC 202: URBAN EDUCATION IN THE NEWS Name: Haley Sutton Title of Article and DATE: The Myth of the New Orleans School Makeover Aug. 22 2015 Author of Article: Andrea Gabor Source of Article: The New York Times URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/opinion/sunday/the-myth-of-the-new-orleans-schoolmakeover.html?_r=1 1. Main ideas of article: The main ideas of this article focus on the school system in New Orleans post Katrina. It has been said for a few years that Hurricane Katrina was the best thing that could have happened for New Orleans school system; this article finds numerous faults in that belief. The author does not take statistics and studies for face value, she goes beyond to find out what the information really means and therefore disproves many impressive claims. 2. Critical Analysis: New Orleans’ poor school system effects virtually everyone in the area. The students are directly affected because they must attend these schools. Parents are being told that the schools are doing extremely well and surpassing expectations, since 2005 standardized test scores have risen 26%. This seems impressive, however the standards in these schools are some of the lowest in the nation. When schools see that they are doing well they could grow complacent with their achievements and never reach the standards that other states are upholding. Also the average ACT score of students in these areas was 16.4, which is far below a score needed to enter a public 4 year college in New Orleans. The students, teachers and parents are being lied to, told their school systems issues are fixed when in reality they are far from revived. Aside from the scores that actual enrolment rates are concerning. 26,000 people in the Metropolitan area from ages 16-24 are neither working nor in school. There is no reason for this many school aged people to be disconnected. Society will fall apart without kids getting any level of a degree, and therefore not entering the work force. The Recovery School District and other programs designed to take over a school for improvement have all of the power. They are coming in and flipping these schools. In one case only 117 of the 366 students returned after their high school was taken over. The students and parents must disapprove considering the reenrollment numbers. The students have no say in the matter, because the statistics being put out there make these programs look better than they are. When in reality they do not include the students that leave school all together in their data. This may affect urban education in a huge way if people continue to believe that the programs are making such vast improvements. Other failing schools may opt for a large program to take over their school after being made to believe that these programs do nothing but good for the students. 3. Challenges to your assumptions about the issue: I had heard before reading this article that the school system after Katrina was doing better because they had gotten the chance to start over from scratch. This article clearly shows that the 1 assumptions being made on this topic cannot be believed as all good. The scores that have raised and the schools that are no longer failing are better at the expense of a large number of people who left these schools. Regardless of how much better the schools look without these students being enrolled, the fact is that the students bringing down the statistics before are no longer attending any school at all. 4. New questions/ideas that the article raises for you: I wonder if the reason for all of the kids not coming back to school is because of the programs. I wonder if the programs are corrupt and are forcing the lower level students out of the schools, or if the lower performing students are leaving because of outside factors. I doubt any outside factors would lead to these large numbers, I’d like to know what really goes on during the reformation of a school. 5. Action you could take to address issue in the article: It is important to make the public less ignorant to these issues. It is necessary that articles like this one continue to be published so that less and less people praise the reform programs and realize the reality of why all the data coming out of these schools look so impressive WAS Hurricane Katrina “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans,” as Education Secretary Arne Duncan once said? Nearly 10 years after the disaster, this has become a dominant narrative among a number of school reformers and education scholars. Before the storm, the New Orleans public school system had suffered from white flight, neglect, mismanagement and corruption, which left the schools in a state of disrepair. The hurricane almost literally wiped out the schools: Only 16 of 128 buildings were relatively unscathed. As of 2013 the student population was still under 45,000, compared with 65,000 students before the storm. Following the storm, some 7,500 unionized teachers and other school employees were put on unpaid leave, and eventually dismissed. Two years before the storm, the State of Louisiana had set up a so-called Recovery School District to take over individual failing schools. After Katrina, the district eventually took over about 60 local schools; about 20 well-performing schools remained in the Orleans Parish School Board, creating, in essence, a two-tier system. Nearly all the schools in both parts of the system have since been converted to charters. Last year, 63 percent of children in local elementary and middle schools were proficient on state tests, up from 37 percent in 2005. New research by Tulane University’s Education Research Alliance shows that the gains were largely because of the charter-school reforms, according to Douglas N. Harris, the alliance’s director. Graduation and college entry rates also increased over pre-Katrina levels. But the New Orleans miracle is not all it seems. Louisiana state standards are among the lowest in the nation. The new research also says little about high school performance. And the average 2 composite ACT score for the Recovery School District was just 16.4 in 2014, well below the minimum score required for admission to a four-year public university in Louisiana. There is also growing evidence that the reforms have come at the expense of the city’s most disadvantaged children, who often disappear from school entirely and, thus, are no longer included in the data. “We don’t want to replicate a lot of the things that took place to get here,” said Andre Perry, who was one of the few black charter-school leaders in the city. “There were some pretty nefarious things done in the pursuit of academic gain,” Mr. Perry acknowledged, including “suspensions, pushouts, skimming, counseling out, and not handling special needs kids well.” At a time when states and municipalities nationwide are looking to New Orleans, the first virtually all-charter urban district, as a model, it is more important than ever to accurately assess the results, the costs and the continuing challenges. New Orleans has been trying to make the system more fair. It replaced its confusing and decentralized school application process with one in which most schools accept a single application. In response to a lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of special education students, the courts recently tightened oversight of charter schools. Advertisement Continue reading the main story But stark problems remain. A recent report by the Education Research Alliance confirmed that principals engage in widespread “creaming” — selecting, or counseling out, students based on their expected performance on standardized tests. In a forthcoming study, the alliance expects to show that lowest-scoring students are less likely to move to higher-performing schools. The rhetoric of reform often fails to match the reality. For example, Paul G. Vallas, the superintendent of the Recovery School District from 2007 to 2011, boasted recently that only 7 percent of the city’s students attend failing schools today, down from 62 percent before Katrina, a feat accomplished “with no displacement of children.” This was simply false. Consider Joseph S. Clark Preparatory High School, one of the city’s last traditional public schools to be “taken over.” Most of its 366 students declined to re-enroll when it reopened under new management in the fall of 2011. During its first year under FirstLine, a charter management organization, Clark had only 117 “persisters,” or returning students, according to a study by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes, known as Credo. FirstLine could not account for where the students went after they left Clark. However, Jay Altman, its chief executive, told me in an email that before FirstLine took over, a similarly low proportion of students, about 35 percent, were returning. (The school district did not respond to my queries about Clark.) 3 One problem is that in the decentralized charter system, no agency is responsible for keeping track of all kids. Two years ago the Recovery School District, acknowledging that it was “worried” about high school attrition, began assigning counselors to help relocate students from schools it was closing. Louisiana’s official dropout rates are unreliable, but a new report by Measure of America, a project of the Social Science Research Council, using Census Bureau survey data from 2013, found that over 26,000 people in the metropolitan area between the ages of 16 and 24 are counted as “disconnected,” because they are neither working nor in school. Ironically, schools like Clark actually feed the New Orleans success narrative because when bad schools are taken over their “F” grades automatically convert to a “T” — for a turnaround. Thus, in the 2013-14 school year, the four schools with “T” grades wouldn’t be counted as “failing” schools, nor would the 16 schools that received a “D” grade. About 40 percent of Recovery School District schools were graded “D,” “T” or “F” that year. Adding to the difficulty of assessing the New Orleans experiment is the fact that Louisiana education data has been doled out selectively, mostly to pro-charter researchers, and much of the research has been flawed. Last fall, the Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives was forced to retract a study that concluded that most New Orleans schools were posting higher-thanexpected graduation rates and test scores. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Advertisement Continue reading the main story Last spring, Credo produced a study of 41 urban charter districts, including New Orleans, that purported to show that charters outperformed urban public schools on standardized test scores; but this study was also highly flawed. The methodology was based on comparing each charter student to a virtual “twin,” a composite of as many as seven public-school kids who attend “feeder” schools and who match the charter students on demographics and test scores. The 4 problem in New Orleans was that there are virtually no local feeders left from which to draw comparisons. Andrew E. Maul, an assistant professor of research methodology at the University of California at Santa Barbara, found that Credo’s report “cannot be regarded as compelling evidence of the greater effectiveness of charter schools compared with traditional public schools.” Meanwhile, black charter advocates charge that the local charter “club” leaves little room for African-American leadership. Howard L. Fuller, a former Milwaukee superintendent, said the charter movement won’t have “any type of long-term sustainability” without meaningful participation from the black community. A few school leaders agree that the model needs major change. For example, a new openenrollment charter school, Morris Jeff, is working to integrate both the student body and its teaching force, and even backed a unionization effort — one of the city’s first since the hurricane. A key part of the New Orleans narrative is that firing the unionized, mostly black teachers after Katrina cleared the way for young, idealistic (mostly white) educators who are willing to work 12- to 14-hour days. Patricia Perkins, Morris Jeff’s principal, says the schools need the “wisdom” of veteran black educators. Morris Jeff is benefiting from one of the most important post-Katrina reforms: a big increase in both government and philanthropic funding. It recently moved into a new bright, air-conditioned building. For outsiders, the biggest lesson of New Orleans is this: It is wiser to invest in improving existing education systems than to start from scratch. Privatization may improve outcomes for some students, but it has hurt the most disadvantaged pupils. Andrea Gabor is a professor of business journalism at Baruch College, the City University of New York. 5 EDUC 202: URBAN EDUCATION IN THE NEWS Name: Matthew Allen Title and Date: Under Stress, Children in New York Schools, Find Calm In Meditation October 23, 2015 Author: Elizabeth A. Harris Source: New York Times URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/24/nyregion/under-stress-students-in-new-yorkschools-find-calm-in-meditation.html Many children, especially in urban areas, bring unwanted stressors to school with them every day. These may include but are not limited to, family and financial problems. The main idea of this article is to explain how some of this stress can be relieved due to simple meditation and relaxation techniques which take up practically no time. At the Brooklyn Urban Garden Charter School, 15 minutes are put aside at the beginning and end of the day so students can relax in silence, focus on their breathing, and feel a sense of calmness throughout their body. Since this is a relatively new technique, little is known how much, if any, these children benefit. I chose this article because the headline intrigued me, but as I read it started to make a lot more sense to me on how these techniques may actually work. The main beneficiaries in this case would be the students. Although they are being taken away from time that can be used for “useful” subjects, I would imagine that the students are more in-tune after their relaxation techniques. A good learning environment consists of a positive attitude and a relaxing vibe. A relaxed and focused student will most likely pay better attention to his superiors, and in turn, gain more insight on lessons being taught. The benefits do not just affect the students however. Teachers will better retain the attention of their students, making it easier to teach the materials given thus making up for time that may be considered as “lost” during time of meditation. I believe that urban schools may benefit the most from this strategy of relaxation. As we know, many children who attend urban schools are surrounded by trouble both inside and outside of school. In some cases, these kids may be the cause of said problems, if not now then in the future. Meditation is a way to better channel urges, and thus creating a better student and person. Many may see the techniques as a waste of student’s time and resources but I see it as a better way to enhance the mind. Meditation is a way to relax your mind and body. It helps you put aside problems to better focus on what is right in front of you. Although the techniques were just implemented I would like to see if there are any proven facts on how these children are doing in school as a direct effect of meditation. Some of the questions I have for the children and the schools are: 6 1. Are the children actively engaging in these techniques? What happens to the kids that are not disruptive but do not want to participate? What about the kids who are disruptive? 2. Do these programs follow the students throughout their schooling or does it stop at a certain grade level? 3. I would like to ask the teachers, if it were up to them, would they keep the meditation techniques? Would you keep them the same amount of time, shorten them, make them longer? Even though the effects may be greatly in favor of relaxation techniques, I do not see the majority of schools making them part of their curriculum. Parents expect their children to go to school and learn not sit on the floor and hum. There is a reason that nap time ends after preschool and that is because children are there to learn. I like the idea of relaxation techniques in the classroom but I do not find them as a realistic part of the curriculum. The article is as follows: On the first day of the new school year, the schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña, stood in an elementary school classroom in Queens beaming at a hushed room full of fourth-grade children sitting cross-legged on the floor. “Please let your eyes close,” said a small boy named Davinder, from his spot on the linoleum. Davinder gently struck a shallow bronze bowl. Gong! “Take three mindful breaths,” he said, and the room fell silent. “Do you do personal visits?” Ms. Fariña asked after the exercise was over. “Like to offices?” In schools in New York City and in pockets around the country, the use of inward-looking practices like mindfulness and meditation is starting to grow. Though evidence is thin on how well they might work in the classroom, proponents say they can help students focus and cope with stress. At the Brooklyn Urban Garden Charter School in Windsor Terrace, 15 minutes are set aside at the beginning and end of every school day, when students must either meditate or sit quietly at their desks. “It’s built into the schedule,” said Linda Rosenbury, founding principal at Brooklyn Urban Garden, a middle school. “Everyone clears off their desks. They shouldn’t be chewing gum, but if they are, they spit it out. Their hands are free. We ring a bell.” A building full of preteens and teenagers goes quiet, she said. “It used to be that you wouldn’t say ‘meditation’ in polite company,” said Bob Roth, executive director of the David Lynch Foundation, a charitable foundation founded by the director of “Blue 7 Velvet,” that promotes and teaches Transcendental Meditation to adults and children, including those at Brooklyn Urban Garden. “Now we’re working with all the large banks, we’re working with hedge funds, we’re working with media companies. People are having us come in as part of their wellness programs, and that wasn’t the case even two years ago.” While Transcendental Meditation entails silent inward repetition of a mantra, a mindfulness exercise might ask children to focus on breathing in and out. In a classroom, both activities have similar goals; the idea, practitioners say, is to get students into the habit of calming themselves and clearing their minds so they can better focus on the day’s lesson. “We’re putting it in a lot of our schools,” Ms. Fariña said about mindfulness, on the first day of school, “because kids are under a lot of stress.” The Department of Education does not keep track of how many schools have mindfulness programs, but a spokeswoman said that grants and professional development seminars have provided some training to school staff members. The city’s Move to Improve program has also taught nearly 8,000 elementary school teachers how to use activities in the classroom that can include things like mindfulness, balance exercises and stretching. In many cases, schools are finding their own way. To mindfulness, in particular. At Public School 212 in Jackson Heights, Queens, the school Ms. Fariña visited on the first day of classes, a literacy coach named Danielle Mahoney began doing regular mindfulness exercises with some classes the year before last, while taking a one-year certification course. Last year, the school converted a large closet in a subbasement into a room devoted to mindfulness, complete with dim illumination and a string of rainbow Christmas-tree lights, allowing users to switch off the harsh fluorescent light overhead. This sort of homegrown effort has created a patchwork effect; “mindfulness” might look a little different in every school. “It’s a bottom-up process,” said Mark T. Greenberg, a professor of human development and psychology at Penn State. “You have very early adopters who are very interested in the ideas, and they are trying out different ideas and venues.” Some districts, however, are experimenting with a more holistic approach. In Mamaroneck, N.Y., in Westchester County, the district has funded mindfulness training for teachers and parents in each of its six schools, and is encouraging the use of mindfulness exercises as part of an effort to address the social and emotional needs of students. In Louisville, Ky., more than half of the city’s public elementary schools are expected to participate in a randomized study next year that will teach mindfulness exercises to some students as part of a so-called health and wellness curriculum. 8 Donna Hargens, the superintendent of the Louisville district of Jefferson County’s public school system, said that in classrooms a teacher’s reflex is to say, “ ‘Focus! Why aren’t you focusing?’ But what does that really mean, and have we given them any tools to help them do that?” Research in a classroom setting appears to be picking up steam. In Britain, researchers from Oxford and University College London are studying whether teaching mindfulness in schools can improve the mental health of students, and some studies have shown benefits for many adults. Still, little is truly known about how, or even whether, children benefit from the practice in an academic setting. 9 EDUC 202: URBAN EDUCATION IN THE NEWS David Marriggi Students Take Too Many Redundant Tests, Study Finds October 24, 2015 By Denisa R. Superville http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/10/28/students-take-too-many-redundant-testsstudy.html 1. The main ideas of this article are that students are taking tests that are redundant, that are not preparing them for the standards needed for their upper level education and future careers, and the tests often don’t even examine the students’ best knowledge on certain content. 2. This issue has it’s affect on many people. The student being the most importantly affected by being instructed to take these tests repetitively without being able to even get the instruction needed to improve because they are not getting their test results back for months. When a student has to spend a lot of time preparing for and studying for a test, this can cause a lot stress which can be very hard on a parent. These tests are also issued by the school to not only determine how well a student has been progressing throughout the year, but also how well the teacher has been instructing. The students and the teachers may benefit slightly from these mandatory tests, but the most benefits go to the school. The school gets to see exactly what level a student is at academically and how well a teacher has been doing just by assigning a test. Teachers and students have no say in these mandated tests. The power comes completely from the school and what they feel is necessary. This is because the school has the say in all decisions involving what has to be mandated and what doesn’t. The hidden agenda behind the redundant standardized testing is that states’ academic administration is solely giving these tests in order to assure that students state wide are obtaining information taught by their teachers. This ensures that every teacher is teaching the required information given by the state. It also ensures that every student throughout the state will be given equal learning opportunity. There are quite a few ethical concerns for this issue. A few that were mentioned in the article are that 8th grade students should not be spending on average 4.22 school days taking mandatory tests each year, even though testing wasn’t common for most pre-K kids, even they were not exempt, and also it took thirty-nine percent of districts two to four months to receive state test results. Political forces are what drives this issue the most. The teachers are pressured and influenced to give these tests by the school. This issue affects urban education because urban schools are already at an extreme disadvantage in the education system, so these tests make this even worse. 10 3. Some challenges to my assumptions about this article are that mandatory tests are beneficial in improving students’ knowledge on the subject being tested. Also, there may not be another way of observing how well a teacher is doing their job without testing. 4. There are a couple of questions I have after reading this article. I wonder why teachers continue to give these tests when studies are not showing improvement in Math or English? Also, how can teachers be held accountable for the barrage of the test that they are required to give from administrators? 5. I think that teachers should be able to teach outside of what they are supposed to teach. No matter what they teach the kids, they will most likely forget within a couple of days after taking the exam so all of that cramming before the exam was pointless. Due to this,teachers should give lessons on how to resolve everyday problems in the real world and also teach them some life lessons that they can keep with them for the rest of their lives just incase that situation arises. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------Article Students Take Too Many Redundant Tests, Study Finds Review of 66 Urban Districts Gauges Scope of Practice By Denisa R. Students across the nation are taking tests that are redundant, misaligned with college- and career-ready standards, and often don't address students' mastery of specific content, according to a long-awaited report that provides the first in-depth look at testing in the nation's largest urban school districts. The comprehensive report by the Washington-based Council of the Great City Schools examines testing in 66 of the council's 68 member school districts, looking at the types of tests administered, their frequency, and how they are used. The findings are expected to add hard numbers and evidence to the fractious national debate around whether U.S. students are being overtested. The study found, for instance, that 8th grade students in an urban district spent an average of 4.22 school days taking mandatory tests last school year—the most test-taking time of any grade level. That's not counting optional tests and those given periodically by teachers to gauge student progress. And the results of mandated tests were often returned to districts months after they had been taken, reducing their usefulness for classroom instruction. While national testing debates are often characterized by finger-pointing as to who is responsible for the aggressive testing regime, the council's report found that everyone—including classroom teachers, principals, districts, states, the federal government, and testing companies—bears some responsibility. 11 "The overarching take-away for us was that everybody was culpable here in one way or another," said Michael Casserly, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools. "There were so many actors involved, and there was so little coordination across them, that you ended up with an assessment system that was not terribly strategic." On Saturday, the Obama administration acknowledged some responsibility for the increased amount of testing in schools and released principles to help states and school districts dial back on assessments, including ensuring that students do not spend more than 2 percent of classroom instructional time sitting for tests. It also called for Congress to scale back on testing in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Deputy Education Secretary John King participated in a panel discussion in Washington on Monday to discuss how to improve assessments in the nation’s schools. Range of Findings Among the report's other findings: • Students in the 66 districts took 401 unique tests last year. • There is no correlation between time spent testing and improved math and reading scores. • Students in the 66 systems sat for tests more than 6,570 times last year. • While testing for pre-K pupils was less common, even they were not exempt. • Thirty-nine percent of districts waited two to four months to receive state test results. • Tests were used for purposes for which they were not designed, such as evaluating school staff. Time Spent on Test-Taking A study by the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents the nation’s largest urban school districts, found that students spend a lot of time taking tests. Some of those tests are redundant, and others are used for purposes for which they were not designed. Eighth graders spent an average of 25.3 hours—or more than four school days—taking mandatory tests in the 2014-15 school year, the highest number of hours in any of the tested grades, according to the study. SOURCE: Council of the Great City Schools The report found that the time students spent taking tests differed from district to district. In St. Paul, Minn., for example, which the council characterized as a "low test" district, students spent an average of 10.8 hours a year taking mandatory tests. In Detroit, a "high test" district, that number was 30.5 hours. 12 While testing costs made up a small portion of the districts' total budgets, they did add up. The Hillsborough County, Fla., district, for example, spends about $2.2 million of its estimated $1.8 billion budget on testing, according to the report. Richard Carranza, the superintendent of the San Francisco school district and the chairman of the council's board, said in a statement that with the increased focus on improving academic outcomes in the nation's urban schools, it was important to "have actionable data that can be used to guide instruction and help us focus on reducing learning gaps." He called the study "an important tool that will guide how we move forward to improve our local testing environments." In a conference call with reporters Oct. 23, three urban superintendents from Orange County, Fla., Cleveland, Ohio, and San Francisco noted the importance of the report in the national debate around testing. Barbara Jenkins, the superintendent of Orange County schools, said it comes at the right time to refocus the conversation around assessments, the purpose behind those assessments, "and what is really reasonable." Eric Gordon, the CEO of Cleveland Metropolitan School District, said district leaders believed that there was value in assessments — including to inform instruction and also to hold school leaders publicly accountable for their students' performance. The superintendents said that it was important that the tests provide districts with actionable data to use to help their students. Gordon said the report also "helps us to figure out what is the right way to consider how to assess our students, as opposed to the debate in the nation of whether we should or should not." Carranza, from San Francisco, said the report highlights the need to have high-quality tests and high-quality assessments. "A test for a test's sake is not sufficient in our schools," he said. "They must be actionable, they must be robust, they must be rigorous, but they must be tied to a defined outcome, and they must actually measure for that defined outcome." Nobody 'Asked the Question' The council's board of directors commissioned the two-year testing review in 2013, realizing that the national discussion around testing was not always grounded in good evidence, Casserly said. "Nobody had really asked the question before about how much testing there really was in our schools," he said. Opposition to testing, which increased under the No Child Left Behind Act, has grown with the advent of the widely adopted Common Core State Standards. The backlash spawned an opt-out movement, as some parents chose not to have their children participate in the tests developed to align to the newer, more rigorous standards. 13 National data on the extent of that movement, however, have been hard to come by. Among the council districts, opt-out rates varied from 20 percent in Rochester, N.Y., to less than 1 percent in many of the districts. The median figure across the districts was less than 1 percent. Since the review was commissioned, many states and districts have taken steps to cut back on the number of tests they administer. Duval County schools, in Jacksonville, Fla., reduced the number of district-required assessments at the elementary school level to 10 from 23 and at the secondary school level to 12 from 29. And a study released in June by the Council of Chief State School Officers, the Washingtonbased organization that represents the top education officials in the states, showed that at least 39 states were working on reducing unnecessary tests. Next Steps Chris Minnich, the CCSSO's executive director, said the organization will use the new data to inform its efforts around improving the quality of assessments and reducing redundancies. (The CCSSO was a key player in the common-core effort.) "We need to continue to work together to have a frank dialogue around which tests provide valuable information," Minnich said. The report comes with recommendations for the state and federal governments and local school districts. It suggests that the federal government maintain oversight for annual statewide testing for all students in reading and math in grades 3 to 8 and once in high school. It also recommends that states cut down on the time it takes for districts and schools to get test results. It calls for revisiting the U.S. Department of Education's policy of using test scores and student learning objectives in untested grades for teacher evaluations, and it urges extending the one-year testing exemption for recently arrived English-language learners. It also calls for more consistency in the annual assessments that states use for accountability purposes. The report recommends that districts review their tests to reduce duplication, attend to the quality of tests before adopting them, and ensure that tests are really assessing how students are doing. The council plans to keep monitoring how the nation tests its students. The next phase includes creating a commission of researchers, parents, and educators to develop a more "thoughtful," "rational" and "intelligent" system. The commission members will be named within the next two weeks, Casserly said. 14 EDUC 202: URBAN EDUCATION IN THE NEWS Your Name: Alicia King Title of Article and DATE: USDA Efforts on School Lunches Include Resources on Nutrition October 21st, 2015 Author of Article: Katie Wilson Source of Article: Education Weekly URL: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/10/21/usda-efforts-on-school-lunches-includeresources.html 1. Main ideas of article: About ninety five percent of schools nationwide are meeting nutrition standards such as increase in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains in school cafeterias. The school lunch revenue has increased by about four hundred fifty million a year. A study at Harvard found that many kids are eating more fruits and vegetables in schools. The USDA has provided schools with nutrition curricula and culinary techniques. In the article it also states that USDA is committed to helping children in high poverty areas to fight childhood hunger. They implement this by increasing food accesses by providing free meals to the students. The goal is to mentor and train to empower school nutrition professionals to provide efficient nutrition advice to students. The USDA continues to award grants to farm-to-school programs to integrate locally grown food sources. 2. Critical Analysis: This issue affects schools nationwide. By implementing public schools with more nutritious school meals will decrease the obesity epidemic. The students especially those in urban setting will be able to have more nutritious meals at school which may be the only meal they will receive in the day. The students and parents will both benefit from more nutritious meals in schools providing students with healthy meals in order to live a healthy lifestyle. The local farmers will also benefit because their product will be implemented into the school lunch which creates business. The teachers will also benefit from this because the students will be alert and focused in class. The goal of the article is to inform the students about how to eat healthy and help them have a good start. The students could spread this to their family who may begin to eat healthier breakfasts and dinners which would benefit the whole family instead of just the student during lunch. Society could be greatly affected by these changes in many ways. Obesity is a major epidemic in society and educating kids at a young age could help with this issue and preventing it in the future. There are ethical concerns on both sides of this issue. Ethically it is not right to feed unhealthy foods to kids at school who only have access to those 15 foods. While also it is not ethical to limit a kids choices in a country where they have a right to eat whatever they choose. This issue has many effects on urban education which includes increasing the access to healthier foods for these students outside of school. Teaching and providing healthy foods to these students within school can increase their awareness on the topic of eating healthy and nutritious food. 3. Challenges to your assumptions about the issue: The cost to the schools would be much higher. Providing the students with healthier meals would be much more expensive than what is currently sold. The students may not react in a positive way to the changing of lunches or they may not like what is being served. The students may not make changes in their everyday life just because the school is serving healthier lunches. These changes may not be implemented outside of school within their families or in the community. 4. New questions/ideas that the article raises for you: How much higher is the cost for the schools to provide students with healthy meals? How will the USDA fund this program and make sure that all regulations are met within the urban schools? Will the USDA base what is sold in the schools off of the costs and expenses? 5. Action you could take to address issue in the article: Teaching the students about urban farming and encouraging the youth to create healthy gardens will create food security within urban setting. Create community service programs and efforts that can help the students build these gardens and learn how to maintain them. Implementing urban farm gardens in urban settings can decrease childhood hunger. Advocating urban farms in the urban schools can educate students to have healthier eating habits. --------------------------------------------------------USDA Efforts on School Lunches Include Resources on Nutrition To the Editor: In honor of National School Lunch Week, which took place last week, I invite everyone to join the U.S. Department of Agriculture in celebrating all of the school meal programs across the country that are providing healthy, appetizing foods to students. Federal support for school meals dates back more than 80 years. In that time, the science of nutrition has evolved, and so have the meals. Teachers and administrators have probably noticed more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains in their school cafeterias. That's because recent changes to federal school nutrition standards underscored the importance of providing students healthy choices to fuel their bodies and minds. 16 More than 95 percent of schools nationwide are meeting these updated standards. And the impact is inspiring: School lunch net revenue has increased nationwide by approximately $450 million a year; teachers report that students are more attentive in the classroom; and a Harvard study has found that students are now eating more fruits and vegetables. We're excited about the progress and want to help schools continue that momentum. The USDA continues to offer a wide range of resources, such as our Healthier School Day Web page, which provides nutrition curricula, culinary techniques, webinars, and more. Our initiative Team Up for School Nutrition Success offers mentorship-based training to empower school nutrition professionals. We award grants to farm-to-school programs to incorporate locally sourced foods in meals. And we're committed to helping schools fight childhood hunger through the communityeligibility provision, which allows schools in high-poverty areas to increase access to food by offering meals at no cost to all students. But all these tools would be useless without the hard work of teachers, school-food-service staff, and administrators nationwide. It's their commitment to promoting wellness that makes this all possible. They deserve all of our thanks for everything they do to help raise a healthier generation. Katie Wilson Deputy Undersecretary Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services U.S. Department of Agriculture Washington, D.C. Vol. 35, Issue 09, Page 20 17
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