Monthly Archive for January, 2011

Adding Up The Spending: Fiscal Disparities and Philanthropy Among New York Charter Schools

Published on January 31, 2011 in News. 0 Comments

By Bruce D. Baker and Richard Ferris, in NEPC

In prominent Hollywood movies and even in some research studies, New York City (NYC) charter schools have been held up as unusually successful. This research brief presents a new study that analyzes the resources available to those charter schools, and it also looks at their performance on state standardized tests. The study reaches some surprising conclusions, some of which include the following:

• Spending by NYC charter schools varies widely, and these differences in spending per pupil appear to be driven primarily by differences in access to private donors. The most well-endowed charters receive additional private funds exceeding $10,000 per pupil more than traditional public schools receive. Other charters receive almost no private donations. (The study’s analysis is based on data from 2006 to 2008 contained in audited annual financial reports, IRS tax filings of non-profit boards overseeing charter schools and charter management organizations.)

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Latest Learning Journal Papers

Published on January 27, 2011 in Journal. 0 Comments

learning

Recently published in The International Journal of Learning:

Nature After Nurture?

Published on January 25, 2011 in News. 0 Comments

By Meghan Rosen, in 3 Quarks Daily

Last year, while doing our taxes, my husband and I were surprised to discover that we weren’t as poor as we thought we were.  As lowly graduate students making a combined income of about $50,000 per year, I had assumed we were on the penny-pinching side of the national pay scale.  But when I compared our income to the median income in the country, I found that we were sitting comfortably in the center.  We had made it; we were officially smack-dab in the middle class.  I thought it would feel different.

In the United States, nearly 25% of the population makes less than $25,000 per year.  At this bottom level, a few households squeak by the poverty threshold, but just barely: in 2010 it’s estimated at just $22,314 for a family of four.

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To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test

Published on January 21, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

By Pam Belluck, in The New York Times

Taking a test is not just a passive mechanism for assessing how much people know, according to new research. It actually helps people learn, and it works better than a number of other studying techniques.

The research, published online Thursday in the journal Science, found that students who read a passage, then took a test asking them to recall what they had read, retained about 50 percent more of the information a week later than students who used two other methods.

One of those methods — repeatedly studying the material — is familiar to legions of students who cram before exams. The other — having students draw detailed diagrams documenting what they are learning — is prized by many teachers because it forces students to make connections among facts.

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Learning Journal, Volume 17, Number 10 available

Published on January 21, 2011 in Journal and Newsletter. 0 Comments

learning_frontThe tenth issue of Volume 17 of The International Journal of Learning has now been published.

Volume 17, Number 10 contains:

Continue reading ‘Learning Journal, Volume 17, Number 10 available’

The Nixon-Obama Compromise

Published on January 14, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

By Richard D. Kahlenberg, from  The New Republic:


In the wake of the Democrats’ losses in the recent election, education policy is emerging as a potential issue on which President Obama can find common ground with Republicans. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was President Bush’s signature example of bipartisan compromise, and in his first two years of office President Obama has already embraced centrist to conservative ideas—such as merit pay for teachers and non-unionized charter schools—that will appeal to the new conservative majority in Congress. Among Democratic interest groups, Obama has singled out teachers’ unions as a power that he is willing to cross; one union official told me that teachers’ unions feel like Obama’s Sister Souljah.
The problem is that non-unionized charter schools, despite all the hoopla surrounding Davis Guggenheim’s film Waiting for ‘Superman’, usually perform about as well as regular public schools. Indeed, the most comprehensive study of charter schools, funded by charter-friendly foundations and conducted by Stanford University’s Margaret Raymond, found that only 17 percent of charter schools outperform comparable public schools. Thirty-seven percent performed worse, and 46 percent performed about the same.

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A Natural History of the Brain

Published on January 11, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From Abigail Rabinowitz and Carl E. Schoonover in Science:

The American Museum of Natural History’s Brain: The Inside Story does not open with the customary brain numerology—the billions of neurons and synapses, the eons of evolution spent packing it all into 1.4 kg of tissue. Instead, you feel your way down a winding corridor surrounded by 680 kg of tangled electrical wire and optical fiber. Spanish artist Daniel Canogar’s installation is lit up with rapid trickles of light and sheets of shifting color—a cross between forest and funhouse. There is no better way to see the organ as many a brain scientist does: a staggeringly complex, interconnected tangle in which countless subtle signals whizz by at breakneck speed.

Once the challenge of understanding the brain is made viscerally clear, the exhibition begins. Five main sections cover topics from the nervous system’s cellular workings and its role in sensation to how our brains learn and change over time. The immensely ambitious exhibition, based on a knowledge set that is still patchy, aims to explain the human brain to an audience of all ages.

If you are new to gray matter, trying to understand everything from synapses to synesthesia in two hours can feel demoralizing, like cramming from an encyclopedia for a multiple-choice test. But at its best, the show moves away from text-heavy placards to displays that encourage you to understand the brain intuitively. Some of this science exhibition’s most effective teaching tools are works of art. To explain how we perceive, Devorah Sperber’s visual puzzle assembles delicately tinted spools of thread into an abstract shape that, once refracted through a glass orb, resolves into a famous portrait. Her installation offers a powerful metaphorical account of how a nervous system takes in disjointed bits of information and synthesizes them into a clear, seamless percept—and does so in a manner that feels effortless to the perceiver. Just across the way, a 1.8-m-tall homunculus with monstrously large lips, hands, and feet symbolizes the relative size of the somatosensory cortex’s representation of various body parts. (Parents, do not fear: one oversized hand is strategically placed.)

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