Indiana schools required to teach CPR
Thanks to a new state law, more Indiana high school students will have the option to learn emergency medical care.
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Thanks to a new state law, more Indiana high school students will have the option to learn emergency medical care.
The United States Department of Education announced Thursday that Indiana would receive an extension on its No Child Left Behind waiver, two months after the date it wished to renew the policy.
Decades of studies show teenagers don’t get enough sleep, but the American Academy of Pediatrics says the problem could be easy to alleviate.
Teachers and schools start teaching to a new set of academic standards and a new standardized test this year, and some educators are asking for a year to adjust.
This year’s Indiana graduating class beat the national pass rate for every portion of the ACTs, according to a press release from the ACT organization.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>New licensing provisions put in place by the Indiana State Board of Education have Indiana teachers in an uproar.The Board of Education approved career specialist permits in a 6-5 vote May 14. According to the new rules, any person with a four-year college degree, a 3.0 or higher GPA and three years of work experience can get a teaching license for his or her field in Indiana. No background in teaching is required.“Teaching isn’t just about knowing content,” said Teresa Meredith, Indiana State Teachers Association president.Meredith and the ISTA have been vocal in their opposition to the new provisions.“I hope that the Board of Education will reconsider and have respect for the profession,” Meredith said.Lou Ann Baker, spokeswoman for the Indiana State Board of Education, said it wasn’t an easy decision for the board.“What was approved was a compromise from what the Board discussed and what they heard from professionals in the field,” she said. “We’re making sure you have a knowledgeable person in front of these students.”Potential career specialists will also have to pass a content assessment test. Upon being hired to teach, they will begin pedagogy training immediately, and they will learn in areas like classroom management, curriculum development and psychology of child development.But it still means career specialists could be hired without having any experience in front of students in a teaching capacity.“There’s more to it than just standing in front of students ready to tell them all you know,” Meredith said.Baker said the career specialist permits were modeled after career and technical training permits that certify professionals in trades like auto repair and firefighting to teach.She said supporters of the new permits believe they will give administrators flexibility when finding teachers.“If they find someone who doesn’t have a teaching background, but they think could be inspirational in the classroom, they can hire that person,” she said.Rural schools sometimes have difficulty finding teachers, and the permits would give administrators another option, Baker said.Though people with career specialist permits would be certified to teach anywhere in the state, hiring them will be entirely up to individual school districts, Baker said.“If they want only to hire teachers who have gone the traditional route with an education degree, they can absolutely do so,” she said.Meredith said the ISTA will urge parents to tell administrators not to hire people with career specialist permits.She is a mother, and her first two children were prone to ear infections. When she had her third child, her doctor recommended she buy an otoscope, a medical device used to look into the ears.She purchased one, and now she knows a decent amount about ear infections.“But I shouldn’t be a doctor,” she said. “There are more things I need to know about the ear and how the whole human body works, and it’s likewise with teaching.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Funding cuts from federal and local governments have left rural Indiana schools with room for improvement.The Rural Schools and Community Trust, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to schools in rural areas, released its annual “Why Rural Matters” report May 19.The report is the seventh in a biennial series analyzing the conditions in rural school districts in the United States.“Our point overall in the study is that after more than a decade of reporting on these issues, very little has changed,” said Robert Mahaffey, director of marketing and communications for RSCT.Mahaffey said many of the states that need to make the most improvements to their rural schools have been at the top of the RSCT’s list for years.Mississippi is at the top this year, and it was also on top in 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2012.“That’s alarming,” Mahaffey said.The group gave Indiana rural schools a priority ranking of 19, which means Indiana rural schools are more in need of improvements than districts in 31 other states.“We have been asked year after year to do more and produce more with less money,” said Scott Turney, executive director of the Indiana Small and Rural Schools Association.Turney said since high levels of poverty aren’t as frequent in rural school districts as they are in urban and suburban settings, his school districts have to work a little harder to find funding and grants that will work for them.Almost 10 million students attend schools in rural districts nationally, which is about 20 percent of the total public school enrollment in the U.S.Turney estimates the average enrollment of Indiana rural school districts to be about 1,300 students.The RSCT report said the state of Indiana spends $5,111 to educate one student.Compared to almost $8,000 being spent per student in other states, it’s one of the lowest rates in the country.Turney said that while rural school districts continue to struggle, every school district in Indiana has funding issues. He points to the $300-million cut in education funding that then-Gov. Mitch Daniels announced in 2009.“As you trickle away money, you affect personnel and those kinds of things,” Turney said. School districts struggle to attract the best and brightest teachers because they can’t afford to pay teachers at a competitive rate.The reports released by the RSCT aim to capture the attention of policymakers in Washington, D.C., where the organization is headquartered. Mahaffey said he hopes legislators from those states that need to make improvements will finally pay attention with this report.“Our endgame is that states that need to pay more attention will spur on to do that,” he said.Turney said the RSCT has worked very hard to raise awareness for the issues rural schools face.But while he said he thinks the government in Washington has noticed there is a problem, nothing has been done yet to solve it.Turney said his schools will need to continue to find new ways of dealing with cuts.“We’ve reached a point now where cuts are having a negative impact on what we are able to do for students,” Turney said. “You can only trim so many things.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Glenda Ritz, Indiana superintendent of public instruction, and the Indiana Department of Education announced the expansion of the state’s Migrant Education Program May 12.Seven new regional education centers have been unveiled, including one in Columbus, Ind.The Migrant Education Program was put in place by the No Child Left Behind Act and aims to identify and serve 100 percent of migrant children ages 3 to 21.While immigrants refers to people who legally move to a new country, migrants forgo legal formalities when crossing national borders.“My department is committed to providing schools and communities with the resources they need to ensure that all children receive an equitable and high-quality education,” Ritz said in a press release.The Indiana DOE claimed federal grant money in order to fund the efforts. The program divides the state into six regions. Region 5 includes Columbus and Bloomington, as well as 24 other counties in southeast Indiana.Migrant families who qualify for the program receive special services like tutoring, health care checkups and individual meetings with program coordinators. Families who have traveled from warmer climates are often supplied with warm clothing.“We provide everything necessary for the kids to excel,” said Judith Grant, an identification and recruitment field specialist for region 5.Grant said she hasn’t found any kids in Bloomington that qualify for the program, but the Columbus center has about 15 students who are bused to Columbus from as far north as Shelbyville, Ind., and as far south as Seymour, Ind. Even though it covers a larger area, region 5 has fewer people than other regions, she said.The Columbus center was added to an English as a Second Language education program in the Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation. Debbie Thomas, director of English language learners for BCSC, is regional director of the program.Thomas said each student in the program will receive an iPad that will be theirs to keep, even if they move away from the area. The iPads will be loaded with books selected for each student’s reading level.Thomas said the iPads will be useful since migrants travel so often.“We can track them as they go from one location to another,” she said.School districts in each county send out work surveys to determine whether or not migrant families qualify for the services.Grant recruits children who have moved from one school district to another in the past three years so that their guardian could find work in agriculture. She visits the homes of families who might qualify to review their cases.Thomas said they had no children in the program at the beginning of the year, but now 15 kids are involved. She said she expects to find more in August when school districts send out work surveys.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>After her 44-minute long preparation period, Mrs. Marvin walks outside her classroom at the end of the hall and watches the flood of students pass by.One thing is always on her mind as she stands by her door.“I think about what kind of day the students are having,” Mrs. Marvin says.Right before the bell rings for third period, the students perform a ritual. One by one, and sometimes two by two, they file into the classroom, pick up notebooks, slide into seats, place jumbo-sized binders on top of their desks and prepare to learn. Once the bell beckons, a petite blonde woman with glasses at the tip of her nose walks from outside her classroom door and steps into what has been her arena, her niche, her warzone for the past 41 years — the classroom. Studies show the transition from sixth grade to middle school can be the toughest one a child faces, but Patricia Marvin is an expert at handling the distracted, puberty-stricken, disorganized children. She’s been teaching English to seventh and eighth graders at Tri-North Middle School since some of her students’ parents were their age. This year, Mrs. Marvin is one of 41 teachers in the Monroe County Community School Corporation who are retiring. She’s not worn out. As a matter of fact, 63-year-old Mrs. Marvin wouldn’t mind teaching a few more years. But 41 years of teaching, including 30 years at Tri-North, is enough for her. She has four grandchildren, with two more on the way, and she wants to be able to spoil them with her husband while she’s still alive. Her parents weren’t granted that luck with her children.Year after year, Mrs. Marvin has been on a seemingly eternal mission to prepare her middle school students for the dog-eat-dog world that is high school, the next chapter of their life.When Mrs. Marvin was in seventh grade, she studied ballet under world-renowned professional ballet dancers like Andre Eglevsky. She was well on her way to becoming a professional ballet dancer in New York. She danced at the Joffrey Ballet dance company. Her dreams to live out her passion for dancing came to a halt after a sudden injury the summer following her high school graduation. The doctor told her it would take at least three years for her to heal. At 18 years old, Mrs. Marvin realized she would be missing out on the most crucial time for a professional dancer. The Long Island native, who had moved with her parents to Lafayette between her freshman and sophomore year of high school, decided to stay in Lafayette and attend Purdue University. While at Purdue, she taught ballet at the YMCA, worked for a horticulture professor and wrote for the Purdue Exponent for two years. She still did not know what she wanted to do after college. Her mother encouraged her to get a teaching degree, just in case. “I said, ‘I don’t want to teach,’” Mrs. Marvin said. “My mother said, ‘Well, just do it for me.’ I said, ‘All right,’ so I got my education classes done and I student taught. I fell in love with it.” After graduation, she taught high school in Monon, Ind., for four-and-a-half years. She said it was the hardest period of her teaching career because the students were so far behind. After teaching there and getting married to a teacher who taught fourth grade at the school, Mrs. Marvin taught at North Newton High School in Morocco, Ind., for two-and-a-half years. She then took a six-year break from teaching to take care of her four children at home before transitioning to Tri-North Middle School, where she has taught for 30 years. “I got a job here teaching seventh and eighth grade thinking I’ll get a job in high school because I always thought I wanted to be a high school teacher,” Mrs. Marvin said. “I never wanted to leave middle school.”*** On another day, in another seventh-grade class, the students are louder than usual, especially the boys. Mrs. Marvin said it was because of all the candy and sugar the students had during Easter.As soon as the bell rings, one student shushes his peers and the room full of seventh graders gets a little quieter. Mrs. Marvin walks in. Sam raises his hand.“I think I forgot my brain at my house. I don’t know if I can do this.”Mrs. Marvin walks toward the student and lifts up a section of his hair. “Well, I don’t see any holes,” Mrs. Marvin says as she examines his head.“No?” Sam says.She walks back to the center of the classroom.“OK! Notebook! Get that notebook open, we are going to talk about ‘Lawn Boy.’”Last week, the students were learning about inferences. This week, they are learning about themes and are reading chapter 13 from “Lawn Boy” by Gary Paulsen. As Mrs. Marvin reads, she stops every so often to make sure the students understand the difficult words.“‘Expertise,’ what does that word mean?” Mrs. Marvin asks. “Drew?” “What you’re an expert at,” Drew said. The students listen to Mrs. Marvin read the rest of the story attentively as she walks back and forth, looking at the students from time to time. After she finishes reading the chapter all the way through, she tells her seventh graders to open their notebooks and make inferences about what will happen in the next chapter.*** Mrs. Marvin’s teaching career at MCCSC began in 1984, the same year that Tri-North became a middle school in MCCSC. Throughout the time span of three decades, some things have changed and some have stayed the same. She still sees kids that don’t pay attention and kids that don’t bring their materials. “That frustrates me a little bit, but it’s annoyed me for the past 41 years,” Mrs. Marvin said.But kids didn’t have cell phones in the 1980s. Mrs. Marvin said the advances in technology have caused students’ focus to shift. “I think kids are so used to instant gratification,” Mrs. Marvin said. “For example, an instant response to a text message, or an instant score on a video game or instant information over the Internet. They’re not willing to wait, and they’re not willing to take time to work through things like the way people used to when they had to no matter what the subject is.” Years ago, Mrs. Marvin said, there wasn’t collaborative networking between teachers. Now, Mrs. Marvin loves the meetings with her co-workers in the morning. The two classrooms to the left of Mrs. Marvin’s belong to two other English teachers, Lisa Riggins and Myra Farmer. During Mrs. Riggins’ and Mrs. Farmer’s prep period, they talk in Mrs. Riggins’ classroom. Mrs. Marvin was one of the people that hired Mrs. Riggins in 1984.“She’s somebody who’s pumped up, ready to do whatever we need to have done or she’s ready to try new things,” Mrs. Riggins said.They call themselves the “Three Musketeers” because of the tight-knit community they established together throughout the years. They know each other’s children. They spend time outside of the school together. “We understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses and celebrations,” Riggins said. “It’s not just about coming to work. We’re a family here.” Both Mrs. Riggins and Mrs. Farmer believe there will be a void when Mrs. Marvin leaves. “In this profession, no one can just slip in,” Mrs. Farmer said. “We all know we’re replaceable, but replaceable doesn’t mean the same quality.” All three of the English teachers said there are many misconceptions about their lives as teachers. “That we work 180 days a year,” Mrs. Farmer said. Mrs. Marvin prepares during the summer.“That we leave at 2:30 in the afternoon,” Mrs. Farmer said. Mrs. Marvin has never left earlier than 4 p.m. and sometimes stays at school until 6 p.m. to finish grading papers and work on lesson plans.“That we check in and check out everyday,” Mrs. Farmer said. “That this is a job, not a profession.”Mrs. Marvin wakes up at 4:45 a.m. to start her day and leaves around 6:30 to prepare for school.“Nowadays, change is rapid fire,” Mrs. Farmer said. “It’s a reaction to symptoms.”Mrs. Farmer referred to the evolving policy actions that have been enacted since she, Mrs. Riggins and Mrs. Marvin started teaching. With the increasing reliance of standardized testing being used to assess, reward and penalize those in the classroom and in schools, all three teachers feel like there isn’t enough beneficial and thorough assessment from the federal and state government. “I don’t remember when I first started teaching people on the outside telling you how to do your job as much, like legislatures,” Mrs. Marvin said. “We are legislated so much today.”The other English teachers look at Mrs. Marvin’s retirement as the beginning of the end of an era in the ever-evolving education reform. During the past 13 years, national education initiatives, like the No Child Left Behind Act and the Common Core State Standards, have drastically changed the way the nation assesses school, teacher and student performance. In 2011, then-Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels signed legislation that included the implementation and regulation of charter schools, turnaround schools, private school vouchers and teacher evaluations. In the past few months, Indiana became the first state to drop out of Common Core and released similar academic standards. This year was the first time the Indiana Department of Education released the new, standardized teacher evaluations, which rates teachers from highly effective to ineffective. The ratings are tied to when teachers can get raises. After the results came in, many people questioned the validity of the teacher evaluation results. According to the data provided by the Indiana Department of Education, 88 percent of teachers and administrators were assessed as being effective or highly effective in the classroom. About 2 percent needed improvement and less than half a percent were seen as ineffective teachers. Some schools with “D” and “F” ratings didn’t have educators with a rating less than effective. MCCSC did not offer its information this year because of a contract agreement with teachers that ends after the 2014-15 school year. These teachers will be given fewer salary benefits once this new teacher evaluation initiative is enacted. “After that time, there will be a base salary and then the only way you can get a raise will be based on this new teacher evaluation system that the state is putting in place,” Mrs. Marvin said. “There are people that we have talked to in other corporations that are already under it that say even if you are deemed highly effective, depending on how much your corporation has, it could be just $250.”Mrs. Marvin said she is concerned about the ratings not for herself, but for teachers coming after her.“It’s kind of a good time for me to get out,” Mrs. Marvin said. “Not because I’m worried about where I’ll be rated. I think I’ll be fine. It’s going to be very hard to keep good young teachers in the profession.”Mrs. Marvin doesn’t think there is anything wrong with standardized testing in itself. The problem, Mrs. Marvin said, lies in the high-stakes value in standardized testing. “If that one test is so important and the kid has the flu that week, they’re not going to do that well. They need to look more at how (students) are really doing in the classroom.” Teacher and student assessment needs to be more realistic, Mrs. Marvin said. She suggested that asking students to write in descriptive language would be a better way to assess what they are learning, instead of multiple choice questions.“When in life, unless you become an editor, are you going be asked to pick adjectives and adverbs out of a sentence?” she said. “That’s something kids ask me all the time. And that’s a very good point.” *** Mrs. Marvin often dreams of her students at night. She hopes for the best for them.In one corner of her classroom, she has a board filled with post-it notes with inspirational messages, written by her eighth graders to the incoming class. There are post-it notes that say, “Don’t procrastinate” and “Always pay attention in class.” Two years ago, one of her students, Schuyler Barnes, handed her a note he got from his mother, Hannah Bolte.A line from the note read, “May your dreams come true — you have the ability to make that happen!”“It was a note that I had written to her when she was leaving eighth grade just telling her that I felt that she was going to be really successful,” Mrs. Marvin said. “It was kind of an inspirational thing.” Mrs. Marvin said she wrote it because she saw that Bolte was going through a tough time. Still, she is surprised that she kept it for so long. The date on the note says June 4, 1990 — 24 years ago. “It bought tears to my eyes,” Mrs. Marvin said as she recalled the time she saw the note for the first time in more than 20 years.It had a lasting effect on 37-year-old Bolte, who had trouble in English class.“It provided me self-esteem that carried all throughout high school and my career,” Bolte said.Bolte, a master’s graduate student and a professor, now works as an editor in her own independent sole proprietorship for university academic writing services. She said she hopes to inspire her students like Mrs. Marvin inspired her.“It really makes a difference to have an advocate, someone who you regularly interact with who enforces that you’re good enough,” Bolte said. “That makes all the difference.” *** After the bell rings, Mrs. Marvin sighs. It’s still a challenge to teach 150 students after all these years.At the end of the day, at the end of her career, she still wonders about the effect she has on her students.“It just makes you feel good to know that they’re able to follow some of their dreams or what they think they’re going to do or what they wind up doing,” Mrs. Marvin said. “I would hope that people look at me as caring, because I care deeply about my students and my family. That’s pretty much been my life.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Wendy Tamborrino has been teaching fifth grade at Binford Elementary since 1996 and was recently awarded the Armstrong Teacher Educator Award from the IU School of Education. Awarded to nine teachers in the state, Tamborrino was the second Monroe County Community School Corporation teacher in a row to receive this award.“I think that that speaks volumes for the quality of teachers in MCCSC,” Tamborrino said.She said she is both humbled and honored to receive the award and said it is nice her and other teachers’ work is being recognized. Tamborrino said she admires the work ethic and expertise at Binford.“There are so many teachers in Binford and in the school district who could be in the same position as I am,” she said. “It just happened to be my lucky day, I guess.”Besides her students, Tamborrino has a 5-year-old son, Nicholas, a 7-year-old daughter, Gabriella, and a 10-year-old son, Anthony, who is in her class at Binford. Tamborrino said it has been a really powerful experience being able to teach her son. She has been able to see his work habits, his strengths and weaknesses.“I think it’s given me a lot of information so that when he moves onto middle school and I don’t have so much interaction with him, I know his work habits,” she said. “I know what he needs. I can kind of predict ahead of time where there might be a problem, and we can work through it and give him the support that he needs.”Tamborrino’s son calls her “Mom” in class, but she said none of the other children seem to mind. She said her classroom has a family feel.“They’re my kids,” she said. “Anthony’s biologically mine, but these kids are my kids.”Tamborrino said she enjoys teaching fifth grade because the kids are old enough to express their opinions and know right and wrong, but they’re still young enough to need some guidance and support.She said their thinking is more worldly than in younger grades, and the students realize they can make a difference in the world. This year, the class has talked about being an “upstander” instead of a bystander, and the kids have been good about stepping forward and reporting bullying, she said.Tamborrino said she was inspired to be a teacher because of her mother, who was a music teacher. She loved watching her mother make lesson plans, find fun music and teach kids in creative ways.“I appreciated the way that she moved outside the box, and that said to me that I want to do something like that — and watching my friends enjoy music from my mom’s teaching, I said I want kids to feel the same way, too,” she said. Tamborrino said she has also been inspired by her colleagues at Binford, especially her fellow fifth-grade teachers. She said the group productively pushes one another to do better each day.“We’re constantly sharing information, talking about kids, what works, what instructional strategies are most effective,” she said. “We’ve really had a sense that the kids who we teach here at Binford are all of our kids, and it’s all of our responsibility. We’re all doing this together, it’s a collaborative culture, and I think that’s what pushes us as professionals to become even better is that collaboration.”Teachers are more than just teachers, she said. They are also caregivers, nurses and coaches.“It’s definitely a job where you have many hats to wear,” she said.The Armstrong Teacher Educator Award recognizes educator excellence and also provides funding to teachers so they can work on their own professional development projects.Tamborrino said she is looking forward to the opportunity to work with other Armstrong teachers, pre-service teachers and to collaborate with IU.“I just really look forward to the year ahead and trying some new, innovative things,” she said.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>About 83.9 percent of students passed the IREAD-3 test in the Monroe County Community School Corporation. Of all third graders in MCCSC, 756 students took the test, with 634 passing. Statewide, 85.58 percent of students passed, up from 85.28 percent the previous year. “These numbers show that year by year we have continued to see modest increases in our passage rate,” Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz said in an IDOE press release. “More importantly, they show that we are promoting a culture of literacy throughout our state. Moving forward, I will continue to promote literacy and reading throughout all of Indiana.”Out of 13 MCCSC elementary schools, Childs Elementary School scored the best, with a passing rate of 96.7 percent. Fairview Elementary School scored the lowest, with a passing rate of 68.6 percent. Templeton Elementary School had 90.9 percent of students pass the IREAD-3. Templeton Literacy Coach Kari Isaacson said this number also includes students who are learning English as a second language and students who are in special education classes and the Individualized Education Program. These students, whether they pass or not, are exempt from having to repeat third grade. The students who didn’t pass will attend summer school, but Isaacson said the passing rate for these students is outstanding. Students who don’t pass the test at the end of the seven-week summer school session will have to repeat third grade, as required by Indiana state law. Isaacson said there are many different approaches Templeton takes to help kids stay on track. There are both Title I teachers and preventionists who go into classrooms to work with small groups, and Issacson said they also pull some of these kids out of classrooms to work with them. At least twice a year, students choose a book to take home and participate in activities such as bookmark making, Isaacson said. As a literacy coach, Isaacson works with teachers on creating specific plans for each student who is not reading at grade level. She performs diagnostic tests to help pinpoint what each student needs to do to grow their reading abilities. She also works with teachers on research-based strategies for teaching reading and teaches some of the students who are reading more than one year behind their grade level. Isaacson said reading helps students think for themselves and problem solve, and it is a quality-of-life skill. “You can go anywhere in the world through a book,” she said.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Duke Energy has recently given the Foundation of Monroe County Community Schools $27,500 to fund the Real Men Read program for the next two school years in the Monroe County Community School Corporation.The program is an early childhood literacy program that works with children in kindergarten. The program will pair a male mentor with each kindergarten classroom in MCCSC.Mentors will be in the same classrooms once a month for five months starting in the fall. The different months will probably be spread throughout the school year, said Cyrilla Helm, executive director of FMCCS. The mentors will read a book with the children and then discuss it with them. Each child will also receive a copy of the book to take home. Helm said there has been a large push in MCCSC for early childhood literacy. She said it is important to make sure children are reading at grade level by third grade. After third grade, they stop learning to read and start reading to learn, Helm said. If they don’t know how to read, students won’t do well in other subjects, such as math or science.Helm said the purpose of the program is to bring a male role model to classrooms so the students can see that adults value education. “It’s bringing the community into the schools,” Helm said. The book the children receive to take home will help build their home libraries and encourage them to read outside of school, Helm said. The children will talk about the book with the mentors, and Helm said he hopes the children might be able to participate in the same activity with their parents or siblings at home. Helm said the program is looking for men who have a passion for reading and who like children.The program can help students see that reading aids in learning and in getting better jobs. Any man who is interested can become a mentor, though he must pass a background check. Duke Energy South Central Indiana District Manager Bruce Calloway said the books not only help the children to gain literacy skills, but they also contain life lessons, such as good nutrition and financial management. Calloway said the program gives the students a positive male role model — something some of them might not have in their lives. Calloway also participated in the program as a mentor at North Lawrence Community Schools in Bedford, Ind., and he said the students would give him hugs and looked forward to having him in the classroom. “It was very, very rewarding,” Calloway said. “We’re very excited about the potential of this. It’s just another way to support education.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Indiana State Board of Education member Tony Walker has released a statement of his opinions about the new proposed Indiana academic standards. The Indiana Education Roundtable endorsed the proposed standards April 21 at its meeting, despite protests from some in attendance. The Indiana State Board of Education will vote on the final draft of the standards April 28. Walker said he will vote to approve the standards if they are coupled with sound curricula and good teaching.He said he believes the standards meet the definition of College and Career Readiness as outlined by Indiana Public Law 31-2014. College and Career Readiness is defined as “the standards that a high school graduate must meet to obtain the requisite knowledge and skill to transition without remediation to postsecondary education or training and ultimately into a sustainable career.”Purdue University has the third-largest population of foreign students in the U.S. at 9,509, according to the Institute of International Education’s 2013 Open Door Report. IU-Bloomington has the 13th-largest population of foreign students at 6,547.Walker still has concerns, though, about whether the standards are competitive with international academic benchmarks. According to the statement, Jim Milgram, professor of mathematics at Stanford University, and professor Sandra Stotsky of the University of Arkansas, said the math and English standards, respectively, are not at the level they could be. According to the Programme for International Student Assessment, the U.S. ranks 35th in the world in math proficiency and 24th in the world in reading proficiency. “Our academic competiveness internationally has real economic impact in higher education and in hiring in Indiana,” Walker said in the statement. “International students and foreign workers are aggressively competing in Indiana for seats at our flagship universities and for our value-added jobs. The academic expectations must reflect this reality.”Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz and Gov. Mike Pence motioned and seconded, respectively, to endorse the standards at the Roundtable meeting. After the endorsement, Pence read a statement, which was met with boos from some in the crowd. “As the first state to withdraw from Common Core, Indiana had a unique responsibility to create new, high standards in an open and serious process that would serve our children and strengthen our school,” Pence said in the statement. “I have long believed that education is a state and local function, and that decisions about our schools should be made closest to the parents and communities that depend upon them. “After a careful review of the process and the outcome, I believe Indiana has accomplished this task and I join the Education Roundtable in forwarding these new Indiana academic standards to the State Board of Education for approval.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The Indiana Department of Education recently released the results of the Indiana Reading Evaluation and Determination test for 2014. The IREAD-3 test measures students’ reading abilities through third grade. Since 2011, the number of Indiana third graders passing the IREAD-3 test has increased 5 percent. In 2011, 80 percent of Indiana students passed the test, compared to 85 percent in 2014.In 2013, 94.9 percent of students in the Monroe County Community School Corporation passed the IREAD-3 test. A total of 766 students took the test, with 727 passing. Childs Elementary performed best in 2013, with 100 percent of the 66 students who took the test passing. Fairview Elementary performed the worst, with 83.7 percent of the 49 students who took the test passing. All other elementary schools had at least 91.2 percent of participating students pass the test. Information for school and corporation passing rates for 2014 will be available later this month. “Today’s numbers are another sign of the great work that is happening in our schools every day,” Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz said in a press release. “These numbers show that year by year, we have continued to see modest increases in our passage rate. More importantly, they show that we are promoting a culture of literacy throughout our state. “Moving forward, I will continue to promote literacy and reading throughout all of Indiana.”Sydney Murray
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents is working with Standard for Success, an online evaluation and management software, to observe and evaluate Indiana teachers.The Indiana Association of School Principals and more than 375 schools throughout the nation are using technology to make teacher evaluations more streamlined and efficient, according to a press release. This announcement comes a few weeks after the Indiana Department of Education released teacher evaluation grades for the first time ever. The IDOE evaluations placed teachers in four categories from highly effective to ineffective. More than 87 percent of teachers in Indiana received a rating of highly effective or effective.Unlike the IDOE evaluations, which are mandatory, the Standard for Success software is simply a tool schools can choose to use if they feel it will help them better evaluate teachers.“The Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents is thrilled about this high-quality evaluation tool and is urging district administrators to consider utilizing this as they conduct observations and evaluations of building administrators and teachers,” IAPSS Executive Director JT Coopman said in a press release.More than 375 schools in more than 80 school districts nationwide use the program, according to the release.Standard for Success lists 74 school corporations and schools from Indiana on its website that use its service. Monroe County Community School Corporation is not one of them.“The IAPSS Board of Directors and staff spent a significant amount of time vetting Standard For Success and other evaluation platforms and are confident that SFS provides a nice, cost-effective platform for schools to complete their teacher/employee evaluations that will enhance performance,” Coopman said in the release.The Standard for Success software is completely mobile and can be accessed by a tablet or laptop. “We’re extremely honored to earn the opportunity to work with the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents and value their input along with the Indiana Association of School Principals, who are highly regarded as two of Indiana’s premier leadership organizations,” Todd Whitlock, chief executive officer of Standard for Success, said in the release. “As educators ourselves, we understand the very large and varied responsibilities of administrators and teachers. Working with the educational leadership associations allows us to continue to adapt the product to meet the schools’ needs.”Sydney Murray
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>About 200 protesters gathered in the Indiana Statehouse Monday to rally against new proposed academic standards for Indiana. The Indiana Education Roundtable endorsed the proposed Indiana Academic Standards, sending them to the State Board of Education, which will vote on the standards April 28. The Roundtable met Monday to discuss new proposed Indiana Academic Standards. Before the meeting, a congregation of parents, children and educators protested the standards’ adoption in the statehouse’s South Atrium. Protesters said the standards too closely resemble the Common Core State Standards that Indiana is trying to leave behind. Participants wore buttons that read “no to common core” and held signs with phrases such as “vote no on the 3rd draft.”Hillsdale College Professor Terrence Moore was the rally’s keynote speaker. He said he does not believe Indiana politicians are concerned about Hoosier children’s minds and souls, unlike the protesters.Moore said the most recent draft of the new standards, released April 15, was just the Common Core Standards warmed over. If the standards were turned into him as a college paper, he said he would give it an F and write “plagiarism” across the top. “I find the same old mistakes that are throughout the standards,” Moore said. Moore said the proposed standards don’t embrace phonics and cannot be easily understood by anyone who is not heavily involved in education. He said the standards use words, such as “complexity,” but then don’t elaborate on what it means. “They are agnostic on what constitutes good reading and good literature,” Moore said. Students will receive only snippets of literature instead of whole stories, Moore said. If Indiana residents want a curriculum that is academic, rigorous and inspiring, he said, Indiana needs to go back to books with stories that are important for children’s lives. Rep. Rhonda Rhoads, R-Corydon, and Christopher Judy, a candidate for state representative in the 83rd District, also made brief appearances at the rally. Judy said he believes education works best at the local level. The movement was also prevalent on social media with #stopcommoncore and #nocommoncorerebrand used on Twitter. Stephanie Engelman, who has three children in school, attended the rally because she does not believe the federal government should be deciding what Indiana children should be learning. She said the new standards are a sloppy rewrite of the Common Core Standards. After the rally, attendees walked across the street to attend the Education Roundtable meeting. Not everyone could fit into the room, and many people had to stand or watch a live stream in another room. At the end of the Education Roundtable meeting, Gov. Mike Pence and Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz endorsed the standards, to the protestors’ dismay. “As a teacher, I have always trusted Indiana educators to design the best standards for our students,” Ritz said in a press release. “They have always been mindful of the changes needed to meet the future needs of our children. Academic standards are about what our children need to know and be able to do.”Pence read a statement outlining his approval of the new standards and said he believes the standards were created the “Indiana way,” written by Hoosiers for Hoosiers. The statement was met with laughter, booing and shouts of “No!” from some in attendance. In his speech at the rally, Moore said the people of Indiana will prove themselves stupid by thinking these new standards aren’t the same as Common Core. “We have to reclaim the great stories,” Moore said. “We have to reclaim the minds and hearts of our young people.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Jobs for America’s Graduates, a national organization that works to keep students in school, has seen an increasing number of members in Indiana. Since 2013, Gov. Mike Pence said in a tweet, JAG in Indiana has seen the largest growth percentage in the shortest period of time in the history of the organization. Joseph Frank, spokesperson for the Indiana Department of Workforce Development, said the Indiana chapter of JAG is now the largest chapter in the nation. JAG provides support services to keep students from dropping out. Frank said students in JAG learn employable skills and get involved with philanthropy work.Frank said JAG targets the most at-risk students in school and helps them move on to post-secondary education and, eventually, to well-paying jobs. At-risk students could be students who have discipline problems or who have experienced homelessness, for example.Jim Koeninger, executive vice president of JAG, said the organization began in Delaware in 1979 and is now found in 31 states. During the 2014-15 school year, Koeninger said, JAG will serve its one-millionth student. If students are unable to get a high school diploma, Koeninger said, there is a chance they will make less money and their lifestyle will not live up to their expectations. Society will probably have to support them in different ways because it might be difficult for them to find jobs, he said. After students graduate from high school, JAG follows them for one year. Koeninger said the program would like to follow students for longer than one year, but it is too expensive.Forty-four percent of JAG students that graduated high school in 2013 went on to enroll in college. Koeninger said Indiana has an extensive support system in place that is one of the best in the country. Frank said the Indiana JAG chapter currently has 91 percent of their students graduate from high school. Nationally, 94 percent of JAG participants graduate from high school.The Indiana Department of Education recently released 2013 graduation rate data for high schools in Indiana. Statewide, 88.6 percent of students graduated from high school.In the Monroe County Community School Corporation, 94 percent of high school students graduated. Indiana has seen success with the JAG program because Pence recognizes the importance of helping young people make good decisions, Koeninger said. He said the leadership in Indiana seems to want to help young people have a good start in their careers.“We think it’s a wonderful program that gives kids a chance to be successful and graduate regardless of their situation,” Frank said. JAG started in Indiana in 2006 at just a few Indiana schools. The program now currently services 6,000 students at 106 different programs in every Indiana region. “It really has blossomed into a great state-wide program,” Frank said.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The Indiana State Board of Education and the Indiana Department of Education released the new proposed Indiana Academic Standards Tuesday.The standards will be presented to the Indiana Education Roundtable April 21 and go to the State Board for final approval April 28.“As the first state to withdraw from Common Core, Indiana had a unique responsibility to create new, high standards in an open and serious process that would serve our children and strengthen our schools,” Gov. Mike Pence said in a press release.According to the release, more than 2,000 Indiana citizens, including teachers, administrators and parents, helped in some way to shape the standards, including through public input online.More than 100 Indiana teachers were included in the process of drafting the standards.“They, along with experts in higher education and business, spent more than 6,000 hours to develop standards that will be both unique to Indiana and will prepare our students for success in college and the workplace,” Pence said in the release. The standards will be reviewed next by the Education Roundtable and the State Board of Education to make sure they are of high quality and meet Pence’s objectives. “Because of the hard work of our educators and parents, Indiana is leading the way on state academic standards that will challenge our students, guide our teachers and give parents the confidence that our Indiana standards reflect the high expectations Hoosiers have for all our schools,” Pence said in the release.More information about the standards can be found at doe.in.gov/achievement/standards.Sydney Murray
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz announced today Indiana’s Four Star Schools for the 2012-13 school year. To reach the designation of being a Four Star School, a school must be in the top 25th percentile of schools in three ISTEP-based categories. More than 300 schools in Indiana were named Four Star Schools.“I am honored to name these schools as our Four Star Schools for this year,” Ritz said in a press release. “Winning this award required excellent work by teachers, administrators, students and parents throughout the year, and on behalf of the entire Indiana Department of Education, I send them my sincere congratulations.” Five schools in the Monroe County Community School Corporation received this honor — Binford and University elementary schools, Tri-North and Jackson Creek middle schools and Bloomington High School South. Childs and Lakeview elementary schools and Tri-North and Jackson Creek middle schools received Four Star designations for the 2011-12 school year. In 2009-10 and 2010-11, three MCCSC schools were named Four Star Schools. Edgewood High School in the Richland-Bean Blossom Community School Corporation was also named a Four Star School for the 2012-13 school year. The first time the Four Star designations were given to schools was during the 2009-10 school year. Sydney Murray
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The Monroe County Community School Corporation has released a guide for families to learn about summer opportunities available for their children. The guide, which features more than 50 pages of information about summer activities, can be accessed online. Girls Inc. offers both Camp Red Fox and a summer volleyball season for girls. Lucy Berger, director of operations, said Girls Inc. has been working with girls in Monroe County since 1975. Berger said Girls Inc. wants to inspire girls in Bloomington by offering activities and after school programs, such as intramural sports. Berger said the organization serves girls of all backgrounds, not just the underprivileged.Girls must be members of Girls Inc. to participate in programs, Berger said. About 550 girls in Monroe County are members of Girls Inc. Summer camps give children something to do when they are not in school, Berger said. “We provide a safe, girl-friendly environment in the summertime,” Berger said. She said the camp includes activities such as hiking and field trips to IU and Indianapolis. Each week of the camp has a different theme. Girls ages 12 and older who participate in the Red Fox Camp also have the opportunity to participate in science activities. They will have the opportunity to travel to Marble Hill Farm in southern Monroe County to learn about animals and the environment. Berger said girls about 12 years old are less likely to participate in activities seen as unfeminine and start to shy away from the fields of science and math. Berger said the camps give girls an opportunity to get their hands dirty — both literally and metaphorically. The Bloomington Boys and Girls Club also offers summer events for kids at their Lincoln Street center. Audrey Hall-Pine is the director of Camp Rock. Two other programs, one full-day and one half-day, are also offered at the Lincoln Street center. Hall-Pine said these programs give children the opportunity to interact with their peers and gain exposure to positive adult role models. Hall-Pine said the mission of the Boys and Girls Club is to help all kids reach their full potential and become caring citizens. For kids participating in Camp Rock, most of the day is spent at Lake Lemon in Unionville. Students participate in fishing, boating, swimming, kayaking, archery and other sports. Hall-Pine said the camp takes kids to a calming, beautiful environment and gives them the chance to learn skills they otherwise might not be able to. Camp Rock is accredited by the American Camp Association. Hall-Pine said she likes that the camp helps kids develop their character and puts them in an environment where they can take risks and make mistakes. Twenty-four new spots will be added to the camp this year so more children can participate. Hall-Pine said she thinks the community feels the same way about the camp as she does. “We feel strongly that we provide a high-quality experience,” Hall-Pine said. Some other organizations that offer programs for children are IU’s School of Informatics and Computing, Ivy Tech Community College, Bradford Woods and WonderLab Museum of Science, Health and Technology. Those interested in summer programs can find more information at mccsc.edu/summer2014.