BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog

Home /
BoardBuzz

BoardBuzz

May 8, 2008

Facebook commits to online safety

T+L: Smarter Connections for 21st Century Learners

This morning BoardBuzz read about the scoop from TechCrunch:

The Attorney General of Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, is about to make an announcement at noon ET that he and the attorneys general from 48 other states have negotiated a deal with Facebook to implement new safety and privacy rules, according to sources with knowledge of the deal. Facebook will be making its own announcement later on today.

And lo’ and behold, the world's 2nd largest social networking site did announce their commitment to working with the attorneys general of 49 states and the District of Columbia to improve the safety of underage users. This development mirrors an agreement those same 49 states made with MySpace last January. Texas alone has not endorsed these agreements. Texas officials want to set even higher standards and see faster response times to identity verification.

Facebook officials also announced that many safety improvements have already been enacted and others are in the works. In the deal, the social network agreed to develop age verification technology, protect minors from inappropriate contact and content, restrict the ability for people to change their ages on the site, monitor the site for harassment, and remove inappropriate content as stated in its Terms of Service.

"Building a safe and trusted online experience has been part of Facebook from its outset," said Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly in a statement. "We are proud to join 49 states and the District of Columbia in affirming our commitment to these principles and to continue improving our technology and policy solutions to keep kids safer on Facebook. The Attorneys General have shown great leadership in helping to address the critical issue of Internet safety and we commend them for continuing to set high standards for all players in the online arena."

Facebook even reaffirmed its participation in the Internet Safety Task Force, which came about through MySpace's earlier agreement and focuses on identifying effective online safety tools and technologies. Moreover, Facebook has agreed to make third-party developers and advertisers adhere to its safety and privacy rules.

"Social networks that encourage kids to come to their sites have a responsibility to keep those kids safe," said North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper in a statement. "We've now gotten the two largest social networking sites to agree to take significant steps to protect children from predators and pornography."

BoardBuzz applauds Facebook for recognizing their responsibility to keep kids safe online. We expect the platform will become more secure as a whole, and all users will benefit from these new standards. For more about online social networking, be sure to check out NSBA's Creating and Connecting report.

May 8, 2008

Stop the confusion!

If you read Education Week's article on Value-Added measures you are probably more than a little confused. For those of you who don't know, Value-Added measures are statistical techniques that are used to isolate the effect schools, programs, or teachers have on the change in student achievement from one year to the next. How does BoardBuzz know this? Has BoardBuzz graduated with a PhD in statistics? No, BoardBuzz just read the Center for Public Education's, Measuring Student Growth: A guide to informed decision making.

The Education Week article focused on the ongoing debate about the accuracy and usefulness of Value-Added models particularly when using the models on high-stakes decisions on teachers such as whether to offer tenure or salaries increases. The article highlights many of the strengths and weaknesses of using Value-Added data to make such decision but is not very clear on how the data should be used. As BoardBuzz learned from the Center's report, Value-Added models are just one tool in making decisions particularly in evaluating teachers. Although not perfect measures, the information obtained from Value-Added models should be combined with other measures such as principal and peer evaluations to obtain a clearer understanding of how effective a teacher really is.

So if your district is considering using Value-Added or any other measure of student growth be sure to check out the Center for Public Education's Measuring Student Growth to find out more on how growth measures should be used.

Posted at 3:50 PM | Advocacy & Legislation | Link to this story | Send to a Friend | Comments (0)

Lunch Safety

High school is a stressful time for many students (anyone who's ever been to high school knows that). Everyone remembers the tests, the time limits between classes, keeping friends, extra-curricular activities, sleep deprivation, and the pressure of getting into a good college constantly on your shoulders. We often hear about drunk driving and teens and groups like MADD, SADD, and others have made excellent strides in reducing the number of drunk drivers that are teens.

BoardBuzz noticed this story in the New York Times about suburban Long Island teens leaving campus for lunch who were involved in fatal car accident while rushing back to school. This fall, two students at Smithtown West High School were killed and a thirteen year old in another car was also killed as the students hurried back to campus from lunch so that they wouldn't be late to their next class.

The Times staff did their homework and went around the country to find that other districts in other parts of the country grapple with an open high school campus. While some districts restrict movement during the day to the school grounds, others continue to let the students roam in the community. There are arguments on both sides of the issue and it's easy to recall the exhilaration of getting a driver's license and being able to have the freedom to roam, but if students are expected to behave accordingly during the school day, shouldn't they be limited to school? It's an issue school boards around the nation have to face and parental and student pressure can sway depending on the district, but nobody wants to read more stories like this one in the Times. Lunch just isn't worth dying for.

Posted at 2:46 PM | School Boards | Link to this story | Send to a Friend | Comments (0)

Right for the job!

BoardBuzz was intrigued by this story from Sherwood, Arkansas. When his school had an opening for computer network administrator, Jon Penn applied, interviewed and was offered the job.

The catch? He's eleven years old.

Once the school board heard his presentation on modernizing the computer system, the position was his!
"He calls it geek speak and he talks like that. I have to remind him to say it in English," explains Jon’s mom Paula Penn.

She’s the school librarian and says Jon's been a computer guru since age 3.

He does the job for free because he enjoys working on computers. And Penn said that so far his work has not affected his social life. He still enjoys recess with his friends. BoardBuzz is glad to see he has an appropriate work-life balance.

In addition to his plan for modernizing the system, Penn has installed a program to protect students from unsafe websites and helped to teach a class. Well-spoken and articulate, Penn has certainly demonstrated that he was the right person for the job!

As his mom points out, "Parenting is not always about giving information to your children. Sometimes it is about learning from them." BoardBuzz certainly agrees! What can you learn from the students in your district?

For more technology innovations, why not check out NSBA's T+L Conference -- registration opened this week for what promises to be one hot conference!

May 7, 2008

In celebration of truthiness

This year’s "Webby Person of the Year" goes to the "Greatest Living American," Stephen Colbert. He will be honored for his innovative and successful use of the internet to interact with fans of "The Colbert Report". The Webbys are presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (yes, this is the online equivalent of the Oscars, and no, BoardBuzz was not nominated this year.) to honor excellence in over 100+ website, interactive advertising, online film & video, and mobile categories, but let's get back to Stephen Colbert. Why him?

Truthiness, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Truthiness is a word that U.S. television comedian Stephen Colbert popularized in 2005 as a satirical term to describe things that a person claims to know intuitively or "from the gut" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. Colbert popularized this definition of the word during the inaugural (pilot) episode (October 17, 2005) of his satirical television program The Colbert Report, as the subject of a segment called "The Wørd". It was named Word of the Year for 2005 by the American Dialect Society and for 2006 by Merriam-Webster.

Colbert later challenged the "truthiness" of Wikipedia. On July 31, 2006, Colbert defined "Wikiality" (a portmanteau of "Wikipedia" and "reality") as "truth by consensus" (rather than fact), modeled after the approval-by-consensus format of Wikipedia. He ironically praised Wikipedia for following his philosophy of "truthiness," that intuition and consensus is a better reflection of reality than fact, while editing two articles on Wikipedia to his liking (Oregon and George Washington). As he stated, "if enough people believe something," it must be true.

Google bombing, courtesy of News.com:

Google bombing, in case you're unfamiliar, is a method of directing mass links that contain a particular line of text to a certain site, which then bolsters that site's ranking on Google when that line of text is used as a search query. The most famous Google bomb was probably "miserable failure," which directed to George W. Bush's presidential biography for quite some time before Google switched a few algorithms around in order to eliminate the verbal pranks.

Not to be upstaged by Bush, Colbert announced on his show last year his desire to be first in Google's search results for a phrase that is probably better left off BoardBuzz (Let's just say,it's a bit of Colbert's). Colbert fans, however, took it upon themselves to place him at the top of Google's hierarchy for the phrase "Greatest Living American" instead. They did so by posting comments all over the Web that contained his name and "Greatest Living American." Despite Google's professions that such antics no longer work, "Greatest Living American" now directs searchers to the official Colbert Report website.

And last but certainly not least, DonorsChoose.org:

DonorsChoose.org is dedicated to addressing the scarcity and inequitable distribution of learning materials and experiences in our public schools. We believe this inequity is rooted in the following factors:
Shortages of learning materials prevent thorough, engaging instruction;

Top-down distribution of materials stifles our best teachers and discourages them from developing targeted solutions for their students; and

Small, directed contributions have gone un-tapped as a source of funding. DonorsChoose.org will improve public education by engaging citizens in an online marketplace where teachers describe and individuals can fund specific student projects. We envision a nation where students in every community have the resources they need to learn.

Stephen Colbert was credited with raising more than $250,000 online for this charity. In the fall of 2007, Stephen Colbert filed for the Democratic primary in his native state, South Carolina. On "The Colbert Report," he asked his viewers to show their support for his presidential bid by donating to South Carolina classroom projects via DonorsChoose.org and raised over $66,000 for students in low-income communities! Colbert announced his presidential candidacy on his show, which prompted the "One Million Strong for Stephen T. Colbert" Facebook group to attract more than 78 members per minute in its first week. He later initiated a DonorsChoose Challenge which states, "do Senators Clinton and Obama have the keystones to do for the Keystone State what the Colbert Nation did for the Palmetto State? Let's find out." He challenged his viewers to participate in a "straw poll that makes a difference" by giving to projects in public school classrooms in Pennsylvania. Donors can choose to fund a classroom project "in honor of Hillary Clinton" or "in honor of Barack Obama." Colbert later appeared on NBC's Today to talk about the Challenge:

BoardBuzz congratulates Colbert for his philanthropic efforts, comedic antics, and community engagement—not necessarily in that order. And, yes, satire sells to young adults. For a full list of Webby winners click here and to vote for BoardBuzz in the only award for which we're nominated, click here.

Posted at 4:01 PM | Education Technology | Link to this story | Send to a Friend | Comments (1)

The Super Bowl of science

BoardBuzz was excited to see this story of some high school students who really know their stuff. This team of four high school students placed first in the National Science Bowl by correctly answering six graduate-level questions.

The event, sponsored by the Department of Energy, is a "competition among teams of high school students who attend science seminars and compete in a verbal forum to solve technical problems and answer questions in all branches of science and math." Like the spelling bee, but with science questions instead.

The winning team, from Santa Monica High School in California, beat out 66 other schools.

"They did not crack under pressure," said Coach Ingo Gaida, a science teacher at the school. "I'd been telling them all year long they had the potential to do this. This was the strongest team we've ever had."

The team began preparing for the bowl in September, and since January had been practicing daily in the fields of math, earth science, astronomy, biology, chemistry and geology. The level of difficulty of some questions in the final round was equivalent to graduate school, Gaida said.

The question that clinched the win: "For the Maclaurin series of the function e2x, what is the coefficient for the x4, in the simplest form?" Answer: 2/3.

"There were some close games, but I always felt like we had a good chance to win," said Dimitry Petrenko, 18, a senior who has been on the team for three years. "I feel satisfied, almost relieved like I've done my job and can graduate."

The other team members are Alexandre Boulgakov, 16, Marino Di Franco, 16, and Ian Scheffler, 17. The team won a trip to the International Youth Science Forum in London this summer, $1,000 for the school's science department and a 6-foot-high trophy.

To say that BoardBuzz is impressed would be a gross understatement! Congrats to the team. We can't wait to see what you're up to next!

May 6, 2008

Tobacco bans change social norms for kids

A new study out of Massachusetts shows that smoking bans in restaurants effectively discourage young teenagers from becoming smokers, and suggests that restaurant smoking bans are even more powerful than the effect of whether a parent or close friend smokes. According to the study, kids in towns with strict restaurant smoking bans were a full 40 percent less likely to smoke than kids in towns with weak or non-existent restrictions.

This is big news for several reasons: Smoking is still the leading preventable cause of death in the US, and fully ninety percent of all smokers start before the age of 18 – tobacco use is a pediatric disease.

Perhaps most encouraging, this study shows that while tobacco use may be an individual decision, there is much that we can do to influence the environment in which that decision takes place. If we work to make tobacco use socially unacceptable, kids are much less likely to try it and get addicted.

World No-Tobacco Day is coming up May 31. Why not take this chance to review and update your school district’s tobacco use policy? For information or technical assistance on comprehensive tobacco free school policies, email info@schoolhealth.org.

Get your learnin' on

October will be here before you know it and along with that comes NSBA's T+L Conference. Registration opened today for what promises to be a conference chock full of great learning opportunities.

Held in Seattle from October 28-30, this year's conference boasts an impressive lineup, including keynote addresses from Stanford University professor and futurist Paul Saffo; education “revolutionary” Joe Caruso; and educator David Warlick.

You can read all about it on the T+L web site and in NSBA's press release.

We're also looking for leaders in education technology to be recognized as the latest group of "20 to Watch". You can learn more about it and submit an application here. Check out last year's group here.

Learning curve

BoardBuzz is all for continuous improvement. That's why we've signed up to attend the Ed in '08 Blogging Summit next week in Washington, D.C. The summit (which is free--so there, you CAN get something for nothing) will offer panelists and speakers and will examine "how the Internet is changing the discourse of education reform, and how those changes are affecting the 2008 presidential election." We can't wait!

Additionally, in the name of shameless self promotion, BoardBuzz is up for the Blogger's Choice Award, and since we may never be nominated for an Oscar, a Pulitzer, or a Nobel Prize, we'd love it if you'd cast your ballot for us!

What's really cool about "our competition" is that the list includes links to each of their blogs so you can check out what's going on all over the blogosphere (and you really should, too -- just remember to vote for us first).

May 5, 2008

Credit where credit is due

This is always one of BoardBuzz's favorite times of the year. No, not because the sun has finally come out and it appears that summer is right around the corner (although that helps). No, what really charges us up is the announcement of the Teacher of the Year, which happens every year right about this time.

And this year is no exception. The Council of Chief State School Officers has named Michael Geisen of Oregon as 2008 National Teacher of the Year. According to CCSSO's Web site,

Geisen, a science teacher at Crook County Middle School in Prineville, Oregon, is the 58th National Teacher of the Year. He will begin a year as a full-time national and international spokesperson for education on June 1, 2008.

“A great teacher,” he says, “is a unifier of ideas, a unifier of people, and a unifier of ideas with people. In my teaching I strive to bring together creativity and science, to unite my students into a community, and to help each person in this community connect with the big ideas of science.”

Working to keep textbooks to, as he describes it, 97 percent colorful wall decoration and 3 percent reference materials, this seventh-grade teacher strives consistently to keep all of his curriculum, labs, assignments, activities and evaluations hand-tailored.

As Geisen explains, “By doing so, I’m able to correlate them exactly with the Oregon standards, incorporate multiple levels of cognition, revise them when needed and keep them up to date with emerging science. Some of them are based on ideas that colleagues or students have shared with me, but many of them I simply dream up while in the shower or while driving to work. However they originate, I try to put a bit of myself, a bit of Prineville, and a good dose of humor and creativity into each activity, project or assignment. In fact, students even laugh during tests in our class."

And that's no laughing matter! Be sure to check out the full press release and the CCSSO's Web site for more information about what makes this teacher a stand out. You can also check out the teacher's of the year who were recognized in each state.

Posted at 4:38 PM | Teachers | Link to this story | Send to a Friend | Comments (0)

Britannica beckons to bloggers

This from Wired's Epicenter:

Old-school encyclopedia Britannica is giving bloggers free subscriptions to Britannica Online, the internet version of its multivolume masterpiece.

What this means is that bloggers no longer have to rely on Wikipedia's crowdsourced and sometimes questionably factual encyclopedia entries when they want to insert a quick link to background info on, say, Bosnia, or circular polarized light, or the grammatical structure of Klingon.

Here's the scoop. Britannica Webshare is a program started by Encyclopaedia Britannica that allows online publishers—bloggers included—to use premium information in Britannica Online for their own research or to share with their readers by providing them with access to individual articles. The program is free, but eligibilty is limited. In short, you sign up, provide them with the requisite information about your site, and they review your submission and decide whether or not you qualify. For more details see Britannica's FAQs.

BoardBuzz sees this as an attempt to remain competitive with the free Wikipedia. TechCrunch states that according to Comscore, for every page viewed on Brittanica.com, 184 pages are viewed on Wikipedia (3.8 billion v. 21 million page views per month). If this pilot project isn't successful, Brittanica might have to open up their content to the public. As TechCrunch also states, their differentiating factor from Wikipedia will be that they have experts guiding articles, so they’ll have a claim to be more authoritative. Until that day, BoardBuzz thinks this Webshare is interesting and has potential. And yes, we've just signed up!

Posted at 1:03 PM | Education Technology | Link to this story | Send to a Friend | Comments (0)

May 2, 2008

NCLB & the Three Branches of Government

No Child Left Behind is providing a lot interesting civics lessons lately. Last week the big news in NCLB came to us courtesy of the executive branch. This was in the form of the proposed regulations the feds have issued on a whole variety of NCLB topics. As NSBA said here, there's good, bad, and ugly in that one.

This week the big developments are judicial. First, a federal court has thown out the last remaining count in Connecticut's lawsuit challenging the act. Legal details here courtesy of NSBA's Legal Clips. The short version is the court said the feds didn't act "arbitrarily and capriciously" when they denied Connecticut's requests on testing of kids in special ed and English language learners and that, regrettably, there was a procedural reason the state's "unfunded mandates" argument couldn't be ruled on. Meanwhile, in the other big NCLB lawsuit, the full Sixth Circuit U.S. appeals court has agreed to rehear the case organized by the NEA. A three-judge panel of that court had handed the NEA a big victory in January when it found the unfunded mandates argument was legit, but we'll have to see whether entire court has a different take. Details from Ed Week here, and BoardBuzz's past take on the suit here.

Meanwhile, the outlook remains bleak from the branch of government that's actually supposed to be the one fixing its own mess. Congress seems unable to act. That doesn't excuse the administration's own culpability. But it's been a big part of the reason all along that we've seen these issues playing out so much in the other two branches.

Posted at 9:52 AM | No Child Left Behind | Link to this story | Send to a Friend | Comments (0)

Florida fiasco(es) tossed to the voters

It only meets once every 20 years but after its recent work Florida taxpayers ought to demand that the so-called "Taxation and Budget Reform Commission" never meets again. The 25-member panel of political appointees with the power to place constitutional amendments to a vote of the people has stuck some real doozies on November's ballot.

First, there's the school voucher double feature. The Commission, in a reversal from an earlier vote, approved on its final day an amendment to essentially undo the state Supreme Court ruling in 2006 striking down Florida's flagship voucher program. But in an act of political trickery, the Commission has paired that amendment (possibly violating the Constitution in the process ironically) with the dubious and foolish but oh so sound-bite friendly "65 percent solution"! BoardBuzz has commented on this concept before and even the oft-critical-of-public-schools Fordham Foundation has questioned it.

The second voucher amendment crafted by the Commission would eliminate the state constitution's "no-aid" provision that is supposed to prevent direct or indirect public funding of religion. Should both be approved by the voters, the doors to funding private and religious schools will be wide open.

But the Commission's good work didn't stop there. It also approved an amendment that, if approved, would end the use of property taxes to fund education and attempt to replace lost school revenue (projected to be $8 billion) with the far more volatile state sales tax.

Florida's newspapers weighed in with expected incredulity: Palm Beach Post editorial here, St. Pete Times here, and its columnist Howard Troxler here.

Meantime, Florida's legislature is looking at cutting public school funding this year by $332 million, forcing school districts to have to make decisions like these.

And thinking ahead to November and the presidential election, what might be the collective impact of all these ballot initiatives on voter turnout? Get ready for a rough and tumble summer in the Sunshine State.

Posted at 7:00 AM | Privatization & Choice | Link to this story | Send to a Friend | Comments (0)

May 1, 2008

How's your school climate?

Have you ever wondered what people are really thinking? As a principal, counselor, administrator, school board member, or teacher, a lot of faith is put into the idea that we are doing a good job and the people we work with feel the same way. But sometimes those perceptions are wrong, sometimes our perceptions aren't those of our key stakeholders, and sometimes the educators need to be educated.

NSBA's Council of Urban Boards of Education (CUBE) recently conducted a study led by Dr. Brian Perkins (along with recommendations from the PTA) regarding school climate. What We Think, surveyed more than 10,000 urban parents in 17 different states to find out their opinions about bullying; teacher/student respect; safety; and expectations, to name a few of the topics.

NSBA and CUBE have previously examined student perspectives on school climate (Where We Learn) and teacher and administrator perspectives (Where We Teach). The third study came to some interesting conclusions, including:

~ Slightly more female parents (76.7%) indicated visiting the school to support its activities than did their male counterparts (72%). ~ Parents overwhelmingly believed that their child was capable of high performance on standardized tests (84%).
~ Most parents felt respected by the teachers at their child's school (87%).

~ Parents with children in the middle grades (6-8) indicated that their children were bullied at least once per month more than parents at other grades (13%).

~ Generally, parents who used self-experience as their primary source of information about their school held more positive views about safety (76.1%), while parents who used the newspaper as their primary source of information about their school held more negative views about safety (12.5%).

Take a look for yourself. The study (as well as the first two) is available on CUBE's website and the results are sometimes surprising. Our friends at Education Daily and Public School Insights already have, and there's no disputing the fact that parents have an important insight into our schools and are crucial to their success.

April 30, 2008

Don't forget to write!

BoardBuzz came across an interesting article in USA Today last week on every high school senior's favorite test, the SAT. The article highlighted two recent studies looking at how effectively the SAT's new writing section (introduced in 2005) predicted college freshman grades. Both reports, one by the College Board (who administers the SAT) and the other by the University of California, found that the new writing section was indeed a good predictor of college freshman grades. Actually it’s even a better predictor than the traditional math and critical reading (formally verbal) sections.

These results show once again that while math, reading, and science are important, well developed writing skills are critical to the future success of our students and should not be overlooked. Students need to leave high school with content knowledge AND the ability to communicate that knowledge clearly and succinctly whether or not they plan to attend college.

In this digital age of instant messaging, email, social networking, and of course blogging, the written word is taking on a growing importance. However, writing is a 21st Century skill that often takes a back seat to math and science. That is why you should check out our friends at the Center for Public Education in the coming months as they look into the knowledge and skills that will be needed in this new century. The Center will look beyond just math and science skills to determine what skills students need to not only get a good job but to be quality citizens as well.

In the mean time you can check out how students fared on the SAT and the ACT, and explore many other educational issues at www.centerforpubliceducation.org.

April 29, 2008

Waxing poetic

BoardBuzz was inspired by some pint-sized poets while perusing the paper earlier today. The Kid's Post (a section of the Washington Post) published the winning poems in its annual poetry contest in today's edition of the paper.

It's hard to pick our favorite -- they range from sweet to funny to sobering -- but they're all quite good. Here's one that made BoardBuzz smile:

A Bird's Springtime
Upon this tree I build my nest
Where leaves nor branches stir
May the smooth bark protect me.
The rounded leaves hide me.
And may I never hear a cat's purr.
--Luci Finucan, 11

Check it out!

Posted at 1:28 PM | Students | Link to this story | Send to a Friend | Comments (0)