- Developers, Schools Line Up for Shot at Stevens Elementary [AppleTree, Community Academy, and Eagle Academy PCS are mentioned]
- TED Offers Free Video Lessons for High School and College Students
- To Many Teachers, Career Has Failed
Developers, Schools Line Up for Shot at Stevens Elementary [AppleTree, Community Academy, and Eagle Academy PCS are mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Jonathan O'Connell
March 12, 2012
Six development teams and six educational organizations have submitted proposals to the District government for a shot at redeveloping
Stevens Elementary School in the District’s West End. (The Washington Post) Stevens Elementary School, on 21st Street NW in the West End.
The six development teams are all headed by groups that have done work in the area:
• Akridge, developer of Burnham Place
• Capstone Development, developer of the convention center hotel
• Donohoe Development
• EastBanc, developers of myriad housing projects in the West End and Georgetown
• Lincoln Property Co.
• MRP Realty, which is refurbishing Washington Harbour
The District tried and failed to previously develop Stevens, which closed under then-mayor Adrian Fenty, but Fenty’s selection of Equity Residential didn’t sit well with West End residents. This effort represents another try under Mayor Vincent C. Gray and Deputy Mayor Victor Hoskins.
Rather than just seek development partners, Hoskins also asked for educational groups interested in space to respond. Six made submissions, mostly charter schools:
• AppleTree Institute for Education Innovation
• Dorothy I. Height Community Academy Public Charter School (CAPCS)
• Eagle Academy Public Charter School (EAPCS)
• GEMS Americas; Urban Atlantic Education; The Robert Bobb Group
• Ivymount Schools and Programs
• Living Classrooms of the National Capital Region.
All of the responses must be vetted by the District before they will be considered as possible partners and ultimately developing Stevens will require a lengthy public meeting process and legislation from the D.C. Council.
Just as he told us in January, real estate magnate and heavyweight political fundraiser R. Donahue Peebles decided not to bid this time, despite coveting and studying the building for years.
The Washington Post
By Lyndsey Layton
March 12, 2012
Imagine you’re a high school biology teacher searching for the most vivid way to explain electrical activity in the brain. How about inserting metal wires into a cockroach’s severed leg and making that leg dance to music?
Starting Monday, that eye-popping lesson, performed in a six-minute video by neuroscientist and engineer Greg Gage, is available free online.
TED, a nonprofit organization that produces a popular annual conference on ideas, is launching TED-Ed, an online collection of lessons it hopes will bring the best educators to any classroom with an Internet connection.
“Right now there’s a teacher somewhere out there delivering a mind-altering lesson and the frustrating thing is, it only reaches the students in that class,” said TED-Ed project director Logan Smalley. “We’re trying to figure out how to capture that lesson and pair it with professional animators to make that lesson more vivid and put it in a place where teachers all over the world can share it.”
TED-Ed is the latest wave in a growing trend of free online education. With offerings from the Khan Academy, founded in 2004 when Salman Khan began posting math tutorials on YouTube, and undergraduate courses from prestigious universities such as Yale and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, free classes and lectures are proliferating on the Web.
But much of that content consists of sequential lectures delivered by an instructor behind a podium or, in the case of Khan, a disembodied voice narrating math equations on an electronic blackboard.
TED-Ed, by contrast, is using sophisticated animation, professional editing and high-quality production values to produce online lessons that are hard to forget. And the lessons don’t meander — each is no longer than 10 minutes.
The project does not provide a sequential curriculum but rather aims to provoke students and their teachers toward further exploration, the creators said. “We want to show that learning can be thrilling,” said TED curator Chris Anderson.
TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, already maintains a vast library of free video talks from its annual conference aimed at adults, and it knows the magnifying effect of the Internet video. The site maintains about 1,100 videos at www.ted.com, which have been viewed more than 700 million times since the site was launched in 2006. The roster of hundreds of speakers includes many well-known figures such as Bill Clinton and the late Steve Jobs. But most were toiling in obscurity before TED put them in the spotlight.
Smalley points to the example of Hans Rosling, a Swedish expert in global health. Rosling estimates that in 40 years of lecturing and writing, his work reached about a million people. But Rosling has given eight TED talks over the past four years, which have been viewed about 6 million times, Smalley said.
“I’m really excited about this project because TED is such a good platform,” said Gage, the neuroscientist, who is based in Ann Arbor, Mich. He and a colleague, Tim Marzullo, perform neuroscience experiments in classrooms around Michigan and sell basic equipment through a Web site, Backyardbrains.com.
Gage said he wants the TED-Ed video to show teachers that they can conduct similar neuroscience experiments in their classrooms. “We hope people see this and realize that it’s really easy to do,” he said. “And that it’ll be a launching point for other experiments about the brain.”
Advertising is barred from the videos, and teachers appearing in them are not permitted to use them for commercial purposes. YouTube, which will host the videos, does carry some advertising. But if the video is shown via YouTube for Schools, a special network setting that restricts access to include only educational videos, no advertising will appear, according to Annie Baxter, a spokeswoman for YouTube.
Initially, TED-Ed lessons will be geared toward high school and college students and “life learners,” Smalley said.
The first batch of about a dozen videos are available Monday and will grow to about 300 within a year, Smalley said. TED-Ed is inviting educators and animators to submit ideas for lessons and will select and produce them, he said. The public can also nominate talented educators, Smalley said.
Teachers will not be paid for their ideas or for recording lessons for the videos.
Subjects are likely to include standard high school subjects such as math, science, social studies and English, but TED-Ed is open to unusual topics as well, Smalley said. “We’ll make sure it’s an even offering across traditional subjects, but we also want to offer things that aren’t taught in school but potentially should be,” he said.
Next month, TED-Ed will roll out a new Web site that will offer materials to teachers that are related to the videos, such as lesson plans and assignments. Teachers will be able to insert questions for their students into the videos and send their students links to annotated videos, a spokeswoman said.
A spokeswoman declined to discuss the budget for TED-Ed, except to say that the venture was a multimillion-dollar project.
Nearly 100 percent of U.S. public schools have access to the Internet, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That compares with just 35 percent in 1994.
The Washington Times
By Ben Wolfgang
March 12, 2012
Students aren’t the only ones who hate going to school.
An increasing number of teachers don’t like their jobs and are considering a new line of work, according to a major survey by MetLife.
The study, which sampled more than 1,000 instructors in kindergarten through 12th grade, found that only 44 percent of American public school teachers are “very satisfied” with their jobs, down 15 percentage points from 2009 and the lowest figure in more than 20 years.
Nearly 30 percent of teachers - up from 17 percent in 2009 - are now “very or fairly likely” to leave the profession entirely, the report shows. MetLife officials said the poll was the first to reflect how the recent economic downturn and cutbacks in public spending have affected teachers.
Teachers’ job satisfaction is at its lowest level since 1989, and the decline has accelerated since President Obama took office in 2009. That year, 59 percent of teachers said they were happy with their jobs and 17 percent were pondering career moves, the survey says.
Analysts point to the recession as the primary factor, as substantial cuts in state education budgets have left instructors with fewer resources and larger class sizes. More than three-quarters of teachers reported that their school’s budget has decreased in recent years.
Job security also has become a big concern, as many districts lay off workers to balance their budgets.
Four years ago, 8 percent of teachers said they feared losing their jobs. Now, 34 percent worry that they will be shown the door, according to the study.
“Policymakers’ actions have real consequences, and those are being felt in classrooms across the country,” said Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest labor union, representing more than 3 million teachers.
“Important programs have been cut. Early childhood education has been eliminated. Computers and textbooks were out of date, and classes such as history, art, [physical education] and music - which provide a well-rounded education - are no longer offered,” he said.
But finances are only one piece of the puzzle, researchers say.
Over the past 10 years, the federal No Child Left Behind law has shed new light on students’ performance in the classroom, and poor test scores - particularly among minorities and in low-income school districts - are sometimes laid at the feet of instructors.
Achievement gaps between white students and their black and Hispanic counterparts remain high, and those looking for someone to blame for those disparities and other problems often find teachers to be easy targets, said Barnett Berry, a former high school teacher and founder and president of the Center for Teaching Quality, a nonprofit education-advocacy organization.
“Another component here is all of the negative press about teachers. It’s the blame game, where the fingers get pointed at the teachers and no one else,” he said. “Teachers pay attention to those kinds of messages.”
Teachers also have found themselves in the middle of high-profile political fights, most prominently in Wisconsin.
Gov. Scott Walker’s efforts to eliminate much of public workers’ collective bargaining power and other efforts, many analysts say, have left teachers feeling as if they are under attack, even though Mr. Walker and others dispute the notion that they are attacking teachers, and instead argue that they are taking necessary steps in difficult economic times.
As those political fights continue, instructors are being asked to take on additional responsibilities and work in less-than-ideal environments.
Two-thirds of teachers reported that their school has laid off staff. More than half of all teachers say their district has reassigned them or given them additional classes during the past year. One-third say their “educational technology and learning materials” have not been kept up to date, and 21 percent said their schools have not been kept in “clean or good condition” over the past year.
“This is not the way America should treat its students,” Mr. Van Roekel said. “It is especially outrageous to students in schools of greatest need.”
Many also feel that teachers aren’t paid adequately for the work that they do. More than two-thirds of instructors, along with 53 percent of parents, don’t believe teacher salaries are high enough, the survey says.
While most teachers don’t get into the field to become wealthy, the relatively low salaries - when compared with counterparts in countries such as South Korea and the Netherlands - can affect morale, said Daisy Stewart, associate director for academic programs at Virginia Tech University’s School of Education.
“There are a lot of countries in which being a teacher is one of the most prestigious occupations. It’s very difficult to get into and very highly paid,” Ms. Stewart said.
Despite the relatively low pay and likelihood that they eventually will get caught up in political fights, Ms. Stewart said, her students haven’t become disenchanted with the profession, and she remains optimistic that future teachers will be happier with their career choice than the current crop.
“The enthusiasm and motivation to go into classrooms and share their knowledge with the next generation - that’s still there,” she said.
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