Approval of Supplementary Instructional Material

Relations

President's United States Soviet Exchange Initiative

Office of the Coordinator

U.S.-SOVIET EXCHANGE INITIATIVE

FACT SHEET 

SEPTEMBER 1989

President Reagan stated in his November 14, 1985, Address to the Nation, "enduring peace requires openness, honest communications, and opportunities for our peoples to get to know one another directly."

In order to accomplish these objectives, the President called for a series of bold new initiatives to "find as yet undiscovered avenues where American and Soviet citizens can cooperate fruitfully for the benefit of mankind."

The Coordinator's Office is responsible for providing guidance to Americans interested in establishing exchanges with the USSR in the areas of performing arts, exhibitions, education, health, sports, television, film, youth, citizen and professional exchanges.

http://digitalcollections.library.cmu.edu/awweb/awarchive?type=file&item=542900

Statistics

IES NCES National Center for Educational Statistics

ASC-ED  District Demographic Dashboard

https://nces.ed.gov/Programs/Edge/ACSDashboard/5307710

Curriculum

Saxon Math

"The basic philosophy of his approach was incremental development and continuous review. Incremental development meant that larger concepts were broken down into smaller, more easily understood pieces that were introduced over time; continuous review refers to the practice of concepts in cumulative problem sets once they were introduced. As a student completed a new concept, a brief review of the previous chapters and concepts were also tested"

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Saxon_(educator)

John Saxon's Story, a genius of common sense in math education

by Nakonia Hayes (former principal at North Beach Elementary, Seattle, WA)

"I have always been a fan. Sometimes the establishment makes me question if I am doing things the "right" way, but after reading this biography, I am even more committed to doing things the Saxon way. I have been a public school teacher for 23 years and the new, new, new...math standards that are coming along in their current brand of repackaged, time-tested and failed, iteration is enough to make me seek another line of work. I think I can become a private instructor teaching Saxon math and make a million dollars. This is a must read for parents. Get mad and talk to your representatives. If parents continue to throw up their hands and relinquish educational control to the public schools, Heaven help us all. This man had it right a long time ago." - John Dover, Amazon review

Statistics

National Center for Educational Statistics

https://nces.ed.gov/Programs/Edge/ACSDashboard/5307710

Funding

"School districts should answer for sloppy fiscal oversight. As school district interest groups demand more money from the state general fund, policymakers should point to incidents of fraud and require district offices to review their accounting practices. Districts should be following state guidelines, and when audits report weak financial accounting— even in districts without ongoing fraudulent activity— lawmakers should demand better fiscal behavior before sending more state money."


https://goldwaterinstitute.org/article/the-school-district-fraud-formula-how-to-prevent-fraud-in-school-districts-and-protect-student-learning-and-teacher-salaries/

https://goldwaterinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/The-School-District-Fraud-Formula-web.pdf

Funding

School chief’s plan would divide L.A. school district into 32 networks

By Howard Blume and Anna M. Phillips
Nov 05, 2018  

"Los Angeles schools chief Austin Beutner is working on a plan to radically reshape the nation’s second-largest school district by shrinking the central bureaucracy and moving decision-making closer to campuses.

The aim is to boost student success and save money at a time when officials insist that grave financial problems threaten the Los Angeles Unified School District’s solvency.

Under a proposal being developed confidentially, Beutner would divide the system into 32 “networks,” moving authority and resources out of the central office and into neighborhoods"
"The network strategy is not a plan to break up or end L.A. Unified, but it could transform how the school system functions."



https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-lausd-school-networks-20181105-story.html

Social Engineering

Ideological Indoctrination and Teacher Education

Abstract

Philosophers who have been concerned with the problem of indoctrination have focused attention chiefly on teaching, textbooks, and the curriculum in elementary and secondary schools where the age of the students and the fact that they have yet to fully develop their own critical judgment suggests a certain vulnerability and susceptibility to non-rational persuasion. On the one hand, teachers may abuse their power and authority and seek to impose certain beliefs and values, actively discouraging their students from raising problems or objections; on the other hand, certain views may simply escape scrutiny and pass unchallenged in education because they have become part of what Karl Popper (1975) labels uncritical common sense. In either case, the real danger is that young students will become incapable of assessing such views for themselves. Indoctrination results when students lose the ability to assess the merits of the ideas they are studying or coming to acquire and find themselves locked into certain beliefs and assumptions in such a way that they cannot seriously consider alternative views because their minds have been closed.

Recommended Citation

Hare, William (2007) "Ideological Indoctrination and Teacher Education," Journal of Educational Controversy: Vol. 2 : No. 2 , Article 5.


Available at: https://cedar.wwu.edu/jec/vol2/iss2/5

History

"De Tocqueville thought it remarkable how often Americans joined together in various organizations which he called associations. "Americans of all ages, all stations of life and all types of disposition are forever forming associations," he wrote. "There are not only commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand types-religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute."

De Tocqueville went on to observe that Americans naturally formed groups when they wanted to hold a celebration, found a church, build a school, distribute books or do almost anything else. "Finally, if they want to proclaim a truth or propagate some feeling ...they form an association. In every case, at the head of any new undertaking, where in France you would find the government ... in the United States you are sure to find an association."


https://www.crf-usa.org/election-central/de-tocqueville-america.html

Post Modern Education

THE LEIPZIG CONNECTION

by Paolo Lionni 

 

The Systematic Destruction of American Education 

"The ongoing debasement of philosophy and ethics, and its social consequences, is a tangled tale and, where references are not pursued or fully detailed, it is not because of an unwillingness to answer the questions raised rather is it from a desire to suggest a broader context within which the story unfolds. Those who contend, with Wilhelm Wundt, that history and its processes are responsible for the formation of individuals and their views (rather than the reverse) will undoubtedly find this approach unpalatable; then again, not everyone would want this tale untangled."


"Perceptive. ..a blunt, concise argument for the restoration of educational principles. ..will stimulate argument."  -The Seattle Times

"Arresting.. .Paints a picture of deliberate sabotaging of sound pedagogy... by those who should have known better." - Christian Science Monitor

"Should be owned and read by every individual concerned with his immediate future safety...More exciting reading than you generally find in such material...extraordinary. "
 - Common Sense Newsletter

 "Power-packed.. .The missing link that tells us exactly who and what.. .fills a large gap in our present research."  - National Educator

"A kind of detective story, one with a villain and victims but no heroes. ..the appalling effects of scientific psychology." - MANAS

https://archive.org/details/TheLeipzigConnection

https://archive.org/stream/TheLeipzigConnection/TheLeipzigConnection-pauloLionni_djvu.txt

Funding

Cutting Federal Aid for K-12 Education

by Neal McCluskey

"Policymakers need to recognize that federal aid is ultimately funded by the taxpayers who live in the 50 states, and thus provides no free lunch. Indeed, the states just get money back with strings attached, while losing billions of dollars from wasteful bureaucracy. There is no compelling policy reason, nor constitutional authority, for the federal government to be involved in K-12 education. In the long run, America’s schools would be better off without it."

https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/education/k-12-education-subsidies

Funding

School Fundraising Statistics

• 56% of the country’s public schools have at least one donor appeal on its site.

• School groups raise more than $1.5 billion every year selling various products.

• Traditional product fundraising accounts for roughly 80% of the dollars that school groups use to provide “extras” for their schools.

• 67% of principals turn fundraising decisions over to their PTO or PTA, even though experts believe this hands-off approach actually hampers a fundraiser’s success.

• 71% of parents said they’ve sold fundraising products to friends, family, and co-workers.

• 35% of schools average $0 – $5,000 in annual earnings from fundraising while 27.1% earn more than $75,000.

• Charitable contributions to colleges and universities in the United States increased only 1.7% in 2016.

• $41 billion was raised for colleges and universities in 2016, up from $40.30 billion raised in 2015.

• The Top 20 fundraising institutions together raised $11.12 billion, 27.1 percent of the 2016 total.

https://nonprofitssource.com/online-giving-statistics/

History

The Patriot Post® · Things Haven't Always Been This Way

By Walter E. Williams · Jul. 17, 2019  

 

"A society’s first line of defense is not the law or the criminal justice system but customs, traditions and moral values. These behavioral norms, mostly imparted by example, word-of-mouth and religious teachings, represent a body of wisdom distilled over the ages through experience and trial and error."

Here’s a suggestion. How about setting up some high school rifle clubs? Students would bring their own rifles to school, store them with the team coach and, after classes, collect them for practice. You say: “Williams, you must be crazy! To prevent gun violence, we must do all we can to keep guns out of the hands of kids.”

There’s a problem with this reasoning. Prior to the 1960s, many public high schools had shooting clubs. In New York City, shooting clubs were started at Boys, Curtis, Commercial, Manual Training and Stuyvesant high schools. Students carried their rifles to school on the subway and turned them over to their homeroom or gym teacher. Rifles were retrieved after school for target practice. In some rural areas across the nation, there was a long tradition of high school students hunting before classes and storing their rifles in the trunks of their cars, parked on school grounds, during the school day. 

Post Modern Education

The Progressive Influence on Modern Education

by John M. Fennell

 

Is the older understanding of education relevant today?

"We as human beings knew how to teach effectively for hundreds even thousands of years. It isn't as though this whole thing was discovered in 1900's. And so what I would hope is the parents and tax payers would become far less agreeable to the so-called investment in so called "new things" and realize that effective teaching has always been out there and always been available and we must look to the past and pay no mind to how to do things revolutionary different in the future."


https://online.hillsdale.edu/courses/education/lecture-3/lecture-3

Curriculmn

Saxon Math Warrior  - website dedicated to John Saxon by Nakonia Hayes

 

 "[John Saxon] A West Point graduate and Korean war hero, Saxon held three degrees in engineering. A gifted teacher, he designed math books to be user-friendly while still honoring the rich, historical foundations of that discipline. He had proved that his program worked before he started selling it, and he challenged others to do the same. They had long held political and financial power, however, and felt no obligation to meet his challenges. Instead, they continued to use unproven fads and programs on children without parent knowledge or permission. His continuing and verified successes, as reported in this biography, were ignored. It was only his death in 1996 that stopped the bloody war between John Saxon and the math education establishment, but he helped ignite the “math wars” that have been rekindled today over Common Core."

Nakonia (Niki) Hayes retired from public education in 2006 in Seattle, WA, after 28 years as a teacher, counselor, and principal. She was introduced to Saxon Mathematics on the Spokane Indian Reservation, pre-kindergarten-12^th grades in 1991-1994 as a math teacher, then principal. Having seen the significant rise in test scores there, she recommended the Saxon curriculum in 2001 at North Beach Elementary School in Seattle. Its population was 80 percent white, upper middle-class children and most of them came to school “ready to read” due to reading in the home. However, math scores were unacceptable. The staff voted to try Saxon. State test scores in math for the 4th graders (the elementary grade tested at the time) rose in three years from 74 to 91 percent by 2004. Because writing scores were also unacceptable, a phonics-based curriculum was chosen and a journalism program started, specifically to improve grammar skills. Writing scores increased from 58 to 89 percent by 2004. Hayes left the school that year due to health issues and taught math half time until her retirement.

http://saxonmathwarrior.com/ 

Curriculum

What happened to vocational training in schools – and can it come back?

 by Katherine Martinko

 

"Imagine if things were different – if technical, physical, and labor-based jobs were not made out to be somehow inferior to academic-based pursuits, nor viewed as a remedial track geared mostly toward minority and working-class students; if aviation maintenance, auto body technology, audio production, and welding were esteemed as highly as medicine, law, and engineering?
I can think of a few reasons why vocational training should be given a prominent place in North American schools and why it would give many students a much-needed advantage.

1) Trades are practical skills. Young people who can build, repair, and invent things have useful knowledge that is easily applied in daily life, at work and at home. Practical skills would give them a tremendous sense of personal satisfaction, particularly for a generation that’s grown up in inhabiting virtual reality.

2) Vocational training allows young people to work immediately after high school without racking up huge student loans. Far too often, the fixation on college degrees results in paralyzing debt that is no way to start one’s adult life.

3) Introducing vocational training could counter the fear culture that pervades schools. It would introduce much-needed perspective on what kids are capable of doing safely, i.e. using power tools, torches, knives, hot stoves, etc., rather than bubble-wrapping them at every turn.

4) Vocational training would help young people be more active. They’d be moving around a workshop instead of sitting at a desk, which would lead to better health and possibly fewer diagnoses of Attention Deficit Disorder and the like, less medication. It could result in reduced aggressive behavior because kids would feel like they’re on a meaningful track in life and have less reason to lash out. They would feel useful.

5) On a national scale, it means large swaths of the manufacturing sector could return to North America if trained workers are available. Wyman writes:

“The manufacturing sector is growing and modernizing, creating a wealth of challenging, well-paying, highly skilled jobs for those with the skills to do them; [but] the demise of vocational education at the high school level has bred a skills shortage in manufacturing today, and with it a wealth of career opportunities for both under-employed college grads and high school students looking for direct pathways to interesting, lucrative careers.”

6) It would expose young people to a wide range of careers that are not commonly known. These could fill the “skills mismatches” that exist currently in the U.S. and continue to affect the country’s ability to lower its unemployment rate"

https://www.treehugger.com/culture/what-happened-vocational-training-schools-and-can-it-come-back.html

Technology

Teaching with Technology 

Simon Hooper, College of Education, University of Minnesota and Lloyd P. Rieber, Department of Instructional Technology, The University of Georgia

 

"Educational technology is often considered, erroneously, as synonymous with instructional innovation. Technology, by definition, applies current knowledge for some useful purpose. Therefore, technology uses evolving knowledge (whether about a kitchen or a classroom) to adapt and improve the system to which the knowledge applies (such as a kitchen's microwave oven or educational computing). In contrast, innovations represent only change for change sake. Given this distinction, it is easy to argue that educators are correct to resist mere innovation, but they should welcome educational technology."

Hooper, S., & Rieber, L. P. (1995). Teaching with technology. In A. C. Ornstein
(Ed.), Teaching: Theory into practice, (pp. 154-170). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn
and Bacon.

http://www.nowhereroad.com/twt/

Technology

History of Distance Education

By Allison Freeland
Posted in: eLearning on April 15, 2012

Distance education focuses on delivering education through alternative means instead of just in a traditional classroom. It allows individuals to access information in various ways. Here is a brief overview of history of distance education, from as far back as the 1800s:

1800s
The more widespread use of correspondence education started in the early 1800’s where teachers would send assignments to students by mail to be completed and returned. In 1840, a shorthand class was offered completely by mail by Englishman Sir Isaac Pitman.  A completely correspondence university was founded in Ithaca, New York in 1883.  Also in the 1880’s, home-study courses in mine safety were started that later became the International Correspondence School.
Early 1900s
By the year 1900, various distance education schools were established and questions regarding ethics and quality began to arise.  Due to this, the National Home Study Council was founded to monitor the quality of distance education programs.  During the early 20th century, various distance education programs were delivered by radio, but this type of education never took off.  Distance learning instructors also experimented with telephone learning, but it too never became a big player in the industry.
1950s
Success for the distance learning field came with the more widespread use of the television. In 1959, Sunrise Semester was one of the first television delivered learning program.  It featured one teacher standing in front of a class of students and the footage was shot from the back of the room.
1960s
In the 1960’s, IBM developed COURSEWRITER, an online distance learning system that could be customized to deliver many different types of courses.
1970s
During the 1970s, a California task force was established to create educational telecourses for profit. Also, Coastline Community College was established to manage the development and filming of distance education videos that were broadcast to various other colleges, libraries, and public television channels throughout the United States. The courses were required to cover complete curricula and abide by the same educational standards as traditional schools.
1980s
Even though online education was under development as early as the 1970’s, the technology greatly improved during the 1980’s.  Various companies and government institutions began to use online education to provide training to their employees.
Early to Mid-1990s
Online education did not become popular among the general population until the 1990’s and the invention of the Internet.  In 1994, a small offline distance learning school in Rhode Island called CALCampus, introduced an entirely online curriculum delivering classes, administration, and materials completely through the Internet.
Late 1990s
In 1996, Jones International University was established.  It was the first complete accredited entirely online school.
Present
From the mid-1900s through the early 2000s, computer technology and the Internet grew at an impressive rate. Online schools began incorporating new types of multimedia such as microphones and webcams.  Today, there are hundreds of online schools based in the U.S. and around the world; and many with regional accreditation. Millions of students are able to complete their entire educational programs entirely online from certifications to advanced degrees. With today’s emerging technology, there are various forms of distance education delivery such as online chat and email to video conferencing. As technology and the Internet expands, distance learning and online education is continuing to evolve and reach more and more students to offer an abundance of degrees online.
As you can see, the history of distance education is rich and lengthy. Online education is gaining the credibility it deserves, and today more than 20 percent of all students learn through online schools.

http://www.collegeonline.org/blog/history-of-college-online.html#.XRGu86wXpxg.link

Learning

The critical role of retrieval practice in long-term retention 

Henry L. Roediger, Andrew C. Butler

Published:October 18, 2010

"Learning is usually thought to occur during episodes of studying, whereas retrieval of information on testing simply serves to assess what was learned. We review research that contradicts this traditional view by demonstrating that retrieval practice is actually a powerful mnemonic enhancer, often producing large gains in long-term retention relative to repeated studying. Retrieval practice is often effective even without feedback (i.e. giving the correct answer), but feedback enhances the benefits of testing. In addition, retrieval practice promotes the acquisition of knowledge that can be flexibly retrieved and transferred to different contexts. The power of retrieval practice in consolidating memories has important implications for both the study of memory and its application to educational practice"

The Critical Role in Retrieval Process

Learning

Teaching Six Strategies for Effective Learning: A Class Room Intervention

Learning

Teaching the Science of Learning

Yana Weinstein, Christopher R. Madan and Megan A. Sumeracki


Abstract
The science of learning has made a considerable contribution to our understanding of effective teaching and learning strategies. However, few instructors outside of the field are privy to this research. In this tutorial review, we focus on six specific cognitive strategies that have received robust support from decades of research: spaced practice, interleaving, retrieval practice, elaboration, concrete examples, and dual coding. We describe the basic research behind each strategy and relevant applied research, present examples of existing and suggested implementation, and make recommendations for further research that would broaden the reach of these strategies.

Keywords:
Education, Learning, Memory, Teaching



https://rdcu.be/bHNDP

Curriculum

 

Why Sing, Spell, Read & Write is the Correct Program for Teaching Children to Read

By Geraldine E. Rodgers

September 9, 1985

"But even the guessing is not the end of the sad story and all the reason for our terrible reading disabilities in this country. Reading is only the door into the tower of knowledge, to refer to a medieval picture drawn to show“learning.” Once children know how to read, they can START to be educated. Marva Collins of Chicago,who teaches real phonics, has her third graders read Chaucer, and her upper graders reading even heavier, REAL literature. It is no wonder her students’ essays show incredible language ability: wonderful syntax, marvelous vocabulary. She has been feeding them wonderful syntax, marvelous vocabulary. She has been feeding them wonderful syntax and marvelous vocabulary in the books she has them reading. Yet basal readers and most subjects area texts in our schools today are “dumbed down”so the children never have a chance to acquire the complex vocabulary and syntax of the literature of Western Civilization."



http://www.donpotter.net/pdf/rodgers1986testimony.pdf

Curriculum

Reading Made Easy with Blend Phonics

Nationwide Educational Reform Campaign

Sponsored by Donald L. Potter

"An effective answer to illiteracy … Let me offer a less costly, and more effective answer. I have here a twenty-five page booklet called Blend Phonics by Hazel Loring, a master teacher born in 1902, who taught under both the “whole word” and phonics systems. The legacy she has left us is powerful. Within the pages of this little booklet is the cure of illiteracy as we begin the twenty-first century. … If every preservice reading teacher, every reading supervisor, every kindergarten, first- and second-grade teacher in America had the information contained in Hazel Loring’s 25-page booklet, and taught it this fall, there would be such a dramatic decrease in illiteracy in this country that the national media would be forced to take note.” - Recommendation for Hazel Loring’s 1980 Reading Made Easy With Blend Phonics for First Grade by Mr. Robert W. Sweet, Jr. Cofounder and President of The National Right to Read Foundation in his 1996 article, “The Century of Miseducation of American Teachers.”


Blend Phonics Features

• Blend Phonics Technique with build in Directional Guidance.
• Comprehensive Scope and Sequence.
• Complete, easy-to-follow Teacher’s Manual included.
• Students are taught to sound-out over 2,ooo words.
• All 44 speech sound and all major spelling patterns are taught for reading and spelling.
• Highly effective for any age or grade level.
• Only a chalkboard or marker board and Wide Lined Spiral Notebooks are necessary for success. No need for costly outlay of funds for high tech equipment. Any school can afford it. No worksheets to purchase or copy.
• Perfect for in-class Tier II or Tier III tutoring. If used for Tier I, it would largely eliminate the need for Tier II or Tier III.
• Absolutely FREE, no strings attached.
• Special features for curing artificially induced whole-word dyslexia, an often undiagnosed condition that is all to common in today’s schools.
• Successfully used by thousands of parents and teachers since 1980.

http://blendphonics.org/

Health

Attempted suicide rates much higher in adults with learning disabilities

July 5, 2017

Individuals with learning disabilities were significantly more likely to attempt suicide than those without, according to recent findings.
“Learning disabilities such as dyslexia cast a very long shadow. Adults with learning disabilities still had 46% higher odds of having attempted suicide than their peers without learning problems, even when we took into account a wide range of other risk factors including lifetime history of depression and substance abuse, ADHD, early adversities, age, race, sex, income and education,” Esme Fuller-Thomson, PhD, of University of Toronto, said in a press release.


Fuller-Thomson E, et al. J Learn Disabil. 2017;doi:10.1177/0022219417714776.

Health

Youth ED Visits for Suicidality Doubled from 2007 to 2015

By Amy Orciari Herman

Edited by David G. Fairchild, MD, MPH

Youth emergency department visits for suicide attempts or ideation nearly doubled over a 9-year period, according to findings reported in JAMA Pediatrics.

Examining a database of nationally representative EDs, U.S. researchers identified over 1600 visits for suicide attempts or ideation among youth aged 5–17 between 2007 and 2015. This translated to an estimated 7.3 million ED visits across the U.S.

The estimated annual number of ED visits for suicidality increased from 580,000 in 2007 to 1.12 million in 2015— even though the overall number of ED visits remained largely unchanged.

Of note, the median age of the patients was 13 years. Over 40% of visits were for children aged 5–10.


https://www.jwatch.org/fw115273/2019/04/09/youth-ed-visits-suicidality-doubled-2007-2015

Post modern education

NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education 

by Sam Blumenfeld, Rome, Georgia 1985

“They had a messianic mission to change America from a free enterprise, individualistic, religious nation to a socialistic, collectivist, atheistic nation. How are they going to do this? See, they believed it very strongly, but the American people were not going to overthrow their system, we were not going give up private property, free enterprise and rugged individualism and our religions and close our churches. How are we going to become a socialist society? They said, well the only way to do it is through education… the Fabian technique through slow evolution. We will take control of the schools, put a new curriculum in the schools and we will turn the children away from the values of their parents.”

"The educators had a totally different view of what the future is. They were not interested in passing on knowledge or values to the next generation. They were interested in manipulating the next generation so it will change America and change all of the values we hold dear. And this is a program that has been going on for quite some time, at least since the turn of the century when the progressives got control of American education. Now who are the progressives? The progressives were a group of men who decided to apply to American education the new psychology, the new religion of evolution, the Humanist view of the world. These men were highly educated, highly sophisticated who decided there was no God; that evolution was truth; that human beings were animals - that could be trained like animals and be observed and measured like animals and they believed that the new psychology, this application of experimental psychology could go a long way to change human behavior. You see, if you don’t believe in God you have to come up with a new theory why people do the things they do.”

 

https://youtu.be/THn_gih9fBA