Will Fitzhugh of The Concord Review sent word that the special Women's History issue is available at Amazon.com. Click here.
Monday, February 27, 2012
March is Women's History Month
Friday, February 24, 2012
Welcome to Teachinghistory.org
It's Friday, and we'd like to share with you a free resource available to teachers in the US: Teachinghistory.org
- Spotlight on African American History Month.
- The February 2012 E-Newsletter.
- Free Historical Thinking and Civil War posters.
The Issues and Research section has an interactive database of state standards for each state and the District of Columbia, which complements its recently updated project, A Report on the State of History Education.
Teachinghistory.org is a project of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and is funded through the U.S. Department of Education’s Teaching American History (TAH) program. It is a leader in providing K-12 history teachers with free access to resources and materials to improve their lessons.
Nearly half a million yearly visitors use this website to find valuable, free information. We invite our history teachers to do the same. We especially call your attention to these sections:
- Video Introduction to Historical Thinking.
- Video Introduction to Historical Thinking.
- Spotlight on African American History Month.
- The February 2012 E-Newsletter.
- Free Historical Thinking and Civil War posters.
The Issues and Research section has an interactive database of state standards for each state and the District of Columbia, which complements its recently updated project, A Report on the State of History Education.
Teachinghistory.org is a project of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and is funded through the U.S. Department of Education’s Teaching American History (TAH) program. It is a leader in providing K-12 history teachers with free access to resources and materials to improve their lessons.
Education Week Commentary: Don't Leave Gifted Students Behind
Education Week: Commentary
Don't Leave Gifted Students Behind
High achievers are essential to global competition
By Frances R. Spielhagen
The annual wars, aka school budget deliberations, are about to begin. Across the nation, states and local districts will once more struggle to maintain educational integrity in the face of annual budget shortfalls, "race to the top" to grab federal dollars, and, hopefully, improve overall student achievement.
Yet, as all eyes are focused on making sure that most, if not all, students meet minimum standards, one group continues to suffer from a kind of benign neglect that actually is not benign at all. These are the very students who can succeed at the highest levels, our gifted students. In classrooms from coast to coast, these students are languishing. They are simply not progressing and learning commensurate with their potential.
Last fall, a report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute brought into sharp focus the decline in achievement among the top students in our nation, those with the potential and demonstrated capacity to excel in school and assume leadership roles in the United States and the global community. Quite simply, the report, titled "Do High Flyers Maintain Their Performance: Performance Trends of Top Students," <http://www.edexcellence.net/publications/high-flyers.html> suggested that this nation's brightest students are the unintended victims of the lofty goals of the No Child Left Behind Act. Rather than making the much-heralded "adequate yearly progress" that is supposed to characterize school success, they are losing ground when their performance is tracked over time.
The Fordham report followed a Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, report <http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/32/50/46623978.pdf> in December 2010. Not only had a majority of 15-year-old students in the United States lagged in mathematics and science performance, but America's top students compared dismally with their peers across the globe. In math, only 1.9 percent of U.S. students scored in the 95th percentile on the assessment's highest proficiency level, below the average of 3 percent of the total sample of students from other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development-member nations, and well below the top students in South Korea (7.8 percent), Switzerland (7.8 percent), Singapore (15.6 percent), and Shanghai (26.6 percent).
"In a nation devoted to the underdog, we seem to have forgotten that gifted students need to grow, too."
Why can't more of our brightest students attain this high level of proficiency? And, why should we care? Here's why: Providing for the continued growth, development, and achievement of our most capable students is akin to betting on the favorite. The most-talented students are most likely to bring this nation out of the economic basement, create new inventions, cure deadly diseases, and, yes, restore the United States to its former place as the international leader in innovation and scholarship. In a nation devoted to the underdog, we seem to have forgotten that gifted students need to grow, too. In fact, in many ways, gifted students are the new underdogs in American education.
Our struggle to bring all students up to a minimum level of proficiency is a laudable and necessary goal. However, attention to the majority has caused the nation to lose sight of the equally valid learning needs of the most-capable students in our care. Several factors have created this situation. First, fears of elitism permeate our collective understanding of the role of schools in a democracy. Second, justifiable rejection of rigid tracking policies has resulted in few grouping options for students who can learn more quickly than their peers, while classroom instruction remains at a uniformly homogenous level.
No one wants to see any student condemned to substandard education, a result of some tracking systems. However, the brightest students are condemned to working at levels below their potential. At the same time, acceleration to the next grade is often not considered or even allowed, despite research-based evidence, such as the 2004 report "A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America's Brightest Students," that documents the benefits of acceleration for our top students. Finally, most teachers have not been trained to work with highly able students in the regular classroom, and that's where most of the high-flying students can be found.
In the past decade, the emphasis on standardized testing has resulted in an information-retrieval model of instruction and assessment, rather than the problem-solving and higher-order thinking on which advanced learners thrive. Struggling to improve the performance of the majority of students, teachers often have neither the skill nor the will to differentiate instruction to meet the needs of their highest-performing students.
Last year, U.S. Reps. Elton Gallegly, R-Calif., and Donald M. Payne, D-N.J., along with U.S. Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Robert P. Casey Jr., D-Pa., introduced a bipartisan bill as part of the reauthorization process for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, currently known as No Child Left Behind. The TALENT (To Aid Gifted and High-Ability Learners by Empowering the Nation's Teachers) Act would require that state assessments capture when students perform above grade level and report the educational growth of the most-advanced students on state report cards required under NCLB. This would represent a critical improvement in the current reporting system and drive schools to consider the educational development of the highest-achieving students. It would also spur policymakers and curriculum developers to provide more-advanced curriculum for high-achieving students. It would expand professional-development opportunities for teachers and establish research initiatives to explore ways that teachers can support and serve high-ability students. The bill is still awaiting action in Congress.
As a former high school teacher and coordinator of programs for gifted students, I know firsthand the frustrations of the very capable student who must slog through drill-and-kill reviews every fall while teachers ensure that everyone is up to speed and ready to move forward. The situation repeats itself throughout the school year, as teachers and students progress toward the annual standardized tests that will be used to determine individual teachers' effectiveness.
The focus on teacher accountability has accentuated the very real pressures on teachers to make sure that all students perform at an accepted level of proficiency, and I am in no way suggesting that teachers are maliciously neglecting the brightest students in their classes. However, when one's job security is on the line, good will and the intention to differentiate instruction for highly able students easily fall prey to meeting the needs of the majority. If gifted youngsters already meet the minimum-proficiency standards, there is no need to move them forward. For now, there is no federal mandate to meet their academic needs.
Moreover, the states lack the grit, will, and resources to provide for these students. The TALENT Act would provide resources for highly able students and for professional development that would foster advanced teaching in the regular classroom. The students are there, waiting and longing to be instructed at the levels they are capable of attaining. How much longer must they—and we—wait?
Frances R. Spielhagen is an associate professor of education and the co-director of the Center for Adolescent Research and Development at Mount Saint Mary College, in Newburgh, N.Y., and the author of Completing the Equation: The Algebra Solution to Mathematics Reform (Teachers College Press, 2011). From 2009 to 2011, she co-chaired the education committee of the National Association for Gifted Children. She is the editor-in-chief of the Middle Grades Research Journal.
Vol. 31, Issue 21, Pages 28-29
Don't Leave Gifted Students Behind
High achievers are essential to global competition
By Frances R. Spielhagen
The annual wars, aka school budget deliberations, are about to begin. Across the nation, states and local districts will once more struggle to maintain educational integrity in the face of annual budget shortfalls, "race to the top" to grab federal dollars, and, hopefully, improve overall student achievement.
Yet, as all eyes are focused on making sure that most, if not all, students meet minimum standards, one group continues to suffer from a kind of benign neglect that actually is not benign at all. These are the very students who can succeed at the highest levels, our gifted students. In classrooms from coast to coast, these students are languishing. They are simply not progressing and learning commensurate with their potential.
Last fall, a report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute brought into sharp focus the decline in achievement among the top students in our nation, those with the potential and demonstrated capacity to excel in school and assume leadership roles in the United States and the global community. Quite simply, the report, titled "Do High Flyers Maintain Their Performance: Performance Trends of Top Students," <http://www.edexcellence.net/publications/high-flyers.html> suggested that this nation's brightest students are the unintended victims of the lofty goals of the No Child Left Behind Act. Rather than making the much-heralded "adequate yearly progress" that is supposed to characterize school success, they are losing ground when their performance is tracked over time.
The Fordham report followed a Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, report <http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/32/50/46623978.pdf> in December 2010. Not only had a majority of 15-year-old students in the United States lagged in mathematics and science performance, but America's top students compared dismally with their peers across the globe. In math, only 1.9 percent of U.S. students scored in the 95th percentile on the assessment's highest proficiency level, below the average of 3 percent of the total sample of students from other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development-member nations, and well below the top students in South Korea (7.8 percent), Switzerland (7.8 percent), Singapore (15.6 percent), and Shanghai (26.6 percent).
"In a nation devoted to the underdog, we seem to have forgotten that gifted students need to grow, too."
Why can't more of our brightest students attain this high level of proficiency? And, why should we care? Here's why: Providing for the continued growth, development, and achievement of our most capable students is akin to betting on the favorite. The most-talented students are most likely to bring this nation out of the economic basement, create new inventions, cure deadly diseases, and, yes, restore the United States to its former place as the international leader in innovation and scholarship. In a nation devoted to the underdog, we seem to have forgotten that gifted students need to grow, too. In fact, in many ways, gifted students are the new underdogs in American education.
Our struggle to bring all students up to a minimum level of proficiency is a laudable and necessary goal. However, attention to the majority has caused the nation to lose sight of the equally valid learning needs of the most-capable students in our care. Several factors have created this situation. First, fears of elitism permeate our collective understanding of the role of schools in a democracy. Second, justifiable rejection of rigid tracking policies has resulted in few grouping options for students who can learn more quickly than their peers, while classroom instruction remains at a uniformly homogenous level.
No one wants to see any student condemned to substandard education, a result of some tracking systems. However, the brightest students are condemned to working at levels below their potential. At the same time, acceleration to the next grade is often not considered or even allowed, despite research-based evidence, such as the 2004 report "A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America's Brightest Students," that documents the benefits of acceleration for our top students. Finally, most teachers have not been trained to work with highly able students in the regular classroom, and that's where most of the high-flying students can be found.
In the past decade, the emphasis on standardized testing has resulted in an information-retrieval model of instruction and assessment, rather than the problem-solving and higher-order thinking on which advanced learners thrive. Struggling to improve the performance of the majority of students, teachers often have neither the skill nor the will to differentiate instruction to meet the needs of their highest-performing students.
Last year, U.S. Reps. Elton Gallegly, R-Calif., and Donald M. Payne, D-N.J., along with U.S. Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Robert P. Casey Jr., D-Pa., introduced a bipartisan bill as part of the reauthorization process for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, currently known as No Child Left Behind. The TALENT (To Aid Gifted and High-Ability Learners by Empowering the Nation's Teachers) Act would require that state assessments capture when students perform above grade level and report the educational growth of the most-advanced students on state report cards required under NCLB. This would represent a critical improvement in the current reporting system and drive schools to consider the educational development of the highest-achieving students. It would also spur policymakers and curriculum developers to provide more-advanced curriculum for high-achieving students. It would expand professional-development opportunities for teachers and establish research initiatives to explore ways that teachers can support and serve high-ability students. The bill is still awaiting action in Congress.
As a former high school teacher and coordinator of programs for gifted students, I know firsthand the frustrations of the very capable student who must slog through drill-and-kill reviews every fall while teachers ensure that everyone is up to speed and ready to move forward. The situation repeats itself throughout the school year, as teachers and students progress toward the annual standardized tests that will be used to determine individual teachers' effectiveness.
The focus on teacher accountability has accentuated the very real pressures on teachers to make sure that all students perform at an accepted level of proficiency, and I am in no way suggesting that teachers are maliciously neglecting the brightest students in their classes. However, when one's job security is on the line, good will and the intention to differentiate instruction for highly able students easily fall prey to meeting the needs of the majority. If gifted youngsters already meet the minimum-proficiency standards, there is no need to move them forward. For now, there is no federal mandate to meet their academic needs.
Moreover, the states lack the grit, will, and resources to provide for these students. The TALENT Act would provide resources for highly able students and for professional development that would foster advanced teaching in the regular classroom. The students are there, waiting and longing to be instructed at the levels they are capable of attaining. How much longer must they—and we—wait?
Frances R. Spielhagen is an associate professor of education and the co-director of the Center for Adolescent Research and Development at Mount Saint Mary College, in Newburgh, N.Y., and the author of Completing the Equation: The Algebra Solution to Mathematics Reform (Teachers College Press, 2011). From 2009 to 2011, she co-chaired the education committee of the National Association for Gifted Children. She is the editor-in-chief of the Middle Grades Research Journal.
Vol. 31, Issue 21, Pages 28-29
Monday, February 20, 2012
American Historical Association: The Tuning Project
What Should History Degree-Holders Know and Be Able to Do?
By Julia Brookins, AHA Special Projects Coordinator
Washington, D.C.—The American Historical Association (AHA) is initiating a nationwide, faculty-led project to articulate the core of historical study and to identify what a student should know and be able to do at the completion of a history degree program. Professors Anne Hyde (Colorado College) and Patricia Limerick (University of Colorado Boulder) will lead accomplished faculty from more than sixty colleges and universities across the country to frame common goals and reference points for post-secondary history education. The project will engage employers, alumni, students, and others in exploring and enhancing how the study of history provides the foundation for a life of active citizenship, continued learning, and successful employment.
This “Tuning” project, supported by a grant from Lumina Foundation (Indianapolis, IN), will test the possibility of harmonizing the nation’s diverse degree programs in a single discipline. Initiated in Europe a decade ago and extended since then to higher education settings in six continents, Tuning has been adapted to the structure of American higher education only in more localized settings. Drawing in part on those pilot initiatives, AHA Tuning project members will convene in June 2012 and February 2013 to draft and refine commentaries on the skills, methods, and substantive range they believe characterize the study of history. Faculty participants will then build on this collaborative work inside their own classrooms and departments by aligning specific curriculum elements to the common competencies requisite for history degree-holders. Participants will scale these learning goals to introductory, upper-level, and capstone courses, as well as to three degree levels (Associate’s, Bachelor’s, or Master’s). The AHA Tuning project will provide history faculty with a hands-on, collegial process to begin defining the terms of assessment that can best measure and demonstrate what and how their students learn.
The AHA’s initiative to “tune the history major” encompasses three broad objectives:
- To articulate the core abilities, habits of mind, and knowledge required of their discipline;
- To develop a clear, common language to express the distinctive value of history for students, employers, and public culture. Students who can see clearly what they are learning, and why, are better equipped to direct their studies towards lifelong learning, meaningful employment, and civic participation;
- To provide a nationwide framework in which historians can design the systems used by their institutions to measure their achievements as teachers.
“This project is part of the AHA’s emphasis on facilitating communication among historians and between historians and the general public,” says Executive Director James Grossman. “Our members will generate curricular frameworks that combine common themes and practices with the flexibility appropriate for institutions with different missions and circumstances.”
###
Contact: Julia Brookins, AHA Special Projects Coordinator (tuning@historians.org)..
Lumina Foundation, an Indianapolis-based private foundation, is committed to enrolling and graduating more students from college—especially 21st century students: low-income students, students of color, first-generation students and adult learners. Lumina’s goal is to increase the percentage of Americans who hold high-quality degrees and credentials to 60 percent by 2025. Lumina pursues this goal in three ways: by identifying and supporting effective practice, through public policy advocacy, and by using our communications and convening power to build public will for change.
The American Historical Association serves historians representing every historical period and geographical area. Its approximately 14,000 members include historians in colleges, universities, schools, museums, historical organizations, libraries, archives, business, and government, along with independent scholars and nonprofessionals with an abiding interest in history. The AHA provides leadership for the profession, protects academic freedom, develops professional standards, aids in the pursuit and publication of scholarship, and supplies services to sustain and enhance the work of its members.
Friday, February 17, 2012
OpSail Announces The Star-Spangled Banner and War of 1812 Essay and Art Contest
ATTENTION HAWAII HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS:
WIN A RIDE ON A TALL SHIP!
SAIL TRIUMPHANTLY INTO PORT WITH A FLEET OF TALL SHIPS
Operation Sail, Inc., the national non-profit organization that produces tall ship events commemorating patriotic American milestones, announced its sponsorship of an essay contest and an art contest for high school students in association with the USS Constitution Museum, the National Maritime Historical Society, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard.
The prize, awarded in each of six ports, will be a ride on the Coast Guard tall ship Eagle.
OpSail has partnered with the Navy, Coast Guard, and navies around the world to commemorate the bicentennial of the writing of The Star-Spangled Banner and the War of 1812.
Some of the world’s largest sailing ships will sail into six major east coast ports from April through July, 2012.
Tall ships and navy warships will form up in parades of sail to begin week-long festivities this spring and summer in six cities: New Orleans LA, New York NY, Norfolk VA, Baltimore MD, Boston MA and New London CT.
Essay contest entrants will write a 1,000-word essay on one of three topics:
• THE ROLE OF USS CONSTITUTION AND THE U.S. NAVY IN THE WAR OF 1812
• WHAT THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER MEANS TO ME
• THE ROLE OF THE REVENUE CUTTER SERVICE IN THE WAR OF 1812
Essays must be submitted as a Microsoft Word attachment in 12 point, Times New Roman font, double spaced, with one-inch margins. The entrant’s name, email and port of interest must appear on the top right-hand corner of the front page. Essay entries should be emailed to opsail2012-essay@opsail.org.
Art contest entrants must submit a copy of their original watercolor, oil, or pencil drawing/painting, no greater than 18 inches x 18 inches depicting one of three topics:
• WHAT THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER MEANS TO ME
• A MARITIME SCENE FROM THE WAR OF 1812
• A REVENUE CUTTER IN ACTION DURING THE WAR OF 1812
Copies of original artwork must be submitted in JPG format under 6 mb in file size. The entrant’s name, email and port of interest must appear in the body of the email. Art entries should be emailed to opsail2012-art@opsail.org. Winners must agree to submit original artwork for display.
Contestants must follow specific deadline and submission requirements. The contests are open to students enrolled in public, parochial or private high schools and who will be at least 12 years old by date of the event for which their work is submitted. The prize is passage on a tall ship for a day during OpSail 2012.
One prize will be awarded in each OpSail event city: New Orleans LA, New York NY, Norfolk VA, Baltimore MD, Boston MA, and New London CT. Entrants must name the one port for which their work is competing (see table below) and meet the deadline for that port city. Deadlines for essays and artwork:
Port Due Date (2012)
New Orleans, LA March 16th
New York, NY April 20th
Norfolk, VA May 4th
Baltimore, MD May 11th
Boston, MA May 25th
New London, CT June 1st
Essays will be judged by a panel of experts led by William H. White, historian and author, and members of the National Maritime Historical Society. Art will be judged by a panel of experts from the USS Constitution Museum. One winner (and one parent/guardian) will be invited to ride the U.S. Coast Guard barque Eagle or a comparable tall ship as the vessel participates in an OpSail Parade of Sail, weather permitting. Winners must arrange for their own transportation to the city where the tall ship sails. Winners may be asked to video record their essays for use by OpSail and must agree to media interviews. Winners agree that their essay or art work may be used for promotional purposes. Submissions become the property of Operation Sail, Inc. for use in print or other media as Operation Sail in its sole judgment determines.
For student/teacher questions about rules, contact:contest@opsail.org.
For more information about OpSail, please visit their website.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
The Polynesian, Honolulu: Washington Refusing a Crown! (1845)
Washington Refusing a Crown!
The Polynesian. Honolulu: October 11, 1845.
J.J. Jarves, Editor.
The following letter has recently been brought to light by Mr. Sparks. It was written in a reply to a proposition made to Washington at the conclusion of the war, by certain officers of his army, to accept a crown. The following sentiments show the republican spirit than animated the man.
“Sir-With a mixture of great surprise and astonishment, I have read with attention the sentiments you have submitted to my perusal. Be assured, sir, no occurrence in the course of the war has given me more painful sensations than your information of there being such ideas existing in the army as you have expressed, and which I must view with abhorrence, and reprehend with severity. For the present, the communication of them will rest in my own bosom, unless some further agitation of the matter shall made a disclosure necessary.
I am much at a loss to conceive what part of my conduct could have given encouragement to an address which to me seems big with the greatest mischiefs that can befall my country. If I am not deceived in the knowledge of myself, you could not have found a person to whom your schemes are more disagreeable.
Let me conjure you, then, if you have any regard for your country, concern for yourself or posterity or respect for me, to banish these thoughts from your mind, and never communicate as from yourself or any one else, a sentiment of the like nature.
I am, &c.
GEO. WASHINGTON.”
Hawaii State Library System CLOSED February 18-20, 2012
We wanted to remind our history teachers, students, history buffs and, indeed everyone, that due to the Presidents Day holiday the Hawaii State Library System will be closed Saturday, February 18 through Monday, February 20, 2012. The libraries will reopen again on Tuesday morning, February 21.
We at History Education Hawaii wish everyone an enjoyable and historical Presidents Day holiday. HEH will reopen its offices on Tuesday. As always, feel free to e-mail HEH anytime!
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