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These articles are in-depth, not time sensitive and of interest to people with a concern for children and their education. Please feel free to suggest articles for this page by sending the link to Weaver.
Snooze or Lose
By Po Bronson - New York Magazine, October 7, 2007
Overstimulated, overscheduled kids are getting at least an hour's less sleep than they need, a deficiency that, new research reveals, has the power to set their cognitive abilities back years.
Using newly developed technological and statistical tools, sleep scientists have recently been able to isolate and measure the impact of this single lost hour. Because children's brains are a work-in-progress until the age of 21, and because much of that work is done while a child is asleep, this lost hour appears to have an exponential impact on children that it simply doesn't have on adults.
How to Get Kids to Sleep More
By Ashley Merryman - New York Magazine, October 7, 2007
Asking sleep experts for advice on how to put children to bed often feels like an exercise in futility. The standard tips are banal and predictable: avoid caffeine; remove the TV from their bedroom; don't sleep on a full stomach; put up dark blinds. You have the feeling the experts are holding out on us'there has to be something more. And there is. Here's the stuff they'd love to tell you, if they weren't afraid of overwhelming you with science.
Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops
By Winnie Hu - The New York Times - May 4, 2007
"...laptops had been abused by students, did not fit into lesson plans, and showed little, if any, measurable effect on grades and test scores at a time of increased pressure to meet state standards. Districts have dropped laptop programs after resistance from teachers, logistical and technical problems, and escalating maintenance costs. " Free registration required.
Schools Reconsider Laptops as Educational Tools
Talk of the Nation, May 9, 2007 - Educators and politicians have pushed the goal of a laptop for every student. But a number of early adapting schools say the laptops aren't helping, and critics argue that the computers are simply a distraction.
Courageous Leaders: Engaging All Students and Sustaining Their Success
by Alan M. Blankstein, compiled by Jessica Baumer - Texas Assoc. of School Administrators Journal, Insight - page 12
Leaders who find "moral purpose" in themselves and in others are on the road to becoming couragious leaders. For these leaders, falure is not an option for any child, and they engage others in bulding this common philosophy - along with a supportive culture, structures, and pedagogy to make it come alive.
Really? The Cafeteria? That's Great!
Dayle Hayes - School Nutrition Magazine
Borrowing ideas from your commercial competitors may be the best secret to serving savvy students.
Dayle Hayes, RD will be presenting at the MEMSPA State Conference in November 2007.
Still Separate, Still Unequal: America's Educational Apartheid
JONATHAN KOZOL / Harper's Magazine
Many Americans who live far from our major cities and who have no firsthand knowledge of the realities to be found in urban public schools seem to have the rather vague and general impression that the great extremes of racial isolation that were matters of grave national significance some thirty-five or forty years ago have gradually but steadily diminished in more recent years. The truth, unhappily, is that the trend, for well over a decade now, has been precisely the reverse. Schools that were already deeply segregated twenty-five or thirty years ago are no less segregated now, while thousands of other schools around the country that had been integrated either voluntarily or by the force of law have since been rapidly resegregating.
Leave No Child Inside - The Growing Movement to Reconnect Children and Nature
By Richard Louv - Orion Magazine
The movement to reconnect children to the natural world has arisen quickly, spontaneously, and across the usual social, political, and economic dividing lines.
How Not to Talk to Your Kids: The Inverse Power of Praise
By Po Bronson - New York News and Features
According to a survey conducted by Columbia University, 85 percent of American parents think it's important to tell their kids that they're smart. In and around the New York area, according to my own (admittedly nonscientific) poll, the number is more like 100 percent. Everyone does it, habitually. The constant praise is meant to be an angel on the shoulder, ensuring that children do not sell their talents short.
But a growing body of research - and a new study from the trenches of the New York public-school system - strongly suggests it might be the other way around. Giving kids the label of "smart" does not prevent them from underperforming. It might actually be causing it.
Invest in Hope, America, Not Despair
By Jesse Jackson - Chicago Sun-Times
Per-pupil spending on elementary and secondary education in the state is about 60 percent of what it costs to cage a prisoner annually. Tuition at a public university is about one-third the cost of a year in prison, for an in-state student. Alabama is paying millions to house inmates in other states. Alabama -- and this country -- could invest in hope on the front side instead...It would cost less and generate more productive citizens.
Why don't we invest in hope?
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