Library

Advanced Placement

Jay MATHEWS, "Making AP Work for Students," The Washington Post, Fairfax Extra, December 15, 2005, p. 23. SUMMARY: This artilce talks about the improvement in Fairfax County Schools for 2005, and ranks the various county's in the Washington area.

Attention Deficiency Disorder

Research article in the April issue of the journal Pediatrics reinforces concerns over the effect of children under two watching too much television at all. SUMMARY: "A child that watched two hours of television a day, before the age of three, would be 20 percent more likely to have attentional problems at age seven, compared to a child who didn't watch any television during that period."
John MAYNARD, "Young Kids and TV: Parents Tune In to Study," The Washington Post, May 18, 2004, p. C11. SUMMARY: "There's certainly been no shortage of studies linking television with violence, obesity and poor performance in school." Now a study published in the scientific journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics has parents concerned about a "correlational" (rather than cause-effect) relationship between young children's TV watching and the eventual development of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Mary Ellen SLAYTER, "Attention Deficit Defiance," The Washington Post, May 22, 2005, p. K1. SUMMARY: Teachers tend to consider students that cannot "focus" on a single task as having ADHD, but as adults we are frequently "graded" on our ability to perform multitasking where "an inability to stay focused on a single task is not an issue."

Autism

Eric GOODE, "Lifting the Veils of Autism, One by One by One", The New York Times, February 24, 2004. SUMMARY: Summarizes what has been learned about autism over the past 40 years and discuses areas where research is taking place.
Jane GROSS, "For Families of Autistic, the Fight for Ordinary," The New York Times, October 22, 2004. SUMMARY: "More and more families with autistic children are finding that techniques that have proved successful in the classroom -- behavioral methods that evolved from the psychologist B. F. Skinner, visual instructions and adaptations of the environment -- can be tried at home not only to maximize learning for an autistic child but also to improve the quality of life for the rest of the family."
Amy HARMON, "Answers, but No Cure for a Social Disorder That Isolates Many", The New York Times, April 29, 2004. SUMMARY: Article discusses "Asperger's syndrome, an autistic disorder notable for the often vast discrepancy between the intellectual and social abilities of those who have it."
Benedict CAREY, "To Treat Autism, Parents Take a Leap of Faith, The New York Times, December 27, 2004. SUMMARY: "More that 60 years after it was first identified, autism remains mystifying and stubbornly difficult to treat. About the only thing parents, doctors and policy makers agree on is that the best chance for autistic children to develop social and language skills is to enroll them in some type of intensive behavioral therapy."
Shankar VEDANTAM, "300,000 Children in U.S. Found to Have Autism," The Washington Post, May 5, 2006, p. A9. SUMMARY: Data comes from two surveys released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and the article mentions that the numbers are declining since Thimerosal started to be removed from children's shots in July 1999, exposing them to less mercury.

Biotechnology Education

Rosalind S. HELDERMAN, "Va. Biotech High School Planned: Institute Would Create Program for Loudoun," The Washington Post, March 25, 2004. SUMMARY: The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, headquarted in Chevy Case, Maryland, plans to fund a magnet program to enroll 250 students in a Sterling, Virginia, school allowing them to use equipment often found only in university laboratories.

Bullying

Amy HARMON, "Internet Gives Teenage Bullies Weapons to Wound From Afar, The New York Times, August 26, 2004. SUMMARY: While schools and parents have long been aware of the importance of addressing physical bullying and sexual harassment at school, they are only more recently coming to appreciate how "the technology lubricating the social lives of teenagers is amplifying standard adolescent cruelty. No longer confined to school grounds or daytime hours, 'cyberbullies' are pursuing their quarries into their own bedrooms."

College Admissions

OP-ED COLUMNIST, "Stressed for Success?" The New York Times, March 30, 2004. SUMMARY: SAT scores are important, but grades are more important, and the greatest success in professional life comes from perseverance, imagination and trustworthiness.
Jay MATHEWS, "Choices: Ignoring the Ivy Itch," The Washington Post, April 5, 2004, p. C10 SUMMARY: While we are always going to want "the best" for our children, it's important to remember that "Routes to Sucess Often Skirt Top-Band Universities." MATHEWS provides 12 facts to help deal with this truth.
Valerie STRAUSS, "First Test for College-Bound: Choosing an SAT," The Washington Post, April 20, 2004, p. A7. SUMMARY: A "new SAT" will make its debut in March 2005, and students will have the choice of taking the current version, the new one, or both. This article discusses the options and issues involved.
Jay MATHEWS, "Advanced Courses in High School May Not Mean Success at College: Report Urges Students to Take Exams After Honors Programs," The Washington Post, December 23, 2004, p. A7. SUMMARY: "College-level courses offered in high school, such as Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB), do not appear to improve academic performance in college, unless students take the tests at the end of each course.... But...performing well on the difficult exams is a better predictor of success in college than nearly anything else in a student's high school record."

Dyslexia

Rebecca F. JOHNSON, "Sorting through dyslexia," USA Today, August 10, 2004, p. 5D. SUMMARY: Six percent of American K-12 students are formally identified with a learning disability; and 80% of the learning disabilities affect reading. But dyslexia can be conquered with time.

Eating Habits

Eric NAGOURNEY, "Have an egg, save a tooth," International Herald Tribune," January 29, 2004, p. 9. Summary: The Journal of the American Dental Association reports that children who skip breakfast tend to be at much greater risk for tooth decay.

Ethics

Valerie STRAUSS, "For More Schools, Teaching Morals Is Right," The Washington Post, June 1, 2004. SUMMARY: More schools are opting to teach ethics, concerned not just about the politics of "self-esteem," but with the development of character. As the article quotes one teacher, "conscience is like a muscle. We either practice it and it grows, or it atrophies."

Fiscal Literacy

Valerie STRAUSS, "Schools Investing in Fiscal Literacy," The Washington Post, February 17, 2004, p. A12. Summary: While financial education is needed, surveys indicate financial knowledge is declining. Credit unions are stepping forward to help students learn about personal finance basics.

G.E.D.

Karen W. ARENSON, "More Youths Opt for G.E.D., Skirting High-School Hurdle," New York Times, May 15, 2004. SUMMARY: The Graduate Equivalency Degree, generally know as the G.E.D. and created to help World War II veterans earn the equivalent of a high school diploma, is generating controversy as a result of the growing numbers of young people opting for G.E.D. programs over more traditional programs.

Grades

Jay MATHEWS, "A to F Scale Gets Poor Marks but Is Likely to Stay," The Washington Post, October 18, 2005, p. A10. SUMMARY: Universal use in the United States restricts possibility of change in the letter grade system established in 1883. Discusses some examples of schools that "buck the system."

Graduate Record Exam

Tamar LEWIN, "Testing Service Delays Rollout of Revamped Graduate Exam," New York Times, February 22, 2006. SUMMARY: The new version of the Graduate Record Exam is being delayed until the fall of 2007 because of delays in setting up enough Internet-based test centers. "The revamped exam will...change the verbal reasoning section so that it will consist of two 40-minute sections rather than one 30-minute section, and will place less emphasis on vocabulary and more on higher cognitive skills. The quantitative reasoning section will grow from one 45-minute section to two 40-minute sections, with fewer geometry questions and more on interpreting tables and graphs. And the analytical writing measure, which had a 45-minute essay and a 30-minute essay, will now have two 30-minute essays." All in all, the GRE will grow from two and a half hours to about four hours in length.

High School

Valerie STRAUSS, "The Next Step: Eight Grade; Kings of the Hill, at the Foot of a Mountain," The Washington Post, November 15, 2005, p. A8. SUMMARY: "Educators are increasingly concerned about the reading ability of the country's eighth-graders, with new results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress showing that 71 percent of them read at the basic or below basic level." The article lays out a comparison between Eighth-Grade Testing in 1895 and today.
Jay MATHEWS, "The Next Step: Ninth Grade; Crucial Year Can Be Precipice or Springboard," The Washington Post, December 13, 2005, p. A12. SUMMARY: About 12% of students repeat the ninth-grade and, of them, as many as 80% of them will never complete high school.

History

Oregon Trail,
http://www.field-trips.org/tours/ss/otrail/_tourlaunch1.htm offers a selection of materials about the Oregon Trail.
American history, diplomacy and law documents, http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/avalon.htm

Hyperlexia

Shankar VEDANTAM, "Studying Hyperlexia May Unlock How Brains Read: Children With Rare Disorder Have Heightened Reading, Learning Skills," The Washington Post, Monday, March 1, 2004, p. A8. SUMMARY: The opposite of dyslexia, hyperlexia may help explain how brains accomplish the feat of reading, but results in slow verbal communication and difficulty grasping social rules.

Home Schooling

John CLOUD and Jodie MORSE, "Seceding From School: Home Sweet School", Time Magazine, 2001. SUMMARY: Makes the point that the home schooling movement is nothing to "giggle" about!
"How to Homeschool", familyeducation.com
Dorthy RICH, "Learning Curve," The Washington Post, January 11, 2004, p. B7. Summary: Learning is mysterious, can take place outside the classroom paradigm, and requires an open mind.
Isabel SHAW, "Pre-Homeschooling Checklist", familyeducation.com
"Subject Toolkits", familyeducation.com
Isabel SHAW, "Making the Transition from Parent to Homeschool Teacher", familyeducation.com
Isabel SHAW, "Homeschooling Your Child with Special Needs", familyeduction.com
"Thinking About Homeschooling", National Home Education Network
Brian D. DAY, "Home Educated and Now Adults: Their Community and Civic Involvement, Views About Homeschooling, and Other Traits," National Home Education Research Institute
Brian D. DAY, "Worldwide Guide to Homeschooling: Facts and Stats on the Benefits of Home School," National Home Education Research Institute

Language

Diane ACKERMAN, "We Are Our Words," Parade, May 30, 2004, p. 8 and p. 10. SUMMARY: Learning language can start as early as around 6 months. Multilingualism helps train the brain to focus and ignore the irrelevant.
Valerie STRAUSS, "Love of Learning Language Transcends All Ages," The Washington Post, April 26, 2005, p. A4. SUMMARY: "Linguists say youth isn't a requirement to master new tongues;" "more schools are adding Latin classes;" and sample questions from the Modern Language Aptitude Test.

Learning Disabilities

Martha Randolph CARR, "My Son's Disability, and My Own Inability to See It," The Washington Post, January 4, 2004, p. B5. Summary: When parents recognize that they are part of the problem, children with learning disabilities can began to believe in themselves and their ability to overcome adversity.
Greg WINTER, "Alaska Agrees to Let Disabled Have Help on a School Exam," The New York Times, August 3, 2004. SUMMARY: This article discusses some of the progress being made toward accommodations to avoid penalizing students with physical or learning disabilities.
Marguerite KELLY, "How to Dance Around Early Learning Problems," The Washington Post, January 28, 2005, p. C8. SUMMARY: This article tells adults to worry less and spend more time working with children, and provides examples of what can be done to help children. "Most schools expect students to read 25 to 50 words by sight at the end of kindergarten, and to write most of their letters, although some may write them backward or use only the first and last sound of a word."

Lesson Plans

New York Times lesson plans on wide range of subjects for grades 6-12 can be found on the following website: http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/lessons/archive.html

Literacy in English

Sam DILLON, "Literacy Falls for Graduates From College, Testing Finds," The New York Times, December 16, 2005. SUMMARY: The National Assessment of Adult Literacy "test...found steep declines in the English literacy of Hispanics in the United States, and significant increases among blacks and Asians." "'These are big sifts,' said Mark Schneider, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, the arm of the Department of Education that gave the test."

Math and Reading

Floyd NORRIS, "U.S. Students Fare Badly in International Survey of Math Skills," The New York Times, December 7, 2004. SUMMARY: American high school students (15-year olds) have "the poorest outcomes per dollar spent on education...ranking 28th of 40 countries in math and 18th in reading."
Valerie STRAUSS, "Math Educators Find Common Denominators," The Washington Post, December 21, 2004, p. A10. SUMMARY: A "peace summit" designed to see whether common ground could be found among American participants in the so-called Math Wars over how to best teach math agreed on the following: 1) "Heavy reliance on calculators in the early elementary grades is a bad idea." 2) "Elementary school children must have automatic recall of number facts, meaning that, yes, they have to memorize multiplication tables." 3) "Children must master basic algorithms."
Sam DILLON, "Young Students Post Solid Gains in Federal Tests," The New York Times, July 15, 2005. SUMMARY: "America's elementary school students made solid gains in both reading and mathematics in the first years of this decade, while middle school students made less progress and older teenagers hardly any, according to federal test results.... For teenage students, the results showed a direct relation between higher scores and more time spent on homework." In the older group, students are spending less time studying and the negative results is evident.
Sam DILLON, "Bush Education Law Shows Mixed Results in First Test," New York Times, October 20, 2005. SUMMARY: "The first nationwide test to permit an appraisal of President Bush's signature education law rendered mixed results...with even some supporters of the law expressing disappointment."
Lois ROMANO, "Test Scores Move Little in Math, Reading: Improvement Appears Slight Since No Child Left Behind," Washington Post, October 20, 2005, pp. A3 and A7. SUMMARY: "Overall, test scores are inching up in math but remaining stagnant in reading." A partial explanation offered is that "...the nation's changing demographics, which show a doubling of the number of Hispanic students in the last 15 years, some of whom may be struggling with the English language" and "need additional attention."
Diana Jean SCHEMO, "Public-School Students Score Well in Math in Large-Scale Government Study," The New York Times, January 27, 2006. SUMMARY: In a large-scale government-funded study by the University of Illinois, once socioeconomic factors like income, ethnicity and access to books and computers at home were considered, students in public schools fared better than those in private schools on math tests.
Daniel De VISE, "Calculating Beyond Their Years," The Washington Post, February 6, 2006, pp. B1 and B6. SUMMARY: "Some Washington area high school students are pushing so far ahead in math courses that Advanced Placement, the widely accepted pinnacle of pre-collegiate study, no longer goes far enough. Students are pushing the boundaries of math in high school because of a corresponding surge in high school-level math in middle schools. Driving the trend is a conviction that algebra, long the exclusive province of high schools and colleges, is a fundamental pre-collegiate skill that should be taught as soon as students are ready to learn it."

Washington Post

Online Education

Washington Post

Parenting

Jack PETRASH, "Parenting: Hold Them Close, Then Let Go," The Washington Post, January 5, 2004, p. C10. SUMMARY: The need for protecting our children has to be counter-balanced with their need to become self-reliant.
John GATTO, The Underground History of American Education, New York: The Odysseus Group, 2002-2003. SUMMARY: An alternative view to American Education.
A. O. SCOTT, "Taking the Kids, Guided by Gut and Guesswork," The New York Times, December 16, 2005. SUMMARY: A Movie Critic, "moonlighting as an unpaid parenting consultant," gives advice on how to decide "what's right" for your children to view at the movies.

Private Schooling

Jeanne SAHADI, "Can you really afford private school?", CNN/Money, February 9, 2004. SUMMARY: Reviews the cost of a private education in American today, and examines issues such as financial aid.

Public Education

Patrick WELSH, "Class Focus: It's Not Just Poor Students Who Need Attention," The Washington Post, November 13, 2005, p. B1 and B4. SUMMARY: Many of the children public schools lose to private schools are average students whose parents feel they'll be left behind in public school, and the author argues that "in many ways they're right."

SAT

Barbara WHITAKER, "Students' Verdict on the First SAT Essay Test? Uncertainty," The New York Times, April 17, 2005. SUMMARY: Some 300,000 students took the first administration of the revised college entrance exam, and among them were 107 who received a perfect score. The new twist was the newly created writing test: "You can't fake good writing."
Tamar LEWIN, "SAT Essay Scores Are In, but Will They Be Used?", The New York Times, May 15, 2005. SUMMARY: "Many universities are still grappling with how, when and even if they will use the new scores."

Social Promotion

Marlene HEATH, "A Failure Policy That Succeeds," The New York Times, March 30, 2004. SUMMARY: Retention of failing students is one of the best things that can be done for children who need more time to develop skills.

Success

Jay MATHEWS, "Self-Disipline May Beat Smarts as Key to Success," The Washington Post, January 17, 2006, p. A10. SUMMARY: "Self- disipline is a better predictor of academic success that even IQ."
"Gender Gap in Good Habits," The Washington Post, January 17, 2006, p. A10. SUMMARY: "It seems at least plausible that women are more self-disciplined than men, but that beyond college, other psychological, social, and cultural factors swamp the self- discipline edge."

Suicide

Charles BABINGTON, "Out of a Son's Suicide, a New Mission," The Washington Post, May 5, 2006, p. A17. SUMMARY: Book review of Remembering Garrett: One Family's Battle With a Child's Depression, by Gordon H. Smith, United States Congressman from Oregon. "Perhaps the book's most useful section is a 13-page appendix on resources, including Web addresses for groups dealing with depression, mental illness and suicide. Two examples are the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (www.afsp.org) and the Columbia University TeenScreen Program (www.teenscreen.org)."

U.S. Government

Video Games

Jose Antonio VARGAS, "Problems You Can Shake a Joystick At," The Washington Post, October 18, 2004. SUMMARY: Entertainment video games have gone "serious." With the United States Military taking the lead, the "emerging serious-games movement is trying to...bring the concept of hands-on simulation training to as many activities as possible."
Michel MARRIOTT, "Weaned on Video Games," The New York Times, October 28, 2004. SUMMARY: "A report last fall by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a health policy research organization, found that half of all 4- to 6-year-old children have played video games.... Of children 3 or younger, 14 percent have played video games." The article notes that "it is unclear whether video games teach preschool children more about phonics and problem solving than about simply how to tool around in a virtual playground."

Virtual Field Trips

Virtual Field Trips in Education covering topics such as Antarctica, Aquifers, Baking Bread, Deserts, Dinosaurs, Endangered Species, Fierce Creatures, Hurricanes, Shakespeare, and more can be found at http://www.field-guides.com/index.htm

Working Mothers

Lynn R. CHARYTAN, "The Same Mom, On the Job or Off," The Washington Post, November 14, 2005, p. C10. SUMMARY: A working mother home on paid sabbatical reaches five conclusions: 1) "Character traits don't disappear when you stop working;" 2) "...the things that bug you when you work, bug you when you're home;" 3) "You don't get a stress-free life because you're home full-time;" 4) "You still say 'hurry up, hurry up' incessantly when you're home;" and 5) "...kids are who they are."