Contents

• National and Global Youth Service Days, April 15^th - 17^th
• The International Baccalaureate Program’s CAS (Creativity, Action, Service) Component
• Getting Ready for the Exam: AP Calculus with Caren Diefenderfer, April 5, 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. (EST), College Board Webcast
• The NCTM conference will be held April 6 to 9
• Getting Ready for the Exam: AP Biology with Tricia Glidewell, April 6, 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. (EST)
• Getting Ready for the Exam: AP Physics with Dolores Gende, April 12, 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. (EST)
• Navigating the Last of the College Application Process: Helping Students Compare Award Letters, April 14, 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. (EST)
• Early Childhood Development: What Parents Need to Know, Tue Apr 19, 2005 - 8:00 PM ET, U.S. Dept. of Education Webcast
• Administering AP Exams: Advice and Best Practices, April 21, 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. (EST)
• National Teacher Certification, Bellevue School District
• Value-Added Assessment of Teacher Quality as an Alternative to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards: What Recent Studies Say

 

National and Global Youth Service Days, April 15^th - 17^th

"National Youth Service Day is the largest service event in the world.

Millions of youth will participate in the 17th Annual National Youth Service Day on April 15-17, 2005.

The goals of National Youth Service Day are:

• To MOBILIZE youth to identify and address the needs of their communities through service.
• To SUPPORT youth on a life-long path of service and civic engagement.
• To EDUCATE the public, the media, and policymakers about the year-round contributions of young people as community leaders.

On National Youth Service Day, a public awareness and education campaign that highlights the amazing contributions that young people make to their communities 365 days a year, young people will design and lead service-learning projects in areas ranging from literacy and the environment, to healthcare, hunger, and help for the elderly."

http://www.ysa.org/nysd/

"Global Youth Service Day (GYSD) is an annual global event organized by Youth Service America and the Global Youth Action Network, together with a consortium of 32 International Organizations and well over 100 National Coordinating Committees that Celebrates, Recognizes, and Mobilizes

• the year-round contributions of young people to build their communities and their world through voluntary service, and
• the contributions made by the community (public, private, and nonprofit sectors) for empowering young people, especially through mentoring."

http://www.gysd.net/home/index.html

 

The International Baccalaureate Program’s CAS (Creativity, Action, Service) Component

Community Service, part of CAS, is a key component of the International Baccalaureate Diploma.

Excerpt from George Mason HS’ CAS description.

"The CAS acronym stands for Creativity, Action and Service. The following is a general description provided by the IB Organization:

The IB curriculum offers a complete educational experience in which the traditional academic subjects and the less formal experiential parts are of comparable significance.

C.A.S. - Creativity, Action and Service - is fundamentally an experiential learning component of the diploma and IBO stresses great importance on C.A.S. as an integral and essential element of the IB curriculum and for the successful award of the diploma.

This philosophy is based on the assumptions that:

• education neither begins nor ends in the classroom nor in the examination hall and the essential aspects of education may exist outside both;
• an international education must go well beyond the provision of information and is inevitably involved in the development of attitudes and values which transcend barriers of race, class, religion, sex or politics;
• the will to act in the service of the community (either local, national or international) complements intellectual development and the academic curriculum;
• IB schools (both national and international) have a special challenge and opportunity to establish links with the local community and, in doing so, further the aims of international understanding;
• Creativity and Action should play an equal part with Service in any such programme. CAS should aim to challenge and extend the individual student; to develop a spirit of discovery and self-reliance; to encourage personal skills and interests; to inspire an awareness, concern and responsibility to serve the community, in general, and its disadvantaged, in particular.

IBO, as an international examinations board, is probably unique among examinations boards in giving this importance to these activities."

http://www.fccps.k12.va.us/gm/IB/cas.htm

 

Getting Ready for the Exam: AP Calculus with Caren Diefenderfer April 5, 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. (EST), College Board Webcast

http://apcentral.collegeboard.com

"Caren Diefenderfer will present strategies for familiarizing students with exam instructions and format. She will also discuss the use of calculators, the free-response commentary, and conduct a practice session with selected multiple-choice and free-response questions."

Note: 27 students in the Everett School District have registered for the upcoming AP Calculus exam to be administered in May 2005. 27 is not a huge number but it is more than last year and next year the number is likely to be bigger still. The Everett School District is ramping up, or shall we say, changing with a positive 1^st and 2^nd derivative.

 

The NCTM conference will be held April 6 to 9

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Annual Meeting, Anaheim, California, April 6-9, 2005

"Embracing Mathematical Diversity"

http://www.nctm.org/

 

 

Getting Ready for the Exam: AP Biology" with Tricia Glidewell, April 6, 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. (EST), College Board Webcast

http://apcentral.collegeboard.com

"This review session will address strategies that AP Biology teachers can use to prepare their students for the AP Biology Exam."

 

Getting Ready for the Exam: AP Physics with Dolores Gende, April 12, 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. (EST) ), College Board Webcast

http://apcentral.collegeboard.com

"Dolores Gende will address the different variations of each type of AP Exam question. For multiple-choice questions, she will discuss conceptual and computational elements, the manipulation of variables, and graphical analysis. For free-response questions, she will focus on problem solutions and lab questions. The session will also include classroom strategies and resources for conducting meaningful reviews."

 

Navigating the Last of the College Application Process: Helping Students Compare Award Letters, April 14, 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. (EST) ), College Board Webcast

http://apcentral.collegeboard.com

"This online event will better enable counselors to help students understand and evaluate financial aid awards and to determine appropriate next steps if the total aid awarded is less than the student needs."

 

Early Childhood Development: What Parents Need to Know, Tue Apr 19 2005 - 8:00 PM ET, U.S. Dept. of Education Webcast

http://registerevent.ed.gov/

The April edition of Education News will explore questions such as:

• What does the medical community tell us about the latest research on brain development and its ties to early learning?
• What do effective preschool and early literacy programs look like?
• Early literacy begins the day the child is born. What activities can parents do�in and out of the home�to help lay the important foundation for reading?
• How can early childhood programs meet the needs of all students despite drastic preparation levels?
• In what ways does poverty affect a child�s acquisition of prereading skills?
• What resources are available for parents, grandparents, childcare providers and Pre-K teachers to prepare children to be successful in school?
• What types of professional development should early childhood professionals to ensure students are prepared for elementary school?

 

Administering AP Exams: Advice and Best Practices, April 21, 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. (EST) ), College Board Webcast

http://apcentral.collegeboard.com

 

 

National Teacher Certification, Bellevue School District

The following was in the latest Bellevue School District newsletter:

"We just learned that legislative change may be coming. The proposed Washington State Senate Budget limits future bonuses to a one-time payment of $3,500 for any teacher who earns certification in the next two years, and discontinues bonuses for teachers who have already received at least $3,500. Given that the cost of pursuing National Board Certification runs about $2,300 per candidate (paid for by Bellevue Schools Foundation in our district, but by individual teachers in most districts), under the proposed Senate budget, the overall bonus would amount to $1,000 for the lifetime of the teacher."

 

Value-Added Assessment of Teacher Quality as an Alternative to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards: What Recent Studies Say

Never shying away from controversy, here is another "school" of thought on the National Board Teacher Certification issue:

http://www.education-consumers.com/Cunningham-Stone.pdf

Executive Summary

"Virtually every state is committed to increasing student achievement as measured by improved standardized test scores. Most of them, however, are also encouraging teachers to become certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS)an organization that embraces a different set of educational priorities. As a result, teachers who adhere to NBPTS standards are being recognized and rewarded while many non-certified teachers who produce far superior outcomes are being ignored.

Four recent studies have examined the annual increases in student achievement produced by NBPTS teachers and found them to be slightly larger than the average of their non-certified peers. However, relative to the achievement gaps identified by the No Child Left Behind Act, the advantage associated with NBPTS certification is trivial.

Although not intended as reports on the value-added performance of non-certified teachers, the studies comparing certified and non-certified teachers surprisingly show that the highest performing non-certified teachers are far superior to their NBPTS-certified colleagues.

The top 10 percent of ordinary classroom teachers produce achievement gains that are 10 to 20 times greater than those produced by the average NBPTS-certified teacher.

These are gains that are very substantial relative to the learning gaps revealed by NCLB, and these are teachers who currently receive no special recognition. They could be identified simply by the very kind of value-added analysis used in the present studies.

It would seem that the educational objective of increasing measured student achievement would be far better served by a policy of rewarding the teachers who produce the highest levels of achievement gain than by encouraging NBPTS certification."