By April Dembosky in San Francisco and Maija Palmer in London

A war for talent is raging in Silicon Valley where internet companies, from big groups such as Google down to the smallest start-up, are scrambling to find the best technology specialists, sending ripples to labour markets from London to Bangalore.
Large California-based companies are raising salaries and bonuses to prevent seasoned employees from defecting to a competitor, while compensation for junior engineers just leaving university has gone up 30-50 per cent in the last year, according to several industry insiders.
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ON THIS STORY
Creating new ways to woo the best
Wall Street vs Silicon Valley
India's IT industry on recruitment spree
FT tech hub
In depth Google
Microsoft in April announced a pay rise for its 90,000 employees. That followed Google raising salaries by 10 per cent at the end of last year to prevent a loss of talent to other Silicon Valley companies such as Facebook.
"The competitive intensity is extremely high, and the best people, in many cases, are getting multiple offers, multiple counteroffers," says Jim Breyer, an investor at Accel Partners, who leads recruiting efforts for companies the firm invests in. "Each week, by phone, e-mail, or in person, I interview 10 young technologists, executives, or potential leaders for our portfolio companies."

Product designers, even more than back-end computer programmers, are in highest demand, Mr Breyer says. Because so many new companies are building software for consumers - such as social networks and mobile applications - the skills to design easy-to-use, appealing interfaces are at a premium. "Designers and people who have experience at companies like Apple are in extraordinarily short supply," he says.
Data scientists - the number crunchers who test consumers' receptiveness to a green button over a red button, or a 20 over a 10 pixel image, and feed this information to product designers - are also in high demand. The information they provide is critical to companies that are focused on attracting user clicks and demonstrating growth to their investors.
The trend has been slower to spread to Europe, with the result that for the first time in decades, London is considered by some as the "cheap" place for hiring developers. This comes at the same time as venture capitalists are finding the investment climate in Silicon Valley inflated, with increasing talk of a second bubble forming, with the result that investments in Europe are seeing a lift.
"Hiring is so expensive in San Francisco. It is one of the reasons we have kept our development team in London," says Alicia Navarro, chief executive of Skimlinks, an online marketing technology provider which is based in London and Silicon Valley.
"It is still hard even in London, where you are competing with banks that can pay double the salaries. But it is better than San Francisco."
Qliktech, a Swedish business intelligence company, moved its headquarters to the US in 2002 and listed on Nasdaq last year. However, it has kept its development team in Lund, a university town in the south of Sweden, where the company can have more stability in its workforce.
Anthony Deighton, head of sales at Qliktech, said: "Being in Sweden and being successful has benefited us. Many employees have worked there for 10 years. You can't find engineers who have worked at one company like that in Silicon Valley. It is impossible. The cost of a developer is not their salary, it is having to rehire them and retrain them."
Recruiters note that demand for IT staff is increasing rapidly in Europe. Logica, the IT services company with offices across Europe, is increasing its graduate hiring this year from 2,500 to 4,000. About 1,000 of those graduates are to be hired in France.
Alex Farrell, managing director at The IT Jobs Board, a technology recruitment website, says she recently took a call from an employer in Germany who was looking for 1,000 consultants. "I have never come across that in the 15 years I have been in IT recruitment," she says.
In the UK, Ms Farrell says there had been a 16 per cent increase in job advertisements on the IT Jobs Board over the past year. For certain skills - such as programming for mobile devices, cloud computing, creating e-commerce applications and banking technology - demand has nearly doubled.
Competition for the best employees is also heating up in Asia, particularly India, where churn - the number of people who leave each year - is now about 17 per cent, up from the more common 10-12 per cent, according to Nasscom, the IT industry lobby.
Indian IT companies are looking to combat this by recruiting students earlier, with help from big IT services companies such as TCS, Infosys and Wipro.
In Silicon Valley too, some start-ups are plucking students from university before they graduate, a tactic used in the 1990s internet boom, says Harj Taggar, a partner at Y Combinator, an incubator for technology start-ups.
He cites how PayPal employees at that time hung around the computer labs at the University of Illinois talking to students to build interest in the company. That's happening again, Mr Taggar says, and the scale of it is increasing as more start-ups launched by younger founders receive funding.

WH Twitter

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What would you #AskObama?

Tomorrow's event has the White House all a-Twitter. At 2pm EDT, President Obama will participate in the first Twitter town hall at the White House to discuss the economy and jobs with Americans across the country. The entire event will be streamed live at WhiteHouse.gov/live. Right now, thousands of people are talking about the event and asking questions on Twitter, using the #AskObama hashtag. Take a moment to join the conversation and ask your own question. Don't know what a Twitter hashtag is, or where to start? We've put together an overview of the event and a link to some more information about how to get started from Twitter here:

Don't forget: @ 2pm EDT tomorrow, head over to WhiteHouse.gov/live to watch President Obama and this exciting event. P.S. If you are on Twitter and can't make the town hall tomorrow, take a moment to "follow" @WhiteHouse. It's a great way to stay current with what's happening in the Obama Administration. And if you'd like to contact the White House, but don't use Twitter, you can always use the form at WhiteHouse.gov/Contact.

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Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation: America's Science and Technology Talent at the Crossroads
In order for the United States to maintain the global leadership and competitiveness in science and technology that are critical to achieving national goals, we must invest in research, encourage innovation, and grow a strong and talented science and...

The book is on line free . http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12984&utm_medium=etmail&utm_source=National%20Academies%20Press&utm_campaign=NAP+mail+New+7.5.11&utm_content=web&utm_term=

Save our Schools March and National Call to Action
http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/about/guiding-principles/


Save Our Schools March & National Call to Action!
July 28-31, 2011 in Washington, D.C. and around the country
We're putting the Public back in public schools!

We, a collection of people from all walks of life and every corner of this nation, embody a mixture of ideas and opinions regarding how we can improve educational opportunities for all children. We stand united by one belief - it's time for teachers and parents to organize and reclaim control of our schools.

As concerned citizens, we demand an end to the destructive policies and rhetoric that have eroded confidence in our public schools, demoralized teachers, and reduced the education of too many of our children to nothing more than test preparation.

A well-educated society is essential to the future of the United States of America. Our students must have access to a fully funded, world-class public education system, and it is our responsibility to hold our government accountable for providing the means to achieve it. Please join us!

July 30: DC Rally & March

The rally will officially begin at noon at the Ellipse, but arrive early to enjoy performances, art, and more!

At noon, Diane Ravitch, Jonathan Kozol, José Vilson, Deborah Meier, Monty Neill, and other speakers, musicians, performance poets, and more will encourage, educate, and support this movement and the Save Our Schools March demands.

At 1:30 p.m., we will march to the White House, where the demands will be read, we'll demonstrate, and engage in a call for continued action to reclaim schools as places of learning, joy, and democracy.

If you can't make it to DC, follow the site to find out more about ways to participate in or plan actions in your local area!

Position Papers
http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/resources/position-papers/

Guiding Principles
[Translate]
For the future of our children, we demand:


http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/about/guiding-principles/


Equitable funding for all public school communities

Equitable funding across all public schools and school systems

Full public funding of family and community support services

Full funding for 21st century school and neighborhood libraries

An end to economically and racially re-segregated schools

An end to high stakes testing used for the purpose of student, teacher, and school evaluation

The use of multiple and varied assessments to evaluate students, teachers, and schools

An end to pay per test performance for teachers and administrators

An end to public school closures based upon test performance

Teacher, family and community leadership in forming public education policies

Educator and civic community leadership in drafting new ESEA legislation

Federal support for local school programs free of punitive and competitive funding

An end to political and corporate control of curriculum, instruction and assessment decisions for teachers and administrators

Curriculum developed for and by local school communities

Support for teacher and student access to a wide-range of instructional programs and technologies

Well-rounded education that develops every student's intellectual, creative, and physical potential


Opportunities for multicultural/multilingual curriculum for all students

Small class sizes that foster caring, democratic learning communities

By Audrey Watters / July 2, 2011 12:30 PM / 19 Comments
Hacker News
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There seem to be three forces at play when it comes to education and social media. The first is a lack of force, quite frankly - the inertia that makes many educators unwilling and uninterested in integrating the technology into their classrooms. The second is the force of fear - the pressures on the part of administrators, district officials, and politicians to curtail and ban teacher and students' interactions online. (See Rhode Island's recently passed legislation that outlaws all social media on school grounds as a case in point.) And finally, the third force is that of more and more educators who are embracing social media and advocating its use on- and off-campus - for student learning and for teacher professional development alike.

I spent this past week with many of those teachers at the International Society for Technology in Education conference in Philadelphia, and when Google unveiled Google+ on Tuesday, most of us were otherwise preoccupied. But now that many of the early tech adopter teachers are getting their Google+ invites, the question on their minds is "How will this work for education?"
entrepreneur.

Plus Potentials for Schools
The first reaction among many educators is that Google+ could work well. As a post on the Apps User Group points out, there is a lot of potential with Google+: better student collaboration through Circles, opportunities for blended learning (a combination of offline and online instruction) with Hangouts, project research with Sparks, and easier school public relations with targeted photo-sharing, updates, and messaging.

Privacy: As Google's own description of the new social feature highlights, it may well be the granular level of privacy afforded by Google+ that is the key to making this a successful tool for schools. Although some educators do use Facebook or Twitter in the classroom, neither of these are ideal in a school setting. Privacy concerns continue to plague Facebook and Facebook users, and although the addition of Facebook Groups late last year did make it easier for educators to have "private" conversations with smaller groups, many schools and teachers have still been reluctant to "friend" students or use the social networking site for educational purposes.

And while Twitter has been embraced by many educators - for both professional development and for back-channeling in the classroom - there's still that "always public" element of Twitter that makes many nervous.

True, Circles gives teachers and students better control over sharing and by extension could be the key to making many more comfortable with social networking. But sharing online isn't simply about weighing privacy concerns; it's also about sharing with the right people. Circles will allow what educational consultant Tom Barnett calls "targeted sharing," something that will be great for specific classes and topics.

Educational Hangouts: Sharing isn't just about pushing information out, of course. It's also about finding and hearing the right information and right people. And like most of the new users to Google+, it may be Hangouts that have educators most intrigued. Skype has become an incredibly popular tool to bring in guests to a classroom via video chat - so much so that Skype has launched a service to help match interested teachers and classrooms. But as those weighing a move to a Google Chromebook are quick to discover: Skype isn't a Web app. Hangouts, on the other hand, is, and many teachers are already talking about the possibility of not just face-to-face video conversation but the potential for integration of whiteboards, screen-sharing, Google Docs, and other collaborative tools.

Plus Minuses for Schools
These early reactions from educators echo what seems to be the general consensus about Google+: it's very cool. But there's a big gap between this initial excitement and more widespread adoption - particularly when it comes to schools.

Limited Field Trial: The most obvious obstacle right now to that adoption of Google+ for education is the limited nature of the field trial. The number of people using the service remains small, and as many of the educators there are early adopters - already active on Twitter, for example, already challenging their schools to be more proactive with technology integration - it's hard to gauge whether or not Google+ really will see wider usage.

Google Apps Integration: The second problem, of course, is that Google+ is not yet integrated with Google Apps accounts. To use Google+, you need a Google Profile, a feature not yet available with Google Apps for Education. However, a Google spokesperson assures me that that's coming soon and that "we're working to bring features in the Google+ project to Google Apps users in the future." Indeed, Google Enterprise's Dave Girouard posted enthusiastically on Google+ that "Can't wait to get Google+ out to some of our Apps for EDU schools!"

For its part, Google says that it wants to make sure to "get it right" in terms of the technology and in terms of the privacy controls before bringing Google+ to its Apps for Edu customers. Google could offer no timeline for that roll-out.

Web Filtering: Of course, Google's efforts are just part of the puzzle, and while Google+ may be a no-brainer for its Apps for Edu customers, there are still many schools which have been slow to adopt technology and have been quick to block all social networking sites on campus. Even Google's own YouTube is blocked at a lot of schools. While students name this one of the biggest obstacles in their use of technology at school, the schools claim they must do so to "protect the children."

Will schools block Google+? Or will the finely-tuned privacy controls it offers trump schools', parents', and politicians' concerns?

The early ed-tech adopters I've talked to seem excited about the possibilities for having a place where students and teachers alike can embrace "the social" and collaborate in the classroom, at home, across the school, and with others around the world. As it stands, those activities are now scattered across Twitter, Nings, and wikis. To have them under one Google roof is a big educational play. Will it be the one to help more schools realize the potential for social media and collaboration tools?

See Also
Thanks to Google Plus, Picasa Gets Unlimited Storage for Photos & Videos, Also Better Tagging
Google Plus...the Facebook Page
Games, Questions & Shared Circles: Google Plus's Next Big Features Discovered in its Code?
Google Plus' Circles System May Not be Sustainable

NEA goes after Education Secretary Arne Duncan
By Valerie Strauss
The Answer Sheet
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/nea-goes-after-education-secretary-arne-duncan/2011/07/03/AG72ClwH_blog.html

National Education Association delegates blasted Education Secretary Arne Duncan, passing a resolution that orders the NEA president to "communicate aggressively, forcefully, and immediately" to President Obama that the teachers union "is appalled" by a number of things Duncan has said and done in the name of school reform.

The resolution of the country's largest union (see below) includes a list of Duncan's actions and statements with which the NEA disagrees, including his standardized test-driven reform policies..

The resolution underlines the sharp animosity that exists among many public school teachers toward Duncan's Education Department. But, with obvious calculation, the NEA does not blame Obama for the policies even though they all have his imprimatur.

In fact, the union's leadership decided in May to ask their legislative body to approve an endorsement of Obama in the 2012 presidential race despite the great disagreement over reform policy.

NEA President Dennis Van Roekel said in May that whatever conflict the union has with the Obama administration, he imagines it would only be worse with any of the Republicans who are either candidates now or considering jumping into the race.

A number of Republican governors have recently launched attacks on the collective bargaining rights of teachers and other public sector workers. The Obama administration has opposed the GOP actions.

The union is effectively between a rock and a hard place - supporting a president with whom it has fundamental disagreements about policy -- and the resolution, combined with the endorsement, appears to be its way of maneuvering in that very small space.

Obama is not, however, likely to take especially kindly to any attack on his education secretary. Obama has known Duncan for years, and has been nothing but supportive.

Many supporters of Obama in the 2008 election have expressed disappointment in his education policies. They had believed that he would gut No Child Left Behind and turn back the high stakes test-dominated education era that it launched. Obama's Race to the Top initiative has, instead, escalated business-driven reforms.

Here's the resolution adopted today by the NEA's legislative body:

ADOPTED AS AMENDED

The NEA Representative Assembly directs the NEA President to communicate aggressively, forcefully, and immediately to President Barack Obama and US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan that NEA is appalled with Secretary Duncan's practice of:

1. Weighing in on local hiring decisions of school and school district personnel.

2. Supporting local decisions to fire all school staff indiscriminately, such as his comments regarding the planned firings in Central Falls, RI.

3. Supporting inappropriate use of high-stakes standardized test scores for both student achievement and teacher evaluation, all while acknowledging that the currently available tests are not good.

4. Failing to recognize the shortcomings of offering to support struggling schools or states, but only in exchange for unsustainable state 'reform' policy.

5. Focusing too heavily on competitive grants that by design leave most students behind-particularly those in poor neighborhoods, rural areas, and struggling schools-instead of foundational formula funding designed to help all the students who need the most support.

6. Not adequately addressing the unrealistic Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) requirements that brand thriving or improving schools as failures.

7. Forcing local school districts to choose from a pre-determined menu of school improvement models that are unproven and have been shown to be ineffective and bear little resemblance to the actual needs of the school that is struggling.

8. Focusing so heavily on charter schools that viable and proven innovative school models (such as magnet schools) have been overlooked, and simultaneously failing to highlight with the same enthusiasm the innovation in our non-charter public schools.

9. Failing to recognize both the danger inherent in overreliance on a single measurement and the need for multiple indicators when addressing and analyzing student achievement and educators' evaluations.

10. Failing to recognize the need for systemic change that helps ALL students and relies on shared responsibility by all stakeholders, rather than competitive grant programs that spur bad, inappropriate, and short-sighted state policy.

11. Failing to recognize the complexities of school districts that do not have the resources to compete for funding, particularly in rural America, and failing to provide targeted and effective support for those schools and school districts.

12. Failing to respect and honor the professionalism of educators across this country, including but not limited to holding public education roundtables and meetings without inviting state and local representatives of the teachers, education support professionals, and faculty and staff; promoting programs that lower the standards for entry into the profession; focusing so singularly on teachers in the schools that the other critical staff members and higher education faculty and staff have been overlooked in the plans for improving student learning throughout their educational careers.

13. Perpetuating the myth that there are proven, top-down prescribed 'silver bullet' solutions and models that actually will address the real problems that face public education today, rather than recognizing that what schools need is a visionary Secretary of Education that sets broad goals and tasks states, local schools districts, schools, educators, and communities with meeting those goals.

Further, the NEA Representative Assembly directs the NEA Executive Committee to develop and implement an aggressive action plan in collaboration with state and local leaders that will address the issues above.

Starting November 2011, the NEA President will provide regular updates to the delegates on the progress of this plan throughout the year.

Cost Implications

Activities to fulfill the requirements of this NBI can be undertaken within the proposed Modified 2011-2012 Strategic Plan and Budget at no additional cost.

Follow The Answer Sheet every day by bookmarking http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet. And for admissions advice, college news and links to campus papers, please check out our Higher Education page. Bookmark it!

By Valerie Strauss | 04:41 PM ET, 07/03/2011



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By Stephen Sawchuk on July 2, 2011 4:12 PM | No comments | No recommendations

The delegation just passed New Business Item B, which encourages all NEA members to participate in the "Save Our Schools" grassroots rally taking place in Washington, D.C., on July 30.

As my colleague Erik Robelen wrote about earlier, the rally's organizers generally criticize things like standardized testing, teacher accountability, school "privatization," and what they deem the "corporate reform" movement. It will include speakers like historian-cum-advocate Diane Ravitch, celebrities, and other officials.

America's Next Educational Crisis
Posted: 07/ 1/11 11:51 AM ET

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/franklin-schargel/americas-next-educational_b_883381.html


High-quality teachers are critical to accelerating student achievement.
--Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education
Leadership is second only to classroom instruction among all school related factors that contribute to what students learn at school.

--How Leadership Influences Student Learning, 2005, Wallace Foundation
America faces a severe school dropout problem, and students who leave school do not cause it. Far more teachers, by percentage, drop out of school than students. According to a variety of sources, 46 percent of teachers leave the field--drop out--within 5 years. A conservative national estimate of the cost of replacing public school teachers who have dropped out of the profession is $2.2 billion a year.

Let's look at some data: If the cost of replacing public school teachers who transfer schools is added in, the total cost reaches $9 billion every year (Alliance for Excellent Education, August 2005). For individual states, cost estimates range from $8.5 million in North Dakota to half a billion dollars in Texas. In the next decade, according to the U.S. Department of Education, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association, U.S. schools will need approximately 2 million new teachers. The large number of teachers who will be retiring are taking with them their knowledge and expertise, which will exacerbate the situation. It is not only the loss of warm bodies that concerns us, but also the difficulty of building an experienced base of teaching and learning techniques that the new, inexperienced and weakly trained staff will need time to accumulate. Some states already faced with the problem are issuing emergency licenses, thereby weakening, rather than strengthening, the teaching cadre of their schools. Some administrators have had to hire teachers with little or no classroom experience, causing classroom management problems, not only for those newly hired but also for the classrooms and teachers nearby. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, the federal legislation for standards-based education reform, gives parents the right to know the qualifications of their children's teachers and paraprofessionals. Teachers are the most essential component in the learning process. Far too many school districts are facing an uphill battle when it comes to recruiting and retaining highly effective teachers, especially those who serve poor students. In fact, students in poor and minority schools are twice as likely to have an inexperienced teacher and are 61 percent more likely to be assigned an uncertified teacher.

Consider the following:
1. "Every school day, nearly a thousand teachers leave the field of teaching. Another thousand teachers change schools, many in pursuit of better working conditions. And the figures do not include the teachers who retire" (National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, 2003).

2. That number is dramatically higher in hard-to-staff schools in the inner city and in minority neighborhoods where poverty rules. The rate of attrition is roughly 50 percent higher in poor schools than in wealthier ones (National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, 2003).

3. Among teachers who transferred schools, lack of planning time (65 percent), too heavy a workload (60 percent), problematic student behavior (53 percent), and a lack of influence over school policy (52 percent) were cited as common sources of dissatisfaction (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2001).

4. "The current teachers' shortage represents arguably the most imminent threat to the nation's schools. The U.S. Department of Education estimates that approximately 2.2 million teachers will be needed over the next decade--an average of more than 200,000 new teachers annually" (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2001).

5. We do not have a teacher shortage. The perceived teaching shortage is, rather, a retention problem. In fact, teachers are leaving the field faster than colleges are preparing new entries (Howard, 2003).

6. New teachers are particularly vulnerable because they are more likely than more experienced teachers to be assigned to low-performing schools in urban areas where the dropout rates reach or exceed 50 percent. It is here that teachers need the most assistance, yet most new teachers are given little professional support or feedback and few are provided with demonstrations of what it takes to help their students succeed (Ingersoll, 2003).

7. In the 2004-05 MetLife "Survey of the American Teacher," new teachers reported being greatly stressed by administrative duties, classroom management, and testing responsibilities as well as by their relationships (or lack thereof) with parents. Current estimates of the proportion of new teachers in urban schools who will not finish even their first year as a teacher run as high as 9.3 to 17 percent. Between 40 and 50 percent will leave during the first seven years of their career, and more than two thirds of those will do so in the first four years of teaching (Breaux & Wong, 2004).
8. We are losing the best and brightest. A study of the North Central Regional Education Laboratory (NCREL) found that a majority of superintendents in the region indicated that 75 percent to 100 percent of the teachers leaving are "effective or "very effective" in the classroom. Hare and Heap suggest that the most academically talented teachers leave in the greatest numbers (Hare & Heap, 2001). The loss of talented teachers is also significant in rural schools, which, in addition, face the problem of lower teacher salaries and the difficulty of recruiting new teachers.
9. Why is teacher turnover so high? In one analysis of teacher turnover, teachers reported that they left because of failure to receive the administrative support they expected (Ingersoll, 2003).

10. Fifty-three percent of today's teachers are Baby Boomers; in 18 states, more than half of the teachers are already over age 50; and in 17 states, 45 percent of the teaching workforce is over age 50 (Carroll & Foster, 2009).

11. A recent report, "Three Distinct Possibilities," from Public Agenda and Learning Point Associates (http://www.publicagenda.org/pages/three-distinct-sensibilities) offers a comprehensive look at how teachers across the country differ in perspectives on their profession. Based on a nationwide survey of nearly 900 teachers, the study of more than 100 questions revealed three broad categories representative of teachers across the nation that the researchers labeled "Disheartened," "Contented," and "Idealistic." The view that teaching is "so demanding, it's a wonder more people don't burn out" is pervasive, particularly among the Disheartened. This group, 40 percent of teachers surveyed, tends to have taught longer and be older than the Idealists. More than half teach in low-income schools. By contrast, teachers in the Contented group (37 percent of teachers surveyed) viewed teaching as a lifelong career. These teachers tend to be veterans--94 percent have been teaching for more than 10 years, the majority has graduate degrees, and about two thirds are teaching in middle-income or affluent schools. However, it is the Idealists (23 percent of teachers surveyed) who voiced the strongest sense of mission about teaching. More than half are 32 or younger and teach in elementary schools, and 63 percent said that they intend to stay in education, whereas 36 percent said they do plan to leave classroom teaching for other jobs in the field. One might assume teachers in public schools are those leaving the field whereas charter school teachers, who voluntarily decided to teach at nontraditional charter schools, would be more likely to stay in teaching. But a study published by the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Teachers College, Columbia University (2009) shows that for charter school teachers the odds are 132 percent greater (compared with regular public school teachers) that a teacher will leave the profession rather than staying the same school. The study also says that charter school teachers are 76 percent more likely than public school teachers to switch schools than to stay at the same school. The research draws on national survey data for the 2003-04 school year. The survey showed that 25 percent of charter school teachers turned over that year, compared to 14 percent of traditional public school teachers. Fourteen percent of the charter teachers left the profession altogether and 11 percent moved to a different school. Among the public school teachers, 7 percent left the profession and 7 percent switched schools. The more polished version of the study also includes some additional calculations aimed at pinpointing the reasons why so many more charter teachers are leaving. Are they quitting in frustration or leaving involuntarily? Mostly the former, according to researchers. "Compared to traditional public school teachers," they write, "charter school teachers are more likely to voluntarily leave the profession or move to a new school because they are dissatisfied with the school and its working conditions." What has caused this problem of recruiting and retaining teachers? According to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, part of the problem has been caused by the failure of America's colleges of education to adequately prepare future teachers for success. "By almost any standard, many if not most of the nation's 1,450 schools, colleges, and departments of education are doing a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st century classroom," said Duncan speaking at Columbia University in October 2009.

More than half of the nation's teachers graduate from a school of education. The U.S. Department of Education estimates that 220,000 students, or 80 percent of incoming teachers, graduate from a teachers college every year. Noting that America's schools will need to hire up to 200,000 first-time teachers annually for the next five years, Duncan said that those new teachers need the knowledge and skill to prepare students for success in the global economy. Secretary Duncan's words echo the words of Arthur Levine, former president of Teachers College at Columbia University. His report, "Educating School Teachers,'' released by the Education Schools Project (Levine, 2006), found that three of five education school alumni said their training failed to prepare them to teach. ''Teacher education right now is the Dodge City of education, unruly and chaotic. There is a chasm between what goes on in the university and what goes on in the classroom,'' said Dr. Levine, who currently serves as the president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. The report goes on to say that most teacher education programs are deeply "awed. The coursework in teacher education programs is in disarray nationwide. Unlike other professions such as law and medicine, there is no common length of study or set of required skills.

In order for schools to be eligible for the U.S. Department of Education's Race to the Top funds, states must remove legal barriers to linking student achievement data to teachers and principals. Grant applications will be scored based on state plans to differentiate teacher and principal effectiveness. Obviously, states and schools within them will now have to gather, interpret, and disseminate that information. A study by the UCLA School of Business shows that the United States Air Force has come to recognize that the cost of losing a pilot is $1,439,754. This is the cost of training and experience. While the financial cost of training a teacher might not be the same, the loss is equally significant in terms of training and experience. If we look at the business world, two of the most successful businesses (Starbucks and Southwest Airlines) believe that their most important customers are their workers. They feel that if their workers are happy, the workers will make their ultimate customer (in education, the parent and student) happy. Companies such as Goggle, Apple Computer, and Amazon are replicating this philosophy.

Can we in education come to recognize this as well? After all, students are temporary personnel while classroom educators are supposedly the "permanent party." Can we, by making our front line people happy, make our ultimate customers happy? Teaching can be a frustrating job. Unlike the idealized pictures of students sitting patiently with their hands folded, waiting for knowledge to be poured in to empty heads, today's students come to class bringing with them enormous challenges. Children are expected to deal with divorce, drugs, violence, merged families, and parents who do not speak to them. They come to school with various abilities, needs, and capabilities. For some, parents have made efforts to prepare them for learning. For others, parents have done little.

They have not taken the time nor had the energy to train their children in some of the fundamentals such as reading, studying, learning the alphabet, and even how to spell their names. School administrators need to understand these challenges and create school cultures that allow teachers to reach every child. This means that teachers need to take chances that may not always succeed. In dealing with people, we do not expect every experiment to succeed. Doctors, like teachers, do not have 100 percent success. Teachers are becoming more frustrated than ever in dealing with the problems they face.

A Possible Dream: Retaining California Teachers So All Students Can Learn (Futernick, 2007) identified challenges to teachers:
* More and more children are coming to school without family support
* Teachers are require to do more and more in a limited period of time
* Teachers are expected to be experts in all fields
* There is too little planning time
* There is too much paperwork
* Unreliable assistance from the district
* Lack of administrative support
* Working weekends without pay
* Spending summer vacations taking college classes or preparing for the next school year
* Undue pressure from parents
* Students needing more time and attention
The study gave six recommendations for retaining teachers:
1. School administrators should continuously assess teaching conditions.
2. Education funding should be increased to at least adequate levels.
3. The state should introduce administrative policies that support teachers' instructional needs.
4. Principals should focus on "high-quality teaching and learning conditions."
5. The state should establish standards for teaching and learning conditions.
6. Administrators should address specific challenges in retaining special education teachers. (Futernick, 2007)The full report is available at www.calstate.edu/teacher quality/retention/.
Clearly, something must be done to deal with the teacher dropout problem. As previously pointed out, the schools of education are failing to adequately prepare teachers. The responsibility for having the best teachers rests with those in the field--what the military calls "on the job training."
Material Excerpted from 162 Keys to School Success by Franklin Schargel

Video: DreamWorks Uses Animated Penguins to Explain Importance of High Performance Computing

DreamWorks, in partnership with the Council on Competitiveness, produced an animated short explaining how high performance computing drives economic growth and national security.

Watch the Animated Short.

reamWorks Presents the Power of Supercomputing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGSRvV9u3...
In partnership with the Council on Competitiveness, Dreamworks produced a short animated film on the importance of high performance computing to the U.S. economy...

Google is betting that its new social network, Google+, will fix what it calls the "awkward" state of online sharing--but Google isn't sharing invitations to its latest project with everyone.

Users have been clamoring for invitations to Google+, which Google launched as a limited "field trial," noting "you may find some rough edges." Access to the project is currently by invitation only, and a limited number of users were given 15 invitations apiece to bring others on board.

If you're eager to begin trying out Google+ and can't find someone with a spare invitation, you can sign up to request a Google+ account here. Google has created an entry form that asks people to submit their first name and email address so they can stay posted as the service is rolled out more fully. "We're still ironing out a few kinks in Google+, so it's not quite ready for everyone to climb aboard," Google wrote. "But, if you want, we'll let you know the minute the doors are open for real. Cool? Cool."

Google has also created a Twitter account, GooglePlus, that has been tweeting out information about the new service. (UPDATE: The account has been suspended and was allegedly not an official Google account.)

This is hardly the first time that Google has created a buzz by limiting a new service to a select group of initial users. Like Google+, Google Wave was at first available only by invitation, as was Gmail.

Check out 9 things you need to know about Google+ here, then take a visual tour of the new social network here.

Web News Briefs

1. My ISTE 2011: Takeaways from a conference

To me, ISTE - with some 13,000 attendees from 68 countries having converged on Philadelphia this week - is like looking out the window from a fast train through a dense urban area: mostly a blur, but your eye freeze-frames what's meaningful to you. So I always come away feeling enriched by the updates and insights I glean and the fresh dose of inspiration I get from connecting with people who love and work with kids and teens. Here are just a few of my freeze frames from the ISTE blur this year:

* "More and more school administrators are interested in participatory learning," said Keith Krueger, CEO of the Consortium for School Networking . CoSN research has found that "over 75% of superintendents and curriculum directors agree that Web 2.0 holds potential value for teaching and learning and 48% said some use of social Web was already in place. This is progress! [See my latest post on U13s in participatory media and ConnectSafely's "Online Safety 3.0" .
* Almost 2/3 of US high schools have robotics programs, and a lot of those involve LEGO Mindstorms , which is in about 30% of US middle schools, LEGO exhibitors told me, and the WeDo little-kid programming environment that makes it possible to program robots in elementary school!
* It was standing-room-only in a large double room for a session on "the iPad revolution" by educator Camilla Gagliolo from Arlington, Va., about how iPads are engaging and enabling special-ed students and revolutionizing learning at her school, which so far has 60 iPads (none of which have been broken, she said); her district now has about 1,000 such portable devices now in use. [Accessibility features on the iPad for special-ed and nonverbal students: VoiceOver, Zoom, Display (white on black or black on white), Speak Auto-Text, Tactile Buttons, etc. .]
* On state tests, Gagliolo said, Arlington, Va., students who had been working with iPads in both special-ed and math classes this past year tested as "Advanced."
* A teacher came in late and sat down next to me in a spellbinding session about core-curriculum instruction with World of Warcraft by teachers Peggy Sheehy (N.Y.) and Lucas Gillespie and Craig Lawson (N.C.). The latecomer whispered that she had to leave another session where the speaker made a blanket statement that there should be no communication between educators and students in Facebook. I'm thankful to be seeing more and more educators rolling their eyeballs at blanket, top-down policies about youth and social media (see this ).
* Gillespie and Lawson just released their middle-grades language-arts curriculum, "WoW in School: A Hero's Journey," which can be downloaded for free here and which teaches everything from writing and storytelling to poetry and literature to video editing to media literacy and citizenship (in this class, every student's a hero and teachers are called "lorekeepers"). Sheehy, who co-presented with Gillespie, started out her teaching with World of Warcraft in an after-school program she designed for special-ed students. It was so successful she was asked to bring it into school.
* Reporting some trends it's seeing, the 2011 Horizon Report found that digital and media and literacy are now key skills in every discipline and profession; that economic pressures are creating unprecedented competition for the traditional model of school; and that "learning is like breathing and can't be contained in school," which is why there aren't yet metrics to measure the way it's happening in today's media environment.
* "Our schools are designed so that most of our learning is at home," says ISTE keynote speaker John Medina, PhD, author of the best-selling Brain Rules . His ideal model for school, he said, is "a guided aerobic workout all day punctuated with islands of learning - the inverse of what we have now." The molecular biologist also said that every brain learns differently from every other brain (so thank goodness for a very accessible tool, the Internet, that allows for learning customization).
* In his talk about "The Best Educational Ideas in the World" (including Reggio Emilia schools and Neil Gershenfeld's Fab Lab at MIT), well-known speaker and Gary Stager point to the attitudes of thought that guide those programs: respect for each learner, authentic problems for students to solve using real tools and materials, expanded opportunities, the belief that learning is natural, collegiality, urgency, and a commitment to social justice and democracy.

Amazon.com: Toward Digital Equity: Bridging the Divide in ...
By Gwen Solomon, Nancy Allen, Paul Resta · Paperback
Amazon.com: Toward Digital Equity: Bridging the Divide in Education (9780205360550): Gwen ... This book is designed to help educators understand complex technology issues and ...
www.amazon.com/Toward-Digital-Equity-Bridging-Education/dp/0205360556

Video: DreamWorks Uses Animated Penguins to Explain Importance of High Performance Computing

DreamWorks, in partnership with the Council on Competitiveness, produced an animated short explaining how high performance computing drives economic growth and national security.

Watch the Animated Short.

reamWorks Presents the Power of Supercomputing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGSRvV9u3...
In partnership with the Council on Competitiveness, Dreamworks produced a short animated film on the importance of high performance computing to the U.S. eco...

http://newamerica.net/events/2011/ignite_or_quash_revolution

The Promise and Limitations of New Technologies in Spreading Democracy
Do the Internet and social media empower Big Brother or individuals in autocratic regimes, or do they offer a rare level playing field?

This year's Arab Spring resurrected exuberant claims for the role of new technologies in spreading democracy. At the same time self-proclaimed "cyber-realists" were quick to point out that President Mubarak's problems seemed to grow after he unplugged the Internet. Now, summer's deadly stalemate in Syria has given pause to anyone peddling absolute theories about the interplay between new information technologies and revolution.

If not a panacea, how can social media and the Internet be deployed to maximize civic engagement in autocratic societies? Does the U.S. policy of supporting Internet freedom amount to a policy of regime change in some countries? When Big Brother does unplug the Internet, what can, or should, the rest of us do about it?

Please join us at a Future Tense event on July 13 to grapple with these issues.

A reception will immediately follow the event.

AGENDA

2:00 pm - Reflecting on the Tunisian Hair Trigger

Sami Ben Gharbia (from Tunisia)
Co-founder, nawaat.org
Advocacy Director, Global Voices

Steve Coll
President
New America Foundation
2:20 pm - Internet Freedom and Human Rights: The Obama Administration's Perspective

Michael H. Posner
Assistant Secretary of State for Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor
U.S. Department of State

Moderator
Jacob Weisberg
Chairman and Editor-in-Chief
Slate Group
2:50 pm - Friending Revolutions: Social Media and Political Change in Egypt and Beyond

Merlyna Lim
Professor, Consortium of Science, Policy and Outcomes and the School of Social Transformation - Justice and Social Inquiry Program
Arizona State University
3:10 pm - How the Arab Spring Begat a Deadly Summer

Ahmed Al Omran
Blogger, Saudijeans.org

Ammar Abdulhamid
Executive Director, Tharwa Foundation
Blogger and Human Rights Activist

Oula Alrifai
Syrian Youth Activist

Moderator
Katherine Zoepf
Schwartz Fellow, New America Foundation
Contributor, New York Times
4:00 pm - Myths, Realities, and Inconvenient Truths of the Internet

Rebecca MacKinnon
Senior Schwartz Fellow, New America Foundation
Co-founder, Global Voices Online
4:30 pm - The View from Havana

Yoani Sanchez (via video)
Blogger, desdecuba.com
Human Rights Activist
4:45 pm - Internet Freedom's Next Frontiers?

Mary Jo Porter
English Translator for Yoani Sanchez and other Cuban bloggers
Co-founder, hemosoido.com and translatingcuba.com

Marcus Noland
Deputy Director, Peterson Institute for International Economics
Author,
Witness to Transformation: Refugee Insights into North Korea

Moderator
Andrés Martinez
Co-Director, Future Tense Initiative
Director, Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows Program, New America Foundation
5:20 pm - Bypassing the Master Switch

Sascha Meinrath
Director, Open Technology Initiative
New America Foundation

Ian Schuler
Senior Program Manager, Internet Freedoms Program
U.S. Department of State

Moderator
Robert Wright
Future Tense Fellow, New America Foundation
Author, Nonzero, The Moral Animal, and The Evolution of God

We are pleased to announce the publication of Origami^5: Fifth International
Meeting of Origami Science, Mathematics and Education.

You can download the Table of Contents at:

www.origami-usa.org/origami5

You can order the book from:

1. The Source: http://www.origami-usa.org/thesource/agora.cgi?p_id=B10-644

2. amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Origami-International-Meeting-Mathematics-Education/dp/1568817142/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1309403067&sr=8-1

2. Barnes & Noble:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/origami-5-patsy-wang-iverson/1100107875?ean=9781568817149&itm=1&usri=origami5

Many thanks to the Origami^5 authors and Charlotte Henderson, AK Peters
editor, for making the book a reality!!

Best regards,

Patsy Wang-Iverson, Robert J. Lang, and Mark Yim, Editors
********************************************************************
Patsy Wang-Iverson
cell: 609.532.0292
net: pwangiverson@gmail.com

Board on Science Education
http://www7.nationalacademies.org/bose/

The Board on Science Education (BOSE) is a standing board within the Center for Education which is part of the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education at the National Research Council, the operating arm of the National Academies. The Board meets biannually and its membership reflects expertise in a variety of domains within science and science education such as natural and learning scientists, educational researchers, policy professionals, science education practitioners, teacher educators, philanthropic corporate stakeholders. BOSE:

provides advice on the research and best practices for science education at all levels in school and non-school settings. For example, one recent report (Taking Science to School) was targeted at grades pre-K through 8 and another (Learning Science in Informal Environments) addressed life-long, out of school learning as well.interprets research findings to inform practice. For example, Taking Science to School has a companion practitioner's volume entitled Ready, Set, Science!develops future directions for science education research and practice. For example, a workshop was recently held on the status of mathematics and science standards, their implications, and the future research agenda.
Major Reports on K-12 Science Learning and Teaching

Learning Science in Informal Environments

Taking Science to School

Ready Set Science


NEW! Download free PDFs of NRC reports from www.nap.edu


NOW AVAILABLE! Successful K-12 STEM Education: Identifying Effective Approaches in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics

Authors:
Committee on Highly Successful Schools or Programs in K-12 STEM Education; National Research Council
Authoring Organizations
Description:
Science, mathematics, engineering, and technology (STEM) are fundamental aspects of everyone's lives as citizens, consumers, parents, and workers. Providing all students with access to high-quality education in STEM is important to their futures and that of the U.S. ...



NOW AVAILABLE! Promising Practices in Undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education: Summary of Two Workshops

Learn More


WATCH! New video based on Surrounded by Science

Learn More Surrounded by Science


BOSE on the Road! Click here to see where and when staff and committee members will be presenting at conferences.


NOW AVAILABLE! Learning Science: Computer Games, Simulations, and Education

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13158

Broader Engagement Program

Apply now for a BE grant.
Goals of the Program
The goal of the Broader Engagement (BE) Program is to increase the participation of individuals who have been traditionally underrepresented in high performance computing (HPC). The program offers special activities to introduce, engage and support a diverse community in the conference and in HPC. Competitive grants will be available to support travel to and participation in the SC'11 technical program. Consideration will be given to applicants from groups that traditionally have been underrepresented in HPC, such as African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders, and other underrepresented groups around the world, including women and people with disabilities. We encourage applications from people in all computing-related disciplines-from research, education and industry.

Information for the Grant Applicants
This year, two types of grants are available to BE participants: Standard Track and Advanced Track.

Standard Track
* Access to the standard technical program, including papers, panels, plenary sessions, birds-of-a-feather sessions and exhibits, but not including tutorials. * Access to the specialized BE community programs, including special events, the mentor/protégé program, specialized technical and professional development sessions. * Eligible for financial support for registration, lodging, travel, and incidentals.

Advanced Track
* Access to all of the standard track elements. * Access to SC11 tutorials (waiving the substantial tutorial registration fees). * Requires that applicants are responsible for their main technical program registration (at the level of society member early registration). Advanced applicants can request mentoring from the program to help the applicant find additional support for their registration. * Eligible for financial support for lodging, travel and incidentals.

There is an optional early-response/notification date by which we can notify you of acceptance into the program at the advanced level. Advanced Track applications received by Friday, July 15 can request an early notification by Friday, August 5.

Early Response Advanced Track applications due Friday, July 15, 2011.
Early Notification: Friday, August 5, 2011.

All Applications due Sunday, August 14, 2011.
All Notification: Monday, September 12, 201.1

For daily updates on BE activities follow us on Twitter.

Broader Engagement Activities at SC11:

Student Job Fair
Students will have the opportunity to have one-on-one interactions with the recruiters at the job fair.

Mentor/Protégé Program
SC11 Communities participants (Student Cluster Challenge, Student Volunteers, Broader Engagement and Education) are matched with mentors who self-identify via their registration forms. In addition to your self-scheduled interactions with your mentors, there is a Mentor/Protégé Mixer to facilitate mentor/protégé dialogues. More information can also be found on the Mentor/Protégé page.

Communities-Exhibitor Scavenger Hunt
Take part in this year's SC Communities BE Scavenger Hunt! Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to use the given clues to find each of the exhibitor booths that have agreed to be in the hunt. Each clue is linked to an exhibitor booth, which has a unique stamp. When you find a booth and its clue, spend some time in the booth, observe their displays, talk to the exhibitor and tell the exhibitor you know they are the answer to the particular clue. The exhibitor will put their stamp next to the clue and then you can move on to the next booth. This is a great chance to navigate through the exhibit floor, learn a lot and win some great prizes. The hunt starts when the exhibit floor opens and ends as the exhibit floor closes each day. Take the challenge by picking up a form at the SC Communities booth.


BE Related Websites

Job Fair: http://sc11.supercomputing.org/?pg=jobfair.html

Mentoring: http://sc11.supercomputing.org/?pg=mentor.html
Questions: be@info.supercomputing.org