Group items tagged

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires public accommodations (businesses and non-profit organizations) to provide goods and services to people with disabilities on an equal basis with the rest of the public. Businesses and non-profit organizations that serve the public are to remove architectural barriers when it is "readily achievable" to do so. The information and website links in the message I am forwarding (below my signature) are available courtesy of the Great Lakes ADA Center.

"The school field trip has a long history in American public education. For decades, students have piled into yellow buses to visit a variety of cultural institutions, including art, natural history, and science museums, as well as theaters, zoos, and historical sites. Schools gladly endured the expense and disruption of providing field trips because they saw these experiences as central to their educational mission: schools exist not only to provide economically useful skills in numeracy and literacy, but also to produce civilized young men and women who would appreciate the arts and culture. More-advantaged families may take their children to these cultural institutions outside of school hours, but less-advantaged students are less likely to have these experiences if schools do not provide them. With field trips, public schools viewed themselves as the great equalizer in terms of access to our cultural heritage."

Wall Street's excesses blew up the economy. Now the question is who pays to clean up the mess. Across the country, our children are already paying part of the bill -- as their schools are hit with deep budget cuts. A new report -- Starving America's Public Schools: How Budget Cuts and Policy Mandates are Hurting our Nation's Students -- released today by the Campaign for America's Future and the National Education Association, looks at five states to detail what this means to kids in our public elementary and secondary schools. (Full disclosure: I co-direct the Campaign.) The findings are sobering.

"A new Department of Public Instruction webpage and video explore best ways of implementing the practice of co-teaching, in order to help all children, including those with disabilities, succeed. The DPI invites comments about co-teaching from Wisconsin educators through a simple form at dpi.wi.gov/sped/educators/consultation/co-teaching, a page which is still evolving."

"Chartered in 1966 as Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, Education Northwest now conducts nearly 200 projects annually, working with schools, districts, and communities across the country on comprehensive, research-based solutions to the challenges they face. Our wide-ranging projects are making an impact in areas such as school improvement, community building, literacy, equity, and research. Although our services and publications have national reach, we primarily work in the five Northwest states of Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington."

"In this post, I am going to describe #Opensem, an Open-Pedagogy-powered First-Year Seminar (FYS) that I taught this past Fall at my small, public university in New Hampshire. While following certain parameters set by the university regarding learning outcomes and goals for the FYS program, I ran the course as an experiment in radical OpenPed. I say "radical" not because it's anything brand new or particularly edgy, but because it takes some of the basic principles of Open Pedagogy as I have been conceiving of them and puts them into practice in the fullest ways that I could imagine within the confines of my institution."

The Center for Assistive Technology (CAT) was created by the School of Public Health and Health Professions at the University of Buffalo. It is a center that "conducts research, education, and service to increase knowledge about assistive devices for persons with functional impairments of all ages." The center focuses on four main areas, (1) "Research, Development, Transfer, and Commercialization," (2) "Education Programs," (3) "Client Assessment & Training Services," and (4) "Dissemination." These four areas include faculty members from approximately thirteen departments at the University of Buffalo. The website created by CAT provides information about the program as a whole, current research, educational programs and services that they provide, as well as current projects and past projects. As a special educator, I would use this website to learn about new assistive technology programs that would be beneficial for my students. I would also use this site to learn about workshops for educators that teach about new assistive technology. This information would be very beneficial during transition and career development time because it would provide me with the most recent information to give to my students.

How can educators align transition goals with standards-based education? Addressing the individual needs of students with disabilities and successfully meeting academic standards for all students is challenging. Therefore, it is critical that innovative curricula emerge that combine standards-based academics with transition planning to facilitate access to general education, including multiple-outcome measures and learning supports (Kochhar-Bryant & Bassett, 2002). This website is all about enhancing transition outcomes by using technology. The Ohio State University developed a standards-driven computer-based curriculum for students with disabilities in grade 8-10. They emphasized 3 skills: reading competencies, information literacy skills, and career planning. This would be great for a special educator to read and adopt the standards that OSU developed. It is interesting to see what different states are doing in the field as we at times tend to stay in our own little bubbles.

"The Annenberg Institute for School Reform (AISR) at Brown University and the John W. Gardner Center (JGC) at Stanford University have each received three-year grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to work together to select a network of sites and develop models for College Readiness Indicator Systems (CRIS). As part of this collaborative effort, AISR and JGC develop, test, and disseminate effective tools and resources that provide early diagnostic indications of what students need to become college ready. The two organizations serve complementary, but distinct roles. JGC develops and studies the implementation of a tri-level (individual, setting, and system) early warning system using a flexible, "design-build" approach with the partner districts. AISR focuses on cross-site learning; brokering expertise and supports for partner districts; understanding issues related to district, municipal, state, and federal contexts; and process documentation. The CRIS sites are Dallas, New Visions for Public Schools (New York City), Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and San Jose, California."

"Childhood has always had its fears - from monsters under the bed, to sleep-away camp, to schoolyard bullies. But normal jitters, about these and other childhood challenges, become an issue when they interfere with regular activities, from riding the bus to going to bed at night. And this kind of debilitating anxiety seems to be on the rise: now affecting close to 1 in 5  kids"

As countless headlines have blared recently, there is a growing demand for what are often called "middle-skill" jobs. Jobs that require more than high school typically but less than a baccalaureate degree; jobs that pay well. Just this week, the USAToday reported on, "Where the jobs are: The new blue collar." Career and technical education (CTE) is the starting point for these and other occupations. But not all CTE we find in today's public schools provides the proper beginning of a career pathway -- a pathway that builds on credentials business and industry recognize and value. What is needed is a revisioning of CTE to meet the more challenging demands of providing students with the skills they need to move through a viable career pathway and continue their education and training to make that pathway a reality. What is needed is high-quality CTE.

School start times for adolescents in the United States are typically too early to be healthy for this age group. There is significant evidence from the research literature that early starts have serious negative impacts on students. In particular, early education start times in adolescence cause chronic sleep deprivation, which damages both adolescents' education and health. Fortunately, chronic sleep deprivation is one of the more preventable public health issues facing the nation.

The "Digest of Education Statistics, 2013," from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), part of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), is the 49th in a series of publications initiated in 1962. Its primary purpose is to provide a compilation of statistical information covering the broad field of American education -- from pre-kindergarten through graduate school -- drawn from government and private sources, but especially from surveys and other activities led by NCES. The digest contains data on the number of schools, students, and teachers, as well as statistics on educational attainment, finances, libraries, technology, and international comparisons. Details on population trends, education attitudes, labor force characteristics, and federal aid supplies helpful background for evaluating the education data.

Here is a new online tool to calculate the cost savings and benefits of hiring a person with a disability. It includes customized results by type of business and listing of resources by State. The tool, known as "Hire Gauge," asks for basic information including the company's size, location and industry in order to provide an assessment of the expenses and incentives involved in selecting a job applicant with a disability. It is believed to be the first online tool to provide businesses with a real-time look at the tax incentives and other benefits they can tap into when hiring individuals with disabilities, according to officials with Think Beyond the Label, a public-private partnership which created Hire Gauge and supports disability employment.

"How to share data effectively: Tips for administrators, teachers, and families | These tip sheets can help administrators, teachers, and families identify the best ways to share student data in meaningful ways, on a regular basis, to strengthen family-school partnerships and promote student learning."

With this report Third Way is continuing NEXT-a series of in-depth commissioned research papers that look at the economic trends that will shape policy over the coming decades. In particular, we're bringing this deeper, more provocative academic work to bear on what we see as the central domestic policy challenge of the 21st century: how to ensure American middle class prosperity and individual success in an era of everintensifying globalization and technological upheaval. It's the defining question of our time, and one that as a country we've yet to answer.

"Bullseye is a public radio show about what's good in popular culture. With a keen editorial eye, Bullseye sifts the wheat from the chaff, and brings you hot culture picks, in-depth interviews with the most revered and revolutionary creative people and irreverent original comedy. Bullseye is equal parts funny and fascinating. Whether you're already plugged in to the culture map, or looking for a signpost, Bullseye will keep you on target."

"Based at the University of California, Berkeley, the GGSC is unique in its commitment to both science and practice: not only do we sponsor groundbreaking scientific research into social and emotional well-being, we help people apply this research to their personal and professional lives. Since 2001, we have been at the fore of a new scientific movement to explore the roots of happy and compassionate individuals, strong social bonds, and altruistic behavior-the science of a meaningful life. And we have been without peer in our award-winning efforts to translate and disseminate this science to the public."