In recent years, single-sex schooling in the public sector has gained momentum. There has been renewed interest in many cities across the country for two main reasons: Parents are looking for more educational choice and the academic crisis that girls and boys have been reported to experience.

The girls’ crisis was given much attention in the 1990s. Some educators responded by offering all-girl public schools to focus on their studies, work with peers and develop confidence on their way to college and employment.

In 2001, the Schott Foundation for Public Education commissioned research on the education gender gap to update data on the progress of girls. They discovered that K-12 female students were making significant progress and that males were performing less well. Nationwide, boys are nearly twice as likely as girls to be suspended, and more likely to drop out of high school. Boys comprise two-thirds of special-education students, are 1.5 times as likely to be held back a grade and 2.5 times more likely to be given diagnoses of ADHD.

The most shocking data revealed black male students showed underachievement on every school-related factor.

A complex array of gender equity concerns has led some educators to consider single-sex public education as one way to address the disparate experiences and outcomes of girls and boys. Urban educators in particular began exploring single-sex education for boys left behind.

The majority of these boys are African-American and Hispanic, a compelling rationale for innovation given the preponderance of literature that these boys are in academic and socio-economic crisis.

The 2006 Delaware State Testing Program 10th-grade reading proficiency scores are 47 percent for black boys, 52 percent for Hispanic boys, and 85 percent for white boys — a gap of almost 40 percent.

Black girls score at 69 percent, Hispanic girls at 52 percent, and white girls at 91 percent.

The 10th-grade writing proficiency scores put black boys at 52 percent, Hispanic boys at 60 percent, and white boys at 81 percent.

Black girls score at 73 percent, Hispanic girls at 61 percent, and white girls at 91 percent proficiency in writing.

The 10th-grade math proficiency scores put black boys at 28 percent, Hispanic boys at 48 percent, and white boys at 80 percent — a gap of more than 50 percent.

Black girls score at 50 percent, Hispanic girls at 42 percent, and white girls at 78 percent in math.

Several studies found that students in single-sex schools devoted more time to homework, had higher aspirations for academic and educational achievement, and wanted to be remembered for their scholastic abilities rather than leadership in activities or popularity.

Studies that find positive effects in single-sex schools emphasize that characteristics of students’ peer groups, including their academic orientation and peer influence may affect outcomes and be indirectly related to the school’s composition.

Other research suggests that some boys, particularly the disadvantaged, benefit from single-sex education. For example, Cornelius Riordan’s research indicates that “single-sex schools do not greatly influence the academic achievement of affluent or advantaged students, but they do for poor disadvantaged students … White middle-class (or affluent) boys and girls do not suffer any loss by attending a single-sex school … At worse, they realize a neutral outcome.”

One researcher has contended that disparate research outcomes for girls and boys in single-sex schools result from the overwhelming focus on girls.

Today there are nearly 360 public schools offering some kind of single-sex option in 37 states. Boys and girls’ charter and traditional public schools are doing well in high-need areas including New York, Houston and Chicago. Washington, D.C., opened its first all-boys charter school in 2006 and will open an all-girls in 2008. Philadelphia opened its first all-boys charter in 2007. Single- gender charter schools are planned for New Orleans and Atlanta.

A school for boys has now been proposed for Delaware.

Prestige Academy intends to counteract the negative social forces operating in poor communities and to address the apparent failure of conventional schooling to get many disadvantaged minority boys to identify with academic success. The scholarly and popular literature is replete with studies demonstrating the epidemic of academic failure and social dysfunction especially among minority boys living in poverty.

Prestige Academy will seek to improve choice for boys by offering a highly structured, achievement-oriented school from fifth to eighth grades. Prestige Academy’s goal is to eliminate the achievement gap and prepare students for success in demanding college-preparatory high schools.

The choice of a single-sex school is one that financially able families in Delaware have been able to make for decades. Delaware charter schools should be allowed to provide this option to the many other mothers, fathers, sons and daughters — and challenge them to dream, compete and succeed.

Source: The News Journal, DE
http://tinyurl.com/ysy8qf

“Parents do not have a constitutional right to home-school their children,” Justice H. Walter Croskey wrote in a unanimous California appeals court ruling on Feb. 28. The case in question was about child mistreatment, not school methodology. But the justice’s precedent-setting words sent shock waves throughout the state and threaten to criminalize tens of thousands of parents in California who teach their children at home.

The opinion deserved and received an immediate legal challenge.

The unexpected decision also startled many home-schooling parents across the country — including me. My wife and I home-school our children. We believe that, apart from protecting children against abuse, it is not the government’s role to dictate how parents raise their families.

The court also said that parents who teach children at home must be credentialed. If not, those teaching will be subject to criminal action.

Religious conservatives were appropriately outraged.

“How dare these judges have the audacity to label tens of thousands of parents criminals — the equivalent to drug dealers or pickpockets — because they want to raise and educate their children according to their deeply held values?” said James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, during a broadcast last week.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger also raised concerns.

“Parents should not be penalized for acting in the best interests of their children’s education,” Schwarzenegger said. “This outrageous ruling must be overturned by the courts. And if the courts don’t protect parents’ rights, then, as elected officials, we will.”

Mark May, president of the local Teaching Parents Association, estimates that 8,000 families home-school in Kansas. To do so in the state, families are required to register with the state as a private, denominational or parochial school. The teacher requirement is that the instructor be competent, and the amount of time spent schooling must be roughly equivalent to the amount required of public school students.

Nationwide there are more than 1 million students who are home-schooled. According to the National Household Education Surveys Program, the three top reasons people choose to educate their children at home are concerns about the environment of other schools, to provide religious or moral instruction, and because of dissatisfaction with the academic instruction available at other schools.

My wife and I like that we can customize our children’s education to their personality and interests.

Much research shows that students taught at home often excel academically. In 2004, an ACT profile report showed that the 7,858 home-schooled students taking the ACT scored an average of 22.6, compared with the national average of 20.9.

Home schooling isn’t for everyone, but it is a legitimate choice for many families. Most important, it’s a decision best made by parents, not by an overreaching court.

Source: The Wichita Eagle, KS
http://www.kansas.com/opinion/castillo/story/339678.html

Six months before five-year-old Gaby was due to start first grade, her mother, Rebecca, was confronted with the horrible realization that perhaps her daughter was not as smart or as developed as the other children in her kindergarten.

“The teacher told me that she was already falling behind with the prereading skills, didn’t know her numbers and that perhaps she should stay back another year before going into first grade,” recalls Rebecca, who lives just outside of Jerusalem.

“I was not keen on the idea. My daughter is very mature, and considers herself much older than she is. Emotionally I knew that she was ready to start first grade but thought that maybe she just needed another adult to sit down with her one-on-one and teach her some of the basic skills that other children her age have.

“I decided to hire a private tutor,” says the former British immigrant, adding that it is sometimes difficult for an English-speaker and busy working mother to find the time to be a teacher in Hebrew as well. “Children also don’t like to listen to a parent in that capacity. With my older son, I held back from getting him a private tutor to prepare him for elementary school. I thought it was just a lot of hysteria and competitive parents. But now that I have a child already in elementary school, I realize that being fully prepared from the beginning is invaluable. It gives them so much confidence.”

“There is always the risk of a child falling behind even from the first few weeks of first grade,” says L. another mother from Jerusalem, who sent both of her children to private preparatory classes. “That is the main reason to sign up for one of these programs. The teacher continues on with the strong students and the weaker ones get left behind.”

L. explains that it was also her older daughter’s kindergarten teacher who made her realize preparatory lessons were a must.

“When my daughter was in kindergarten, I began noticing that some of the children were already reading and my child wasn’t,” she recalls. “It was very competitive and while it did not stress my daughter out, I felt that she would be disadvantaged when she got to school.

“So often children arrive in first grade with no background, and because they start off working fast and because the classes are so large, those children start to fall through the cracks. I know it’s all down to the hysteria of parents, but we all want what to see our children succeeding.”

Parents pushing their preschool children to succeed and providing them with a head start on their academic career before they even start school is a growing trend, according to Keren Yifrah, adviser of studies and customer service director at Limudit, a nationwide company dedicated to providing private tutors for children from preschool through to their final school grades.

“I believe that private tutoring is much more popular here than in other places and the bottom line is that there is the feeling that the Israeli education system is just not very good,” she says. “Parents are simply trying to take responsibility for their own children.”

Yifrah, who says that Limudit has been operating for the past 15 years, notes that in recent years the demand for preschool courses has been growing.

“People want to get their children to the basic level before they start school,” she says, noting that Limudit’s classes are tailored to each child’s capability and that they focus on prereading and basic math. “We have even had some requests from parents of preschoolers wanting their children to start learning English as young as four.”

While the phenomenon derives from a desire by parents to help their children, Yifrah also says that the younger generation is growing up much quicker than in the past.

“They are already learning so much from television programs and the world around them,” she notes. “Learning to recognize the letters or numbers really won’t cause a child emotional damage but can really give them a confidence boost.”

At the Ministry of Education, courses for preschoolers are only recognized unofficially, and there are no figures on how many children arrive at school with some kind of formalized teaching.

“We are not against such classes, but if we accept them, then we are admitting that our system is not giving preschool children the preparation they need for school,” says Sara Reuter, elementary education administration director at the Education Ministry, adding that while she is head of the department, such courses will not be offered as a matter of official practice.

“It is not really a question of whether a child needs such preparation or not. We accept any child who reaches the right age for school whether they are academically ready or not. Hopefully, we are able to provide them with any extra help they need in the classroom or in the framework of school.”

A former teacher, Reuter adds that the ministry is aware of the phenomenon but is really “not sure where or how it started.”

“Parents are exposing their children more and more to the world,” she theorizes. “They are reading more books to their preschoolers, taking them on trips within Israel and overseas and really showing them the world. That means that children are more ready and open to learning at a younger age.”

However, Reuter also says the desire to equip children with additional tools for first grade is mainly driven by parental fear that their “little bird is moving on to a much more advanced stage of life. Physically school is so different from kindergarten. It’s so much bigger and there are many more people. Parents are scared of that change.”

Rebecca agrees that it is partly parental fear that prompted her to seek lessons for her daughter.

“I did not want her to be struggling with the academic lessons and miss out on the social aspect of school,” she says. “At that age, school is supposed to fun, but the children get so much homework and have to take on so much responsibility even from first grade that if I can ease that for her in advance, surely it’s worth it?”

At Limudit, which hires both qualified teachers and students familiar with some of the methods for teaching preschoolers, that cost can run anywhere from NIS 100 to NIS 300 a lesson, depending on how long and who is teaching.

“It’s not cheap,” admits L. “It’s really only for those who can afford it or think it’s an essential priority.”

“It really is worth investing the money,” says Yifrah. “Competition is not really my own personal taste but if giving your children these lessons can boost their confidence, then just spend less money elsewhere. Buy fewer clothes or toys.”

“Most of these types of classes take place in stronger socioeconomic neighborhoods,” says Reuter, adding that the ministry is not really concerned about preschool courses contributing to growing gaps in the education system between wealthy and less well-off pupils.

“All children are different and grow at different speeds,” she continues, using the analogy of infants learning to walk. “They all get there eventually, even if they start walking at different times. A child who might succeed academically in the future could be still developing at age five and not so interested in the academic side of life.”

She notes that the ministry only measures levels of development among pupils when they get to more advanced grades. “Our teachers are trained to assess the children at school and if they need help then they will provide it.”

Asked whether she believes that preparatory classes for first grade could help a child with borderline special needs overcome some of his or her difficulties before gaining a label, Reuter says, “These classes will not really help children with special needs; those children need something completely different.

“A child not knowing something at age six does not automatically mean they have special needs. We do have certain standards, but we also know that children mature differently. The best advice I can give is that parents should just read to their children as much as possible - and it does not matter in which language they do it.”

Source: Jerusalem Post, Israel
http://tinyurl.com/2mg663

There was a certain paradox in last week’s state appeals court ruling that requires parents who school their children at home to hold teaching credentials.

For many of the homeschooling parents, it seemed more than a little hypocritical for a state that fails to ensure a credentialed teacher in each classroom - and is often slow to remove underperforming teachers - to impose its “standards” on families that have opted out of the system. Also, the argument that more state oversight is required for the best interests of the homeschooled children would seem to represent the height of audacity in a state with public schools that produce far too many dropouts and far too few students with the basic skills to cope in modern society.

The court ruling has touched a nerve, especially among the parents of the estimated 166,000 children who are homeschooled in California.

The homeschool movement would contend that the state’s approach of recent years - which is basically to look the other way - has worked just fine. They point to the homeschool graduates who are excelling at elite universities, or the students who are dominating spelling bees, as evidence that the laissez-faire approach should continue.

Then again, the students we worry about are those whose parents isolate them from a full curriculum of basic subjects - especially those who follow the philosophy of “unschooling.”

The state must balance parents’ rights with its obligation to make sure all young people have access to an education.

Anyone who thinks a credential is a panacea should consider the abysmal outcomes of public schools in Richmond or Oakland.

A noncredentialed parent-teacher with the guile and determination to secure the right resources and tutors could give his or her child a far more rounded education than a parent with a credential and a false sense of infallibility.

California legislators should look for ways to increase the level oversight and accountability of homeschooling. But the teaching-credential requirement, as ordered by the appellate court, is not the answer.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle, USA
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/10/EDV7VH9OV.DTL

When math instruction is limited to drills and memorization, children and parents can begin to see it as a boring task. Although 80 percent of traditional mathematics teaching relies on memorization, parents can make math more fun and approachable by linking it to real-world examples.

“Memorization of math facts and formulas is an important part of math instruction,” explains (Insert name, title) of Sylvan Learning Center. “But in order for children to really understand even basic math facts, they must discover them. Using games and activities is a fun way to encourage math discovery in children.”

To help parents use games to teach math, the experts at Sylvan Learning Center, the leading provider of in-center and live, online tutoring at home to students of all ages and skill levels, have these tips and ideas:

1.) Play popular board games that require basic math skills. Chutes and Ladders® and RackO® develop number sense. “24″ and Yahtzee® help computation speed and accuracy, and problem solving skills are developed through games like TriOminos® and Connect Four®.

2.) Assemble puzzles with your child. Puzzles help children learn spatial and visual organization. These are the basic lessons of geometry.

3.) A deck of cards can be a valuable math tool. Card games begin to teach the lesson of probability and reinforce addition and subtraction memorization for children learning basic math facts.

4.) Dice are helpful for younger children to practice number facts to six. If they are stumped, they can count the dots to find the sum.

5.) Relate math to your children’s favorite sport. Keeping score is a math exercise! Ask them to calculate the number of points needed for their favorite team to win. Encourage them to create multiple point combinations to reach that score.

6.) Use driving time as math game time. Invite children to figure out how long it will take to get to the destination or estimate how much it will cost to fill up the gas tank.

7.) Play other car games like “guess my number.” This will reinforce logic skills with children of all ages.

8.) If your child receives an allowance, use it to formulate mathematics problems and teach them about saving. For older children, relate percentage problems to their allowance.

9.) Dominoes are a great game for children of all ages. Smaller children can use them to recognize similar quantities while older children can explore the concepts of probability.

10.) Use the Internet to find other fun math games. Visit web sites like www.aplusmath.com or www.funbrain.com for more ideas. (…)

Source: NTV, NE
http://www.nebraska.tv/Global/story.asp?S=7826461

Almost one in three parents have hired tutors for their kids, says a new study.

The Canadian Council on Learning attributes the growing trend to an era of “intensive parenting” in which mothers and fathers, particularly the more affluent, want their sons and daughters to have a competitive edge.

The survey found that people are increasingly hiring tutors because schools are falling short of escalating expectations and parents are too time-restrained to cope with homework.

“Tutoring is no longer primarily geared towards low-achieving students requiring remedial instruction, but rather caters to a growing number of average and high-achieving students seeking to improve their learning and academic performance,” said the 2007 Survey of Canadian Attitudes Toward Learning.

There are about five million school children in Canada attending kindergarten to Grade 12 and 33 per cent of parents reported sending their kids to tutors, particularly for help with math.

For some middle-class families, private tutoring is a lower-cost alternative to sending their kids to private school, said Paul Cappon, head of the learning council, an independent body funded by Ottawa…

Source: The Province, Canada
http://tinyurl.com/ypabca

Children’s lives are becoming increasingly “scholarised” as parents come under pressure to turn the home into an extension of school, a major report on primary education has found.

Teachers have cut back on play-times and ministers want children to spend more time at after-school and breakfast clubs, doing their homework or taking part in sport or drama.

The study, published by Cambridge University, warned that children were likely to fight such attempts by adults to control their activities “at all times” - even during their free time at home. The research by Berry Mayall, from London’s Institute of Education, forms part of the Cambridge-based Primary Review, the biggest inquiry into primary education for decades.

The report said: “English children attend school for six hours a day and are also asked to do homework for school, even in the first years of primary schooling. Children’s time outside formal schooling is increasingly spent under adult supervision in environments which can be described as ‘more school’.

“Thus in order to facilitate mothers’ paid work, more children now spend time in ‘breakfast clubs’ and in after-school care centres. This expansion can be understood as part of a general move to ensure that children are supervised by adults at all times; and that their activities are controlled by adults.

“Parents have an important function in helping their children to have some free time.”

The report followed repeated calls from ministers for parents to take a greater interest in their children’s education.

Schools Secretary Ed Balls recently suggested that all parents should spend 10 minutes a day reading stories to their children, and buy more books as Christmas presents…

Source: The Press Association
http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jbU6NEWpi_7O9G7SuhmDXULFNnDg

Call it kindercramming. These days one of the fastest-growing markets for after-school tutors is preschoolers and kindergartners, whose parents are hoping that if their kids learn to read before first grade, it will ultimately help them get into college and get good jobs. Anxious moms and dads are no longer satisfied with traditional nursery school, which many see as a glorified romper room that focuses too much on learning through play. And of course, after years of Baby Einstein marketing, some parents have become convinced that the more math and reading skills their tots master, the better. Srinivas Rao, a veterinarian in Columbia, Md., began sending his daughter Sanjana to after-school tutoring last summer, shortly before her third birthday. To his delight, he soon found she could not only count the 14 dots on her homework work sheet but also write 14 beside them. “I didn’t think kids could just learn that overnight,” he marvels.

The tutoring industry is marveling too. Franchises geared toward giving toddlers an academic edge are popping up across the country. A few years ago, Sylvan Learning Centers, which operates 1,100 tutoring sites in the U.S., started a pre-K reading program. Around the same time, Kumon, a Japanese company with nearly 1,300 centers in the U.S., launched Junior Kumon to teach kids as young as 3 how to add and read the alphabet. The latest glommer-on: KnowledgePoints, a 60-center franchise based in Lake Oswego, Ore., which last summer began a program for 3- and 4-year-olds.

The toddler-tutoring frenzy may be intensified by a study in the latest issue of Developmental Psychology. Researchers who examined longitudinal data on nearly 36,000 preschoolers in the U.S., Canada and Britain found that the best predictor of success in later school years wasn’t the ability to pay attention or behave in class but was in entering kindergarten with elementary math and reading skills. Experts caution, however, that these findings should not be taken as an endorsement of academic drills for preschoolers. Says the study’s lead author, Greg Duncan, a social-policy expert at Northwestern University: “The kind of skills that matter in affecting later learning are things parents can pretty easily convey to their children in the home.” These include such basics as the knowledge of letters and the order of numbers…

Source: TIME
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1686826,00.html

There has been a recent flurry of news stories on “dropout factories” — high schools where no more than 60 percent students who start as freshmen stay in school through their senior year.

One in 10 American high schools could qualify for that label.

Questions abound. What’s happening in our classrooms? Why aren’t our children motivated? How is it that they are underperforming, and lack the incentive to stay in school?

Some say the government is failing kids, that there should be more programs to help boost learning skills. Others say society is asking too much from underfunded, overcrowded schools and from teachers who are underpaid and overworked.

While this may be true in some instances, for the real answers we must look closer to home.

Much closer.

It’s uncomfortable, but true: Parents must take responsibility for their children’s performance, and kids have to step up and take responsibility too.

Kids who struggle in school need parents who will be there to help seek out solutions: tutoring, homework help, specialized services that can help their child do the best work he or she can. No one knows a child better than his parent; no teacher can have the same influence a parent can…

Source: Journal and Courier, IN
http://tinyurl.com/3yz8hm

Secondary school pupils who are struggling to read would be kept behind for up to an hour every day under plans drawn up by a leading Government adviser.

They should receive back-to-basics lessons in how to recognise words and extra time practising silent reading to bring them up to scratch, according to Sir Cyril Taylor, the architect of Labour’s city academy programme.

In a speech today, he will say that every 11-year-old should sit a test when they start secondary school to identify those failing to master basic literacy.

School timetables for the worst performers - pupils unable to meet levels expected of the average seven-year-old - should be “suspended” until standards improve, he will suggest. His comments come amid growing concerns over the ability of schoolchildren to read and write properly.

Last week, an influential report strongly criticised Labour’s £500 million National Literacy Strategy for having a “relatively small impact”. The study, published by Cambridge University, concluded that children’s reading skills had not improved since the 1950s.

By the age of 14, a quarter of pupils now fail to reach the required standards, and the problem is particularly acute among boys. Speaking at a conference in Brighton, Sir Cyril will say: “These worrying statistics are of even greater concern because literacy is so important to general learning.

“It’s been estimated that 75 per cent of academic success is predicted by reading ability.

“Even science and maths ability depend on one’s ability to read. If you can’t read the maths problem you can’t solve it.

“Children must know how to read in order to be able to read to learn. Not being able to read leads to boredom at school, truancy, and sometimes worse things, especially for boys.”

Sir Cyril, the chairman of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, calls for a major overhaul of the way pupils are taught to read from the age of 11 onwards.

All 600,000 children starting secondary school every year should get a reading test to “diagnose those in need of support”, he recommends.

Those 40,000 pupils estimated to have a reading age lower than a seven-year-old should get intensive lessons in “synthetic phonics“.

The traditional reading method, which involves teaching the letter sounds of English and how to bind them together to form unfamiliar words, is compulsory in primary schools, but should be extended to remedial secondary classes, says Sir Cyril…

Source: Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/08/nread108.xml