A test for school standards that promote deep thinking

Last month, for a book on the influence of media on youth, she had read them a study on the effects of cell phones and computers on the lives of young people, a column of newspaper on the role of social media in the Tunisian uprising and a 4 200-word magazine article titled "Is Google." making us stupid? ?

A Professor of mathematics, José Rios, used to take a day or two about probabilities, curves Bell of drawing on the Blackboard to illustrate the pattern of normal distribution. This year, he extended the lesson a day and had the students work in groups to try to pull the same chart type by using the heights of 15 boys in the class.

"Finally, they realized that they could not because the sample was too small," said Rios. "They learned that the size of the sample of the questions, and I did not tell them.".

In three years, training in most countries may look much like what was going on at the Hillcrest, 100 schools in the city of New York experiment of new curriculum called common core standards.

Forty-two States, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands have signed the new standards, an ambitious set of objectives that go beyond reading lists and mathematical formulas to try to raise the bar on what students in each grade are expected to learnbut also on how teachers are supposed to teach.

Standards, to go into effect in 2014, will replace a hodgepodge of State guidelines that have become the Achilles heel of the No Child Left Behind Act. In many States, including New York, lowered standards in boost to meet the requirements of the Act that all students reach level school, as measured by each State, in English and mathematics. President Obama expressed the desire to rewrite the law, and many experts predict that the common core will be a centerpiece of the effort.

The new standards provide specific goals which, at the end of the 12th year, should prepare students for college work. Book reports will be ask students to analyze, not summarize. Presentations will be classified in part on how persuasive students express their ideas. History documents, will be read from multiple sources; the goal is for students to see how beliefs and biases may influence the way different people describe the same events.

There are a number of challenges.

There are guidelines for what students are supposed to do in each grade, but it is still in the districts, schools and teachers to fill in the finer curriculum points, as the books to read.

There is no national agency responsible to see that standards are made because of worries about give too much control of education to the Federal Government. So far, only a few other major cities, including Boston, Cleveland and Philadelphia, began to apply the standards in the classroom. And according to how No Child Left Behind is remodeled, it can still be left to each State to measure its own success.

"Standards create a historic opportunity in what we have now a destination worth aiming for, but only time will tell if they'll create historic change," said Chester e. Finn Jr., a Reagan deputy administration education Secretary and the President of the Institute of Fordham Thomas b.a group that supports national standards.

With 3,200 students, Hillcrest is the second largest city pilot school. Its size and diversity - whites are a minority (4%), Muslims are religious plurality (approximately 30 per cent) and one-tenth of students learning English - makes an ideal laboratory for testing how the standards could operate in the cityofficials said.

A recent Wednesday, Jill Lee, a Professor of English, closed a unit on the meaning of the American dream not assigning a test of the first person, as it has done once, but by asking each student to interview an immigrant and write a profile of the person.

Eleni Giannousis made a change in her 10th-grade English class which may make some purists to launder. She had the students to look at the provision on filmed scene from "Death of a salesman," starring Dustin Hoffman: Willy Loman, before they read the piece. The idea was to bring students to absorb the information through a medium that they use for entertainment, a way she experimented with his lesson plans try to reach new goals.

"This is to make things easier for students, but to challenge to make the experience of a classic in a different way", said Ms. Giannousis.

While the English course will include always healthy amounts of fiction, the standards say that students should be reading nonfiction texts more as they get older, of them to prepare for the types of equipment that they will read in college and careers. In the fourth year, students should read about the same amount of "literary" and "informational" texts, the standards; in the eighth year, 45% should be literary and 55% of information and by grade 12, the split should be 30/70.

Shael Polakow-Suransky, academic Director of the city, said the city plans to create a package with exercises that have used teachers at the Hillcrest and other schools; work of the students that they have assigned; and guidelines for the assessment of the work.

In a session of training last month, teams representing several schools in the pilot have been invited to list of the lessons they had. Teachers of the Forward School of Creative Writing, a school in the Bronx Williamsbridge section, written on a piece of cardboard: "Visual help students make sense" and "many students read below grade level".

Timothy Shanahan, a Professor of urban education at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has helped write the common basic standards on how to incorporate the teaching of science, read said that overall, standards not to make any adjustment for students who are learning English or for children who could enter kindergarten without having been exposed in the books.

"If I teach fifth grade and I have a boy in my class that reads like a first grader, throwing him that a school level text will not make him any good, no matter what standards," he said.

Mr. Polakow-Suransky, too, warned against over-optimistic expectations.

"This is not one of those things where you switch and tomorrow, everything will be different," he said.

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Arrests in the school shooting Brazil

The authorities say than Wellington Oliveira, 23, killed 12 students at a school in Rio de Janeiro Thursday before killing himself.NEW: demonstration Sunday calls for the control of fire greaterNEWweapons: Gunman application note of suicide for the House to turn animal shelterTwo men who sold a weapon used in the shooting were students arrestedTwelve were killed in the shooting

(CNN) - two men were arrested in the Brazil for the sale would have a weapon for the gunman who opened fire at a school in Rio de Janeiro last week, killing 12 students before turning the gun on himself.

The homicides division of the Rio police service made the announcement Saturday, the news agency Agencia Brasil reported State.

The motivations behind why Wellington Oliveira, 23, shot himself and students remain unclear.

Locksmith Charleston Souza de Lucena is responsible for helping the de Oliveira to acquire a firearm. After he has done work for Oliveira, according to the police, de Oliveira asked where he could find a weapon to fire. Souza de Lucena presented him Isaias de Souza, who helped obtain the weapon of calibre.32 used in the mass of fire, said police handguns.

The origins of a second gun used in the shooting, a revolver.38, are still unknown, said police.

The two men told police that they have never sold Oliveria of the weapon to fire had they known how it would have used it, Agencia Brasil reported.

Ten children is remained injured to the hospital, said the Secretary of State health and civil defence. Those who were killed were buried Friday in heavy agitation.

During this time, no one came to identify and claim bodies of Oliveira, Agencia Brasil reported. If no one claims the body within 15 days, he will be buried as an indigent.

Mass school Thursday, shooting, which is rare in the Brazil, has excited the country border lobby. Twelve red flags were raised Sunday during a demonstration at the beach of Copacabana calling for greater efficiency against weapons and ammunition of traffic.

"Where the ammunition comes from." Where are the upcoming guns? Are we safe? Organizer of the event Antonio Carlos Costa said, according to Agencia Brasil.

The Director of the school where the shooting took place, said Sunday that he hoped to reopen the school April 18. Cleaning of the scene is scheduled to begin Monday, said Luis Marduk.

Also Sunday, the minutes of the validated TV one note of suicide allegedly from Oliveria, who included funeral instructions. Note also asked that his house, which has been under police surveillance after that vandals defaced it, turn into an animal shelter "because animals are currently very despised and need much more protection and care that humans human.".Journalist Luciani Gomes and Marilia Brocchetto contributed to this report. CNN

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A troubled Tenure: in the school system of the city, hope the new Leader can steer right course

Dennis M. Walcott, the candidate to be the next Chancellor of city schools, projected an air of confidence Friday, ensuring the municipal Council that schools have been able hands, despite the projected thousands of teacher layoffs.

"It will certainly be setbacks along the way, the difficulties and challenges," said Mr. Walcott, but I am confident that by working together, we come out stronger on the other side. ?

But Mr. Walcott will be only to manage budget cuts. On several fronts, people inside and outside of the report of the Ministry of education, the school system was drifting.

It inherits a huge agency, the largest of the city, and some of his problems date back years. But tenure unstable, short of its predecessor, Cathleen P. Black, at worse, said observers from education.

"Any person working on a plan for the last months of two and a half years has no assurance that, it could never be done rather than having simply dust come together," said Joe Williams, Executive Director of Democrats for education reformwho works closely with schools and education officials. The "having no not a leader makes wonder why they display every day in this bureaucratic blob giant."

"That they are trying to change the world, and they cannot do so when there is zero direction vessel."

Two aides of higher education has complained that Ms. Black, the absence of a clear program from the top began to create inefficiencies in the Department. His predecessor, Joel i. Klein, loved make decisions fast and energetic. According to Ms. Black, proposals may wander through the layers of control: Ms. Black, his two powerful assistants and officials of the City Hall, including Mr. Walcott and another Deputy Mayor, Howard Wolfson.

In the confusion, several proposals have been delayed, including efforts to obtain grants for school improvement. Assistants speak on condition of anonymity because the Mayor requested that agents to past criticism of Ms. Black tenure. To obtain a response to it on Friday night for their remarks failed.

Some officials worried that the momentum of the reform programme of Mr. Klein, including her push to rid the system of teachers mid-March, began to falter. Without the presence of Eric Nadelstern, a Deputy Chancellor, who is retiring after the appointment of Ms. Black, the Department seemed more in more familiar with the needs of each school.

Ms. Black often deferred to Shael Polakow-Suransky, the academic Director and Sharon Greenberger, the Chief of operations, giving them power that education officials joke called "Chancellor", said the two aid.

Meetings have been fraught with manoeuvres of senior officials tried to move Ms. Black to their point of view, said wizards. Mr. Polakow-Suransky and Ms. Greenberger served as guards, decide which proposals to approve and which to scuttle.

Mr. Polakow-Suransky, acting Chancellor until Mr. Walcott receives a waiver, expressed his disagreement on Friday with those who complain that the Ministry had lost its moorings. "There were frustrating moments, and there have been ups and downs,", said Mr. Polakow-Suransky of recent months. There is also, he said, "real excitement and a sense of possibility."

"People are working hard on many different fronts," he continued. "The fact that Dennis has resumed, which will only add."

A school in limbo, the cobble Hill School of American Studies at Brooklyn, was supposed to be improved now. It is part of the program of President Obama turn around schools, and the city of New York is considered a national urban districts model. But when the examiners of the State is made in January, they stated that "the evidence of teaching and learning was not apparent in the majority of the classrooms.

The lack of progress in school is the result of many factors, but one is the slow pace of the city in the application of federal money shift and hiring personnel to operate.

"There is fighting every day," said Naya Hunt, 16, an 11th grader, the dismissal Friday. "" "". "It was a fight only today, before leaving school".

A man police said was not a student, was led handcuffed wrists shortly after. "It is crazy about it," she said.

While the State, city and union officials disagree on the cause of the slowdown, all agree that money did not start flowing in schools until January, too late to produce change.

"Some of the schools has decided, you know what?". "We're going it alone," said Michael Mulgrew, the President of the Federation of teachers. "No there was no support from the Ministry of education in these schools."

Juliet Linderman and Noah Rosenberg contributed reporting.

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