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Welcome!
What is
Urban Edge?
Urban Edge is a service that provides CUBE districts
with relevant information to help your awareness of education issues around the
country. We will glean news sources, blogs, research studies, and NSBA's wide range of expertise for timely information that guides CUBE districts in making sound decisions. Around
the nation
More
from NAEP and TUDA
Another report was released last week focusing on
urban student achievement, and this time the reading
scores were up slightly in a few CUBE districts,
while others stayed about the same as they have been
in recent years. The National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP), is often referred to as
the nation's report card, but the most recent report
focused more on urban districts with the TUDA (Trial
Urban District Assessment). The TUDA, a pilot
test in 11 urban districts, showed good results for
math about six months ago but is showing mixed
results for reading. While some urban
districts had rising scores, many stayed at the same
level as the national average. The Center for
Public Education's blog has a good summary of the
results, and many local newspapers covered the
results in their respective cities.
Link
to Wall Street Journal article 5/20/10
TUDA
results snapshot, by city
Link
to NSBA's Center for Public Education's Edifier blog
Demographic shifts continue in Texas
CUBE has programmed many sessions at
conferences around the changing demographics in
America's urban schools, and a Texas Education
Agency report is showing the reality of the changes
are happening now. In many ways, Texas is on
the forefront of the shift from majority white to
majority Hispanic districts (currently 49 percent of
Texas' preK-12 students are Hispanic), and many of
those districts are urban in nature. The issue
facing school boards and teachers is the reality
that many of the students of Hispanic background are
not well prepared when they enter school, and cost
more money to educate because of limited English
skills, according to the article. While
efforts to keep students in school are costly, the
benefits of a well educated population in the state
is an asset to everyone. But Texas is learning
that it takes more than throwing money at the
problem, students need to have role models, mentors,
and help from the entire community to succeed in
school.
Link
to Houston Chronicle article
5/16/10
Fighting the "dropout factory"
School truancy is not usually a topic that gets
a lot of headline attention in the media, but it is
one of the leading indicators for school
success. The idea of students not performing
well if they aren't in school seems so logical, but
many districts have had to cut their truancy
workforce and cannot keep up with the number of
students who don't show up regularly. In
Philadelphia, a program was piloted last year that
is now being expanded to other districts to help
curb the truancy rate and help the graduation
rate. The program, "Diplomas Now,"
is tackling middle schools as a line of defense
after realizing that students in high school are
often already so far behind that they cannot catch
up. With funding help from PepsiCo Foundation,
the program creates a data-driven early warning
spreadsheet for schools to use. The story in
USA Today gives more details on the effort.
Link to USA Today article 5/28/10
Needles
in a Haystack
NPR's Ohio affiliate, WCPN, showcased
a recent report by the Fordham Institute called
"Needles in a Haystack," which looks at
urban schools doing very well in Ohio, despite being
in historically low-achieving districts. The
report's author is interviewed and points out a few
of the commonalities among the schools he
visited. High expectations, dedicated staffs,
and using data to make decisions are a few of the
pieces he mentions that make up the fundamentals of
the successful schools he visited.
To listen to the five minute interview and view the
report itself, links are provided below.
Link
to WCPN interview 5/13/10
Link
to Fordham Institute
Report (5/25/10)
NSBA
News
National School Climate Survey 2010: To help district officials understand the importance of school climate
and its relationship to educational outcomes, NSBA
is supporting the efforts of Dr. Brian K. Perkins,
principal investigator for the National
School Climate Survey 2010 survey. CUBE
districts are already familiar with the first three
school climate studies he conducted, which can be
found here.
Perkins will host a series of informational webinars
on the survey which will provide data to
participants to help make decisions on ways to
improve school climates, including student,
administrator, teacher, and parent perceptions of
school climate, and student academic achievement and
school performance indicators. Register for a
webinar on one of the following days: June
1 at 4 p.m. EDT; or June
23 at 4 p.m. EDT.
Is
you district interested in showcasing what you've
done at NSBA's Annual Conference next year in San
Francisco?
The deadline for submissions is fast approaching--June
1, 2010. For more information, click here
to get everything you need to apply.
CUBE
News
CUBE
is on Twitter-Follow CUBE_Edge (CUBE_Edge)
for daily updates on what's happening in urban
education around the country.
Program
Note
Did
you know that all previous editions of the Urban
Edge are available on CUBE's web site? If
you missed an issue, wanted to go back to find a
link to a research study we referenced, or need some
information about what other districts are doing,
click here.
Disclaimer
Links
on the Urban Edge are subject to change or
become inactive after a period of time. Please
be aware that CUBE has no control over links to
other organizations or entities.
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