Parents Of Honor Roll Students

Raise your hand if you think American students score poorly on international tests because they do too little homework

spend too little time in class and watch too much television.

Why doesn't teachers have a "Board / Council" of Parents'

Of Honor Roll Students?  Those are the parents that should give advice.

They have a proven method that has worked in many different situations.

Web site to connect Southern colleges

A World Wide Web site that will connect all course offerings at public colleges in the South was unveiled at a regional education meeting. The Southern Regional Electronic Campus was developed to give access to a wide array of courses to people who work and can’t attend college, as well as students who want to broaden their choices.

The address for the Southern Regional Electronic Campus is www.srec.sreb.org

Study says teach children to think.

Raise your hand if you think American students score poorly on international tests because they do too little homework, spend too little time in class and watch too much television.

Now lower your hand. An exhaustive study suggests none of those oft-cited culprits are to blame for the relatively low achievement.

The problem rests more with shallow textbooks and repetitive teaching methods that don't challenge U.S. students, according to researchers who analyzed results of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, or TIMSS.

For instance, a video distributed by the researchers shows how Japanese teachers start a math class by introducing a real-life problem. Then students, individually or in small groups, to try to figure out a solution while the teacher walks around the room offering advice.

Students then present their answers to the class. Students who find a wrong answer, or a less desired path to the right answer, are gently guided to the correct response.

The idea is to spend a lot of time thinking, not listening to lectures or memorizing formulas. Results of the international tests, which rank Japanese eighth-graders near the top, suggest that the Japanese approach works.

The United States, on the other hand, scored below average in the math test, behind Ireland but ahead of Spain, and about average on the science portion.

Contrary to popular belief, the study concludes, Japanese eighth-graders spend less class time on science and math, get fewer homework assignments and spend about the same amount of time watching TV as their American counterparts. They just seem to learn more during the time they do spend on their studies.

Like previous international tests, TIMSS is disappointing to Americans who fear lackluster schooling jeopardizes the United States' status as the most awesome economic, political and military power on Earth.

But it is music to the ears of some Louisiana education officials who have been preaching and practicing reforms in math and science education for years.

The study, based on tests of 500,000 students in 41 countries, does not focus on Louisiana. In fact, it's not even certain that any Louisiana students were part of the U.S. sample.

But Louisiana, which ranks low on most national indicators of education achievement, suffers from many of the symptoms uncovered by the study, say officials of Louisiana Systemic Initiatives Program, or LASIP, which has been working to rejuvenate math and science education.

Math textbooks available to Louisiana cover too many topics - and few of them well - because publishers include a bit of everything required by school districts all over the nation, says Stephanie Williamson, assistant LASIP director for math.

Math teachers also cover the same topics year after year instead of giving students enough time to fully master a concept in one grade, then teaching a more advanced concept in the next. For instance, Williamson says, some form of adding whole numbers is taught in Louisiana classrooms from first through eighth grade.

And science classes include too little hands-on, or more precisely, "minds-on" exercises, says Faimon Roberts, LASIP's assistant director for science.

LASIP's main job is to hold training sessions for teachers that offer more lively, effective ways of teaching science and math.

For instance, Roberts said, instead of memorizing a diagram of electrical flow, students can be given a light bulb, a battery and a single wire and be challenged to get the bulb to light. Although students have more fun learning that way, they also work harder and are more likely to remember the concepts they learn, Roberts said.

An estimated 250,000 Louisiana students, more than a fourth of the state's school enrollment, are being taught at least one subject this fall by LASIP-trained teachers.

LASIP now is focusing on getting entire schools to focus on different teaching principles.

LASIP is not a cure-all for Louisiana's educational shortcomings. But it is a promising program that seeks to help free Louisiana teachers from the chains of traditions left over from a simpler time.

The program takes a hopeful view of a generation that often gets a bad rap as coddled and lazy. LASIP promotes the ideas that students can learn the hard work of thinking, rather than just recite what they've been told, and that they can be taught to work out problems for themselves.

Turning those ideas into reality isn't easy. But it's one way to help ensure that the United States' next generation is equipped to extend "the American century" well into the next century.

Harriet Beecher Stowe: 1811-1896

Harriet Beecher was born June 14, 1811, the seventh child of a famous protestant preacher. Harriet worked as a teacher with her older sister Catharine: her earliest publication was a geography for children, issued under her sister's name in 1833. In 1836, Harriet married widower Calvin Stowe: they eventually had seven children. Stowe helped to support her family financially by writing for local and religious periodicals. During her life, she wrote poems, travel books, biographical sketches, and children's books, as well as adult novels. She met and corresponded with people as varied as Lady Byron, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and George Eliot. She died at the age of 85, in Hartford Conneticutt.