Interesting education reports released this week

We can't include every report we see in our weekly newsletter at the Scholastic Library.  So we select 2 or 3, or sometimes 4, that we think are the most interesting or relevant to what we do here at Scholastic.  These are the ones we picked this week.

The Education Trust has published Education Watch: National Report.  It provides a general

overview of achievement, attainment and other factors normalized for the U.S.  There are also

individual state reports.  “This national report and every individual ‘Education Watch State

Report’ show how well schools are serving different groups of young people.”

The National Institute for Early Education Research has released The State of Preschool 2008.

 It finds that the recession has either stalled pre-kindergarten funding or reversed it in

some states.  Despite an increase in state spending over the past few years, federal spending

for public programs like Head Start had decreased.  But now many states are cutting funding

as well.  The good news is the money in the stimulus plan that’s designated for pre-k

programs.  For a review of the study’s findings, see Recession stalls state-financed

pre-kindergarten, but federal money may help from the New York Times.

Learning Teams: Creating What’s Next is a report from the National Commission on Teaching and

America’s Future.  The report warns that “more than half the nation's teachers are Baby

Boomers ages 50 and older and eligible for retirement over the next decade.”  It encourages

retention efforts and mentoring of new teachers.  For more on the report, including a map

with statistics on where the retirement issue could be a real problem, see USA Today’s

article A ’tsunami’ of Boomer teacher retirements is on the horizon.  

And the State Educational Technology Directors Association has released its sixth annual

Enhancing Education through Technology report called Focus on Technology Integration in

America's Schools.  It “identifies programs that effectively integrate technology to create

robust subject-matter content, innovative curricula, ongoing professional development, and

diagnostic assessments to facilitate individualized instruction.”  Report profiles states'

ed-tech successes from eSchool News Online reviews the findings.

And just for fun, the video on this is a bit grainy.  But you’ll still enjoy this dancing dog.