New Tool assists High Schools improves FAFSA Completions

As the cost of college continues to increase, financial aid becomes ever more important. While many factors are involved in the decision to attend college, there is a strong correlation between FAFSA completion and college enrollment.

In earlier days, high schools relied on self-reported surveys to estimate their FAFSA completion rate and that data can be inaccurate. For this reason, Federal Student Aid is providing high schools with current data about their FAFSA submissions and completions so that high schools can track their progress and help to ensure that their students complete a FAFSA. A completed FAFSA allows the Department to determine a potential student’s eligibility for federal student aid – a key factor in families’ college decisions.

The data included in the attached charts reflect the number of submitted and completed FAFSAs among applicants no older than 18 who will have received their high school diploma education by the start of the 2012-2013 school years. The data is displayed in spreadsheets broken down by state that include the school name and city of the high school.

US Education Department Awards $24.6 million to support Staff and Principal Development

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan today announced the award of nearly $24.6 million for three grants to improve student achievement by increasing the effectiveness of teachers and principals. Funded under the Supporting Effective Educators Development (SEED) program, projects are awarded to the National Writing Project, New Teacher Center, and Teach for America.

“Effective teachers and principals are so central to boosting student achievement and producing better outcomes for children,” Duncan said. “These grants are excellent examples of ways to support teachers and school leaders and develop the next generation of world-class educators.”

The National Writing Project, based in Berkeley, Calif., will use its $11.3 million grant to train 3,000 K-12 teacher-leaders in the teaching of writing, who will then conduct professional development for teachers in local schools and districts in all 50 states. They are expected to reach some 12,000 students during the 2012-13 school year. The training will be conducted at intensive summer institutes for teachers on university campuses as well as through online programs. Another focus of the National Writing Project grant is to provide at least 30 hours of professional development in writing instruction throughout the school year for teachers serving high-need students in 100 schools and districts across the country.

The New Teacher Center in Santa Cruz, Calif., will use its award of nearly $4.98 million to support novice teachers and principals in the Hillsborough County Public Schools in Florida. The grant will fund teacher mentor and principal coaches to provide intensive support for each beginning teacher and new principal to ensure that they are having a positive impact on student learning right from the start of their careers. The program will reach 1,200 new teachers in elementary, middle, and senior high schools throughout the county.

Teach for America (TFA), based in New York City, will use its $8.3 million award to support more than 9,000 teachers in high-need schools during the current school year, and recruit, select, train and place up to 5,800 new teachers for the 2012-13 school year. The funds will support summer training institutes for its teachers in eight cities--Atlanta, Chicago, Delta, Miss., Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and Tulsa—as well as recruitment efforts on college campuses. The project’s overarching goal is to improve academic growth for students reached by TFA teachers.

How Psychology linked with education?

Education and psychology are linked in more than one way and the psychology of education might be connected to educational morality in psychology or how education as a discipline is trained within psychology as a topic and how these two disciplines unite. This is mainly the focal point of educational psychologies which revises how human learning happens, in what ways of teaching are most efficient, what special methods should be used to lecture talented or disabled children and how main beliefs of psychology could help out in the study of schools as communal systems.

Educational psychology revises both the personal approach to education as in giftedness, disability, learning theories useful to children and adults and the more common objective approaches to educating as the function of schools as social or cultural systems.

The psychology of education could include the following branches:

General Educational Psychology 

1. Learning Systems - As considered from idiosyncratic learning outlooks and general learning perspectives, a conversation of the different theories, performance and systems or methods of learning is an essential part of educational psychology and particularly central to general educational psychology.

2. Social Systems - The use of education in communal, cultural and financial systems could be measured within the psychological circumstance and this narrates to the position of education in society.

Individualistic Educational Psychology 

1. Learning Systems - Learning techniques and systems or techniques will have to be in agreement with the requirements of the children or adult contestants and according to talents of the teachers. Requirements differ according to personal character and aptitudes and individual needs will have to be measured during the education process.

2. Social Systems - Personal learning psychology will have to be intentional according to exact social and artistic backgrounds of the learners and therefore a more biased study of learning move towards and national role of the individual in the learning process allowing for their social, cultural or academic background will have to be considered.

           

The Grand Third International Education Week

International Education Week (IEW), a campus-wide event, brings collectively the university’s society of students, staff and faculty to contribute in a selection of attractive, educational and culturally-rich events which together help to encourage and have fun language attainment, international exchanges, global citizenship and cross-cultural awareness.

The third annual International Education Week takes place Nov. 14-18.

At present, IEW is famous in more than 100 countries worldwide, and this year, above 30 student associations, academic sector, offices and the public partners connected forces on 50 events at UT with: foreign and documentary film nights, international boards and forums, roundtable planning, travel workshops, study overseas info sessions and more. 

IEW is a chance to rejoice the elevating benefits of international education and trade worldwide. This joint scheme of the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education is part of their hard work to support programs that prepare Americans for an international environment and draw future leaders from overseas to study, learn and switch over skills in the United States.

Indiana's Academic Standards & Resources

Driven by information, powered by knowledge and energized by technology our world is changing quickly. In order for students to make reasoned decisions about their lives and contribute to their family, community, and nation they need more skills and knowledge than ever before. To meet these challenges, Indiana established world-class academic standards that clearly outline what students should know and be able to do at each grade level and subject area.

Learning resources:

To support students and educators in meeting these essential expectations, the Indiana Department of Education offers a variety of online learning resources for teachers to use in aligning classroom instruction and assessment to Indiana’s Academic Standards, including:

• Core Standards –  A companion to Indiana’s Academic Standards, the Core Standards help teachers prioritize instruction and connect the “big ideas” students need to know in order to advance.

• Classroom Activities –  A series of instructional activities geared toward the teaching of each standard. The activities feature opportunities for incorporating technology, links to other content areas and standards; tips for extending the activities and meeting the individual needs of students and more.

• Classroom Assessments –  Assessments designed to measure what students know and what they need to learn in relation to the standards. For grades K-8, the classroom assessments include short standards-based quizzes for each standard or cluster of related standard indicators. At the high school level, the assessments are designed to measure student progress at the end of the course.

Improving Schools for Native Americans on Web Chat

How state and federal policy can hold up the teaching of Native American cultures and languages is clear to be one of the subjects in next week's live web chat on improving education for Native American students. The free chat is planned for Aug. 11, 3 p.m., Eastern time. It will be open for queries on that day and a transcription will be available afterward.

One of the guests is Keith O. Moore, who presently became the director of the U.S. Department of Interior's Bureau of Indian Education, the first person to be selected to that post as President Obama took office. Formerly, Moore was the director of the Indian education office for South Dakota. He took that career when South Dakota reopened the office in 2005, after it was blocked for about 15 years. I met Moore three years ago when he helped to bring together educators and scholars from a number of Western and Midwestern states to focal point on how to improve the academic achievement of Native American students. I wrote on that meeting and mobility issues among American Indians in a public school in Rapid City, S.D., for Education Week.

The second guest in the chat is Leslie Harper, the director of an Ojibwe language-immersion school in Minnesota. She has direct experience with how federal and state laws can hold up or delay the teaching of a Native American tongue at the school level. I wrote regarding her school when she came to Washington in recent times to ask for more flexibility in how the No Child Left Behind Act relates to immersion schools for original languages.