Common Core’s Curriculum Maps in English Language Arts

This announcement contains a link to tools to support implementation of the English language arts portion of our new standards (known locally as Kentucky Core Academic standards [KCAS] and nationally as Common Core State Standards [CCSS]):

Common Core’s Curriculum Maps in English Language Arts were written by public school teachers for public school teachers. The maps translate the new Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for Kindergarten through 12th grade into unit maps that teachers can use to plan their year, craft their own more detailed curriculum, and create lesson plans. The maps are flexible and adaptable, yet they address every standard in the CCSS. Any teacher, school, or district that chooses to follow the Common Core maps can be confident that they are adhering to the standards. Even the topics the maps introduce grow out of and expand upon the "exemplar" texts recommended in the CCSS. And because they are free, the maps will save school districts millions in curriculum development costs. The draft maps are available for public comment until September 17.

Archipelago Learning to Give Free Study Island Licenses to Teach For America Corps Members

Archipelago Learning, a leading subscription-based online education company and developer of the highly-respected Study Island, has entered into a partnership with Teach For America. Under the terms of the affiliation, new Teach For America corps teachers will receive a free, two-year license to Study Island that can be used with their students upon completion of the program's online training modules.

"Helping to eliminate educational inequity in the United States is the cornerstone of what Teach For America was created to do," said Tim McEwen, CEO for Archipelago Learning. "And that's why we developed Study Island -- to make sure that every child has the tools to help him learn and master core academic content. We are truly excited to help these amazing new educators make a difference in classrooms around the country."

Teach For America is a national corps of teachers that go above and beyond traditional expectations to improve the educational outcomes of children growing up in low-income communities. The organization seeks top graduates from all academic majors and backgrounds who have demonstrated outstanding achievement, perseverance, and leadership. Teach For America received a record-breaking 46,000 applications this year, and admission was more selective than ever before, with an acceptance rate of 12 percent. This fall, more than 8,200 corps members will be teaching in 39 regions across the country. Beyond their impact as corps members, two-thirds of the 20,000 Teach For America alumni across the country remain in education. More than 450 Teach For America alumni serve as school principals or superintendents, more than 500 work in government or policy, and nearly 30 serve in elected office.

The web-based Study Island system incorporates standards-based instruction, interactive games, and rewards to help improve student performance. By providing engaging, self-paced instruction and positive reinforcement, Study Island helps students take control of their learning and build their confidence, while creating a culture of academic success. The comprehensive, web-based program combines rigorous content in math, reading, writing, science and social studies, and its online instruction, practice, assessment, and productivity tools are built directly from state standards and the new common core standards. For teachers, Study Island includes lesson plans, video and supplemental and digital resources and tools for monitoring student progress that enable differentiated instruction for on-level, struggling and advanced learners.

Study Island is available for purchase by schools, districts and learning centers, as well as parents and students. For more information please visit the Study Island website at: www.studyisland.com.

About Archipelago Learning

Archipelago Learning is a leading subscription-based online education company that provides standards-based instruction, practice, assessments and productivity tools that improve the performance of educators and students via proprietary web-based platforms.

Study Island, the core product line, helps students in kindergarten through 12th grade master grade-level academic standards in a fun and engaging manner and is utilized by over 10 million students in approximately 21,800 schools in the United States and Canada.

EducationCity, used by 8,200 schools in the United Kingdom and 4,800 schools in the United States, provides online K-6 instructional content and assessments for reading, mathematics and science.

Northstar Learning, for the post-secondary market, offers online instructional content and exam preparation products across a variety of core curriculum and vocational topics.

For more information, please visit www.archipelagolearning.com. Archipelago Learning is headquartered in Dallas, Texas.

About Teach For America

Teach For America is the national corps of outstanding recent college graduates who commit to teach for two years in urban and rural public schools and become lifelong leaders in expanding educational opportunity. This fall, more than 8,200 corps members will be teaching in 39 regions across the country, while more than 20,000 Teach For America alumni continue working from inside and outside the field of education for the fundamental changes necessary to ensure educational excellence and equity. For more information, visit www.teachforamerica.org.

This news release was distributed by GlobeNewswire, www.globenewswire.com

Q & A about EduJob Money

While this article is specific to PA, it contains good general information regarding the flow of $10 billion EduJobs funding to states and school districts.


The Morning Call (Lehigh Valley, PA)

August 13, 2010

Breaking down education jobs money
It can be used for hiring, rehiring, or paying expenses related to current employees.

With $878.8 million of federal cash soon on its way to Pennsylvania to help stave off education job losses, many Lehigh Valley school districts are wondering how they can put the money to work without increasing spending in the long-term.

The U.S. Department of Education on Friday clarified how districts can use the money not only for hiring or rehiring, but also for maintaining its current work force, such as paying for benefits, professional development and pension costs.
The Morning Call compiled the following questions and answers to explain the new program:

Q: What is the purpose of the money?

A: Congress passed $10 billion in education job money Tuesday for districts to use for compensation, benefits and other expenses associated with hiring, rehiring or keeping current employees on the payrolls. Allowed uses of the money include salaries, performance bonuses, health insurance, retirement benefits, incentives for early retirement and pension fund contributions.

Q: Which employees can be supported with the money?

A: Teachers, principals, assistant principals, academic coaches, teacher trainers, classroom aides, counselors, librarians, secretaries, social workers, psychologists, interpreters, physical therapists, speech therapists, occupational therapists, technology personnel, nurses, athletic coaches, security officers, custodians, maintenance workers, bus drivers and cafeteria workers.

Q: When will the money be available?

A. States must first apply to the U.S. Department of Education, which expects to issue money to approved state within two weeks. States may use 2 percent of the money for program administration, but must make the remaining 98 percent of money available to local school districts. The Education Department expects the money to be available locally by September.

Q: How will districts get the money, and how long does it last?

A: The money will be distributed through either the basic education funding formula or the federal Title I formula, depending on what the state decides. Individual district amounts have not yet been released by the state. Districts are encouraged to use the money this school year, but have until September 2012 to spend it.

Q: Can the state tell local districts how to use the money?

A: No. Local districts can use the money how they see fit so long as they meet all other requirements and guidelines both in the law and issued by the Education Department.

Q: Does the money mean districts will definitely be hiring?

A: No. Districts should be careful not to hire new people using one-time money unless they know they can afford the increased costs in the long run, after the federal money is gone. In many cases, districts will probably report saving jobs and use the money for expenses such as professional development.

Q: How will the impact be tracked?

A: States and local school districts will be required to report how they use the money and how it supported personnel in quarterly reports similar to those required for stimulus money. The first report will be due in October.

christopher.baxter@mcall.com
610-778-2283
MORE INFORMATION
See the U.S. Department of Education's website for the Education Jobs Fund at http://www2.ed.gov/programs/educationjobsfund/index.html. Specific questions can be e-mailed to EducationJobsFund@ed.gov

States: Come Get Your Edujobs Money

Posted: 13 Aug 2010 11:36 AM PDT
This article comes from the “Education Week” blog: Politics K-12 [webeditors@epe.org]

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wasn't kidding when he promised school districts and states that the applications for the new Education Jobs Fund (created under the $10 billion edujobs bill) would be very quick and "streamlined."

Less than a week after President Obama signed the edujobs bill, the application has been posted, and it is super straightforward. There is basically only one question: States have to specify whether they plan to distribute the funds through Title I or through their state education funding formula. (Except for Texas, which is special, and gets no choice in the matter. Texas has to distribute the funds via Title I. And, it has stricter maintenance-of-effort provisions.)

The money can be used for restoring cuts in salaries and benefits and boosting teacher pay in the 2010-2011 school year. Districts can also eliminate furlough days that had been scheduled for the 2010-2011 school year.

But they can't use the funds to pay salaries and benefits for outside contractors, except in cases where districts contract with other districts for specific services. And the money can't be used for central office staff.

Districts can use the funds to pay the salaries of teachers and other employees, including principals, assistant principals, academic coaches, in-service teacher trainers, classroom aides, counselors, librarians, secretaries, social workers, psychologists, interpreters, physical therapists, speech therapists, occupational therapists, information technology personnel, nurses, athletic coaches, security officers, custodians, maintenance workers, bus drivers, and cafeteria workers.

QUOTES ABOUT EDUCATION

I found these quotes in a blog posted by Nate German, a Study Island user,
[ http://nathangerman.blogspot.com/2010/08/week-7-lesson-7-blog-vii-educational.html ] who appears to have found them at www.QuoteGarden.com

No man who worships education has got the best out of education.... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete. ~G.K. Chesterton


The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men. ~Bill Beattie


The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows. ~Sydney J. Harris


Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school. ~Albert Einstein


The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize. ~Franklin D. Roosevelt


It'll be a great day when education gets all the money it wants and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy bombers. ~Author unknown, quoted in You Said a Mouthful, Ronald D. Fuchs, ed.


An educational system isn't worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn't teach them how to make a life. ~Author Unknown


If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. ~Attributed to both Andy McIntyre and Derek Bok


It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense. ~Robert G. Ingersoll


Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. ~G.M. Trevelyan


To the uneducated, an A is just three sticks. ~A.A. Milne


Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both. ~Abraham Flexner


Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army. ~Edward Everett


Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding. ~Ezra Pound


Education should be exercise; it has become massage. ~Martin H. Fischer


The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives. ~Robert Maynard Hutchins


He who opens a school door, closes a prison. ~Victor Hugo


Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won't fatten the dog. ~Mark Twain


My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of the young and inflame their intellects. ~Robert Maynard Hutchins


Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. ~Will Durant


Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age? ~Erich Fromm


Education aims to give you a boost up the ladder of knowledge. Too often, it just gives you a cramp on one of its rungs. ~Martin H. Fischer


Education would be much more effective if its purpose was to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they do not know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it. ~William Haley


I read Shakespeare and the Bible, and I can shoot dice. That's what I call a liberal education. ~Tallulah Bankhead


A child educated only at school is an uneducated child. ~George Santayana


Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one. ~Malcolm S. Forbes


An educated person is one who has learned that information almost always turns out to be at best incomplete and very often false, misleading, fictitious, mendacious - just dead wrong. ~R. Baker


What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook. ~Henry David Thoreau


Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught. ~Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as Artist," 1890


Did you know America ranks the lowest in education but the highest in drug use? It's nice to be number one, but we can fix that. All we need to do is start the war on education. If it's anywhere near as successful as our war on drugs, in no time we'll all be hooked on phonics. ~Leighann Lord


What if man were required to educate his children without the help of talking animals. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul. To Miss Mackay it is a putting in of something that is not there, and that is not what I call education. I call it intrusion. ~Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie


If I had learned education I would not have had time to learn anything else. ~Cornelius Vanderbilt


Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity. ~Aristotle


Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. ~G.K. Chesterton


In the education of children there is nothing like alluring the interest and affection; otherwise you only make so many asses laden with books. ~Michel de Montaigne


Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence. ~Robert Frost


Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate themselves. ~Abbé Dimnet, Art of Thinking, 1928


Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary


The modern world belongs to the half-educated, a rather difficult class, because they do not realize how little they know. ~William R. Inge


It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. ~Aristotle


I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. ~Mark Twain


When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course. ~Peter Drucker


If a man is a fool, you don't train him out of being a fool by sending him to university. You merely turn him into a trained fool, ten times more dangerous. ~Desmond Bagley


Education is the movement from darkness to light. ~Allan Bloom


Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants. ~John W. Gardner


There is nothing so stupid as the educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in. ~Will Rogers


Education is not filling a pail but the lighting of a fire. ~William Butler Yeats


Education, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary


A good teacher must know the rules; a good pupil, the exceptions. ~Martin H. Fischer


With just enough learning to misquote. ~George Gordon, Lord Byron, "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers"


There is only one Education, and it has only one goal: the freedom of the mind. Anything that needs an adjective, be it civics education, or socialist education, or Christian education, or whatever-you-like education, is not education, and it has some different goal. The very existence of modified "educations" is testimony to the fact that their proponents cannot bring about what they want in a mind that is free. An "education" that cannot do its work in a free mind, and so must "teach" by homily and precept in the service of these feelings and attitudes and beliefs rather than those, is pure and unmistakable tyranny. ~Richard Mitchell,The Underground Grammarian, September 1982


The regular course was Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with; and then the different branches of Arithmetic - Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision. ~Lewis Carroll


Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve. ~Roger Lewin


They say that we are better educated than our parents' generation. What they mean is that we go to school longer. It is not the same thing. ~Richard Yates


I think everyone should go to college and get a degree and then spend six months as a bartender and six months as a cabdriver. Then they would really be educated. ~Al McGuire


The tragedy of education is played in two scenes - incompetent pupils facing competent teachers and incompetent teachers facing competent pupils. ~Martin H. Fischer


A gentleman need not know Latin, but he should at least have forgotten it. ~Brander Matthews


If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found time to conquer the world. ~Heinrich Heine


You send your child to the schoolmaster, but 'tis the schoolboys who educate him. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


One attraction of Latin is that you can immerse yourself in the poems of Horace and Catullus without fretting over how to say, "Have a nice day." ~Peter Brodie


The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have given his life. ~Ernest Renan, Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse, 1883


Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. ~John Dewey


Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent. ~John Maynard Keynes


Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know. ~Daniel J. Boorstin, Democracy and Its Discontents


I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly. ~Michel Eyquem de Montaigne


Education is the process of driving a set of prejudices down your throats. ~Martin H. Fischer


It doesn't make much difference what you study, as long as you don't like it. ~Finley Peter Dunne


Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't. ~Pete Seeger


We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Intelligence appears to be the thing that enables a man to get along without education. Education enables a man to get along without the use of his intelligence. ~Albert Edward Wiggam


The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas. ~George Santayana


The founding fathers... provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called education. School is where you go between when your parents can't take you and industry can't take you. ~John Updike, The Centaur, 1963


You can get all A's and still flunk life. ~Walker Percy


The more that learn to read the less learn how to make a living. That's one thing about a little education. It spoils you for actual work. The more you know the more you think somebody owes you a living. ~Will Rogers


My parents told me, "Finish your dinner. People in China and India are starving." I tell my daughters, "Finish your homework. People in India and China are starving for your job." ~Thomas L. Friedman


All the learnin' my father paid for was a bit o' birch at one end and an alphabet at the other. ~George Eliot


Education is the transmission of civilization. ~Ariel and Will Durant


The one real object of education is to have a man in the condition of continually asking questions. ~Bishop Mandell Creighton


If you sincerely desire a truly well-rounded education, you must study the extremists, the obscure and "nutty." You need the balance! Your poor brain is already being impregnated with middle-of-the-road crap, twenty-four hours a day, no matter what. Network TV, newspapers, radio, magazines at the supermarket... even if you never watch, read, listen, or leave your house, even if you are deaf and blind, the telepathic pressure alone of the uncountable normals surrounding you will insure that you are automatically well-grounded in consensus reality. ~Ivan Stang, High Weirdness By Mail

Reading Eggs 'Hatch' in U.S. Market: Archipelago Learning Becomes Exclusive Distributor of Popular Australian Literacy Product for Early Learners

Reading Eggs is Perfect Complement to Study Island, a Favorite of U.S. Teachers, in Archipelago's Line-Up of Online Instructional Programs

DALLAS, Aug. 9, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- To help young students 'crack' the reading code, Archipelago Learning, a leading subscription-based online education company, announced today that it has become the exclusive U.S. distributor of the school version of Blake Publishing's Reading Eggs. The playful, online early literacy program hails from Australia and is creatively designed to support core literacy teaching that will drive early reading successes and help students, ages three to eight, become proficient readers.

Developed by a highly experienced team of teachers, education writers, and developers, Reading Eggs comprises 100 research-based lessons within a highly motivational framework. The program is rich with an assortment of instructional tutorials, review activities, and games. Blake Publishing has a long history in publishing award-winning and internationally renowned K-12 reading materials for several major U.S. publishers. Its high-quality educational resources provide a vast array of literacy resources and programs for teachers and students, alike.

"We are thrilled to add this very clever and exceptional balanced literacy reading program to our Study Island family, and to offer it to our growing customer base," said Tim McEwen, chief executive officer for Archipelago Learning. "We understand the role that early literacy development plays in student achievement in elementary school and beyond. With this engaging product, we are giving preschool and early elementary teachers an important tool that will have their students experiencing tremendous success early in their literacy acquisition process, thus ensuring that reading for meaning is achieved."

Each of the simple-to-navigate lessons that make up the Reading Eggs program offer between six and eleven sections that focus on core reading skills and strategies essential for sustained reading success. The animated program begins at an emergent reading level, focusing on letter sounds, first sight words and reading simple sentences. Using their very own avatar or online character, students navigate their way through a host of fun and interactive activities as many times as they want. With each lesson, students gain valuable repetition and practice of the five pillars of reading skills the National Reading Panel determined essential for reading proficiency: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency. As lessons are successfully completed, students are provided a corresponding online-leveled reader as well as earn the opportunity to add a Reading Eggs' fun "critter" to their collection. After ten lessons, students complete a mastery quiz that provides teachers with a report summarizing what each child has learned thus far along with diagnostics to inform instruction.

For older students, the program's Story Factory opens up a world of story writing and reading where young scholars can write their own stories and enter them in a weekly story writing competition sponsored by Reading Eggs.

Teachers will find the diagnostic tests and student management tools useful in placing students in the appropriate reading level within the program. All student activities and progress are recorded, showing teachers a list of test results and lessons finished with a complete scope and sequence of content covered. In addition, the teacher toolkit provides access to a wide range of interactive whiteboard resources, 96 spelling tests, and interactive lesson ideas.

"The cool graphics, appealing songs, rewards, and work-at-your-own-pace program really grabs the attention of young readers, including struggling and reluctant readers," added McEwen. "The playfulness of the Reading Eggs program, combined with its strong instructional focus, creates a solution that is educationally rigorous but still suits the learning style of young children who learn best through play."

The complete Study Island product offering is available for purchase by schools, districts and learning centers, as well as parents and students. Purchase prices specifically for the Reading Eggs program begin at $199 for an annual, single class subscription. For more information please visit the Reading Eggs section of the Study Island website at: http://www.studyisland.com/readingeggs.

Contact your Kentucky Sales Rep, Pat Ryan [pat.ryan@studyisland.com] to register for a FREE Trial or, go to: secure.studyisland.com/readingeggs/schools_freetrial.cfm