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Pennsylvania's Secretary of Education Visits Penn State

Vicki L. Phillips, Secretary of Education for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, was greeted by about 50 faculty, staff, and graduate students of Penn State's College of Education during an informal gathering April 24 in Chambers Building. Phillips discussed the Commonwealth's plans for improving the educational landscape in Pennsylvania, and then held a dialogue with those in attendance.

Phillips cited recent test performances of the state's public school students as a need for educational reform. "Fifty percent of Pennsylvania's eleventh graders cannot meet the basic proficiencies in mathematics, and 41% of them can't pass our tests for reading at a proficient level," she said.

The Secretary briefly outlined a four-pronged Plan for a New Pennsylvania introduced by Governor Ed Rendell. The plan would reform the state's approach to education, calling for economic stimulus, property tax relief, investment in proven practices, and solutions to funding education. A detailed description of Rendell's plan is available on the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Web site: http://www.state.pa.us/budget/site/default.asp.

Phillips stressed the importance of increasing educational resources in pre-school years and in early elementary grades, a concept aimed at increasing student achievement later. "We're one of only nine states in the country that do not invest in quality pre-school education," she said.

She also talked about a plan for a rewarding results fund, aligned with President George Bush's No Child Left Behind act. Phillips, a native of rural Kentucky, related her own childhood to the No Child act, describing her rise from an underprivileged elementary classroom to a top post in the Rendell administration. "I attended school in a poor area, and because of that I was tagged as having no expectations," she said. "This was in spite of the fact that I was in the top 10% of my class. If it weren't for a friend who talked me into going along with her one day to take a college entrance exam, I never would have been qualified to attend college." Phillips eventually earned her bachelor's and master's degrees at Western Kentucky University and her doctorate in instructional leadership from the University of Lincoln in England.

"My own childhood is probably the main reason I'm so concerned about providing educational opportunities for every child," concluded Phillips.

Three College of Education Faculty Co-Author Award-Winning Research Article

University Park, Pa. - A recent paper co-authored by three College of Education faculty members has won the 2001-03 Outstanding International Study Award from the American Education Research Association. David P. Baker, Gerry LeTendre, and Brian Goesling authored the study titled "Socioeconomic Status, School Quality, and National Economic Development: A Cross-National Analysis of the 'Heyneman-Loxley Effect' on Mathematics and Science Achievement" that appeared in the August 2002 issue of the journal Comparative Education Review.

In their paper, Baker, LeTendre, and Goesling cite an erosion of the Heyneman-Loxley effect, a 1970s phenomenon that showed that the relationship among educational achievement, family background, and school resources varied by average national income level. In recent years, say the authors, the size of family background effects on variation in mathematics and science achievement has become similar across countries, and school resource effects are not as evident in less-developed nations. But, as in the 1970s, average national income is still positively associated with mathematics and science achievement.

ESL Certificate Program Will Fulfill State Requirements

University Park, Pa.—All teachers in Pennsylvania’s public schools who are providing instruction in English as a Second Language (ESL) will soon be required to hold a Program Specialist-ESL certificate. Penn State is now offering an approved 15-credit training program to satisfy the ESL education requirements outlined by the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE).

The new PDE mandate takes effect at the beginning of the 2004-05 academic year. Until then, school districts may continue to staff ESL positions with educators holding any Pennsylvania Level I or Level II instructional certificate. Effective July 1, 2004, however, those teachers already working in ESL classes who do not hold the Program Specialist certificate issued prior to 1990 will be required to complete an ESL training program in order to continue in their assignments.

Previous to this year, there were no sanctioned ESL training programs offered in Pennsylvania. The Commonwealth’s recent legislative mandate has opened the door to new training efforts.

Penn State’s new credential program, titled Program Specialist: English as a Second Language, consists of upper-division and graduate-level courses that lead to a demonstration of knowledge of the fundamental concepts and practices of ESL instruction and services. The program is a joint effort of the College of Education and the College of the Liberal Arts. Miryam Espinosa-Dulanto, assistant professor of education and applied linguistics, and Karen E. Johnson, professor of applied linguistics, serve as the program’s co-directors.

Program information is available on the Web at: http://www.ed.psu.edu/ci/esl.asp

Penn State Harrisburg offers a separate ESL program. Visit: http://www.hgb.psu.edu/hbg/news/20021119.html

Horst von Dorpowski, assistant dean of undergraduate and summer programs, said “Here’s another illustration of how specialists in these two Colleges collaborate to meet needs in the school of the Commonwealth.”

The courses will be available both at the University Park campus and through the University’s outreach program. The curriculum addresses the following components:

•English usage and developing linguistics awareness;

•ESL instructional materials development;

•English language learners language and support services knowledge; and

•Cultural awareness/sensitivity.

The ESL training program is designed to satisfy the certification needs of teachers in two situations—those who are currently working in ESL classrooms throughout the state, and those seeking Act 48 credit. Credits earned through the program count toward the issuance of a Level II certificate. ESL teachers who hold the Program Specialist certificate for ESL issued prior to 1990 will be exempt from the training if they have continuously taught ESL in the district that applied for the original Program Specialist certificate.

The program is also open to students who are currently enrolled in undergraduate and graduate education programs at Penn State. These students will be able to tailor their curricula to include ESL certification, provided they also hold or are working toward an Instructional I or II certificate.

Credits earned in Penn State’s long-standing Adelante program and other similar programs can be counted toward the mandatory ESL training if the content is reviewed and approved as meeting all of the ESL competencies. Candidates who have completed or will complete the Adelante Program by August 30, 2003 and who wish to apply to PDE for the ESL credential will need to take an additional three-credit course (APLING 410 or 484).

A Program Specialist-ESL certificate is specific to the individual, the assignment, and the employing school district. A teacher having completed certification will be able to participate in ESL instruction only in his/her school assignment. Upon moving to another school district, he or she can teach ESL only if the hiring district applies for and receives a new Program Specialist-ESL certificate from the PDE.

“Conferring a program-specialist credential provides the PDE with credentialing flexibility,” explained von Dorpowski. “But a candidate with an approved ESL credential for one school district should have no difficulty in obtaining another credential required for a second district, and so on.”

In-depth information about ESL training is available at the PDE Web site: http://www.pde.state.pa.us

Penn State Professor Emeritus Nicely Wins PASCD Award

University Park, Pa. Robert F. Nicely, Jr., professor emeritus and associate dean emeritus in Penn State University’s College of Education, was presented with the Pennsylvania Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development’s President’s Award during the annual PASCD meeting recently. The PASCD honored Nicely for “dedication and leadership to our professional organization throughout the years.” The Association noted that Nicely’s “commitment has been instrumental in making PASCD a premiere affiliate within our state and international organizations.”

Additionally, Pennsylvania Educational Leadership, the official journal of PASCD that Nicely has edited for the past eleven years, has received the 2002 award for the Outstanding Affiliate Article from the 150,000-member international Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. He accepted the award at the ASCD’s annual conference in San Francisco in March.

Penn State Professors Herr and Niles Win Two of ACA's Eight Awards

University Park, Pa. Faculty members of Penn State University’s College of Education received two of the eight awards given this year by the American Counseling Association (ACA). Edwin L. Herr, distinguished professor of counselor education, and Spencer G. Niles, professor of counselor education, were honored by the ACA at its annual conference in Anaheim, Calif., on March 24.

Herr received the 2003 ACA Extended Research Award, which recognizes an ACA member who has conducted high-quality research on issues of significance to the counseling profession over the course of at least ten years.

Niles won the 2003 David K. Brooks Distinguished Mentor Award. This award honors an ACA member who has a documented record of supporting and strengthening the counseling profession as a role model and mentor; and who has an established history of professional excellence whereby the individual has freely given of himself or herself to help others within the profession.

LeTendre and Baker Receive Prestigious Fulbright Scholarships to Germany

by Joe Savrock
Two faculty members of Penn State's College of Education have been awarded Fulbright Scholarships for the next academic year. Gerald K. LeTendre, associate professor of education, and David P. Baker, professor of education and sociology, won separate awards to lecture and conduct research in Germany.

LeTendre proposes to lecture on the role of education in American society and school-based prevention programs in American schools, and to conduct research on German school-based drug-prevention programs. He will be affiliated with the Bremen Institut for drug research at the University of Bremen. "This institute has extensive programs and faculty engaged in the study of substance abuse prevention and intervention programs," he said.

"The Fulbright offers me the opportunity to renew my contact with Germany and create a point of comparison and reference for my work on U.S. and Japanese schools," continued LeTendre.

Baker plans to study adolescents' understanding and attitudes of political principles and governing processes. He anticipates that his study "will provide information for educators and policymakers in Germany, the United States, and elsewhere about ways to improve the political understanding of youth, as well as identify nations in which there are serious failures in the preparation of the next generation of citizens and suggest what might be done about that in the near future." In addition, Baker will be lecturing at the University of Potsdam, Institut für Pädagogik.

Baker added that "This experience will further strengthen my ability to provide training in education policy to a diverse set of students, as well has make contacts for future international work for my students and myself."

The Fulbright Scholarship Program was established in 1946 by U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. The program allows more than 700 Americans each year to benefit from resources around the world, helping them gain international competence in an increasingly interdependent world.

Walter Wins Prestigious Olivo Award for Outstanding Service

University Park, Pa. - Richard A. Walter, associate professor of education at Penn State University, received the prestigious C. Thomas Olivo Outstanding Service Award at the annual meeting of the National Occupational Competency Testing Institute (NOCTI) Consortium in Las Vegas.

The Olivo award is NOCTI's highest honor. It is presented to an individual whose service to the field of career and technical education has been exemplary and who has demonstrated leadership in the arena of occupational competency assessment. Named for C. Thomas Olivo, a founder of NOCTI, the award is based on credibility; expertise; dedication and commitment to processes, products and applications of occupational competency assessment programs and services; personal qualities of leadership; interpersonal relationships in advancing NOCTI; knowledge about and contributions to NOCTI programs and/or services; and active professional affiliation.

Zembal-Saul Wins Prestitious CAREER Grant from NSF

University Park, Pa. - Carla Zembal-Saul, assistant professor of science education in Penn State's Department of Curriculum and Instruction, has received a five-year, $579,741 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for her program titled "Teaching Elementary School Science as Argument (TESSA)."

Zembal-Saul's research will investigate the development of an electronic learning environment designed to support beginning teachers in learning science and learning to teach science. These resources will include an argument articulation component (tools for constructing scientific arguments) and a teaching science as argument component (tools for developing pedagogical knowledge and abilities for teaching science in ways that give priority to evidence and argument).

The CAREER grant is the NSF's most prestigious awards for new faculty members. It recognizes and supports the early career-development activities of teacher-scholars who are most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st century. CAREER awardees are selected on the basis of creative, career-development plans that effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their institution and that build a firm foundation for a lifetime of integrated contributions to research and education.

Penn State Alum Receives Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching

by Joe Savrock

State College, Pa. — Brenda Khayat, a teacher in the State College (Pa.) Area School District and mentor in the Penn State University/SCASD Professional Development School program, has won a Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching.

The Presidential Awards are the nation’s highest honors for elementary and secondary school teachers, recognizing those who have demonstrated outstanding and innovative ways to teach. The National Science Foundation (NSF) administers the awards program for the White House.

Khayat ‘96 M.Ed., a fifth-grade teacher at Park Forest Elementary School, was honored for her focus on elementary mathematics. She received a special citation from the President of the United States and a $7,500 cash award from the NSF to improve science and mathematics instruction during an awards ceremony March 21 in Washington, D.C.

“I am very thankful to my family, school and district for supporting all my endeavors in my quest to be the best mathematics teacher for the students I teach,” said Khayat. “I have a passion for teaching mathematics, and to be rewarded for it through this Presidential Award is more than I can ask for. I’ve spent many years studying mathematics—developing my own understanding and learning about students’ understanding—and now I will push forward to share this with others.”

Khayat’s award also included participation in a number of week-long activities. “I met so many wonderful and exciting people within the National Science Foundation and from many of the professional organizations represented—such as the National Council of Teachers for Mathematics,” she said. “I also networked with many elementary mathematics teachers, and we are already e-mailing each other and sharing information and ideas. This was the most important part of the week—meeting many exciting educators like myself who are very driven to be the best for the students we teach.”

Khayat credits her participation in a former Penn State College of Education project as a springboard to some of her success. That project, the Mathematics Teacher Development (MTD) project, likewise was funded by the NSF. “The MTD project was very important,” Khayat acknowledged. “This course made a huge difference in my growth and where I am today. For three years I was extensively immersed in mathematics, and it became a way of life to do what I do in my mathematics classroom today.”

The MTD project was instructed by Martin A. Simon, professor of mathematics education. Simon added that “Brenda has brought tremendous energy and enthusiasm to improving mathematics teaching and to supporting prospective teachers as they learn to teach mathematics for understanding. As a participant in the MTD project, Brenda was a member of a small group of dedicated and talented teachers who worked hard for three years to understand mathematics and mathematics teaching and learning. These teachers are now a valuable resource to the State College School District.”

Giroux Wins Top Award for Rhetoric Article

Susan Searls Giroux, lecturer of English and Literacy and Language in Penn State’s College of Education, has won the James L. Kinneavy Award for the most outstanding article published in 2002 in the Journal of Advanced Composition (JAC). She was recognized for her article titled “The Post-9/11 University and the Project of Democracy.”

The Kinneavy Award is considered the top award for rhetoric composition in the United States. JAC is a peer-reviewed journal publishing theoretical articles on a variety of topics related to rhetoric, writing, multiple literacies, and the politics of education. It is the premier journal in the rhetoric field.

Educational Experiences Help Shape Employment Prospects of Students with Severe Physical Disabilities Who Use AAC

University Park, Pa. — The workplace challenges and successes met by persons with severe physical disabilities often are grounded in the effectiveness of past educational experiences, according to a recently published article co-authored by David McNaughton, associate professor in the Department of Educational and School Psychology and Special Education.

While appropriate educational experiences are important for any individual, effective instruction is especially critical to the employment success of students with severe physical disabilities who have communications disorders.

The article, “Getting your ‘wheel’ in the door: The successful full-time employment experiences of individuals with cerebral palsy who use augmentative and alternative communication”, co-authored by Janice Light and Kara B. Arnold, appeared in the vol. 18 no. 2 issue of the journal Augmentative and Alternative Communication. The article describes the reflections of eight employed individuals with severe physical disabilities who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) techniques to communicate. AAC techniques include computer-based voice output aids, sign language, and word boards.

“For these individuals, AAC provides a way for them to share their knowledge and skills with others,” said McNaughton. “Learning to make effective use of an AAC system, however, just as in learning a foreign language, takes significant time and effort from both the person who uses AAC as well as the educators who work with the individual. Appropriate educational experiences are critical to the development of communication skills, and communication skills are critical to employment.”

While there are some success stories with regards to employment for individuals who use AAC, overall the national picture is bleak: Less than 5% of individuals who use AAC are employed. In order to learn from the experiences of those individuals who have been successful in obtaining employment, McNaughton and his co-investigators used a focus group discussion format on an Internet bulletin board. All of the participants used AAC and were employed full-time; they posted opinions on 10 discussion topics during a nine-week period.

All eight individuals in this study were well educated. All had completed high school and at least some university coursework; four had earned at least one graduate degree. Their educational achievements helped them earn jobs in a wide variety of areas, and current job titles included teacher, software engineer, and independent living advocate.

Six themes emerged from the responses posted by the participants. In addition to describing their employment activities, they provided information on the following areas: the benefits of employment and reasons for being employed; the negative impact of employment activities; barriers to employment activities; supports to employment activities; and recommendations for improving employment outcomes. Two of these themes—barriers to employment activities and supports to employment activities—strongly emphasized the need for appropriate instruction from qualified professionals.

The participants clearly indicated that they made their greatest academic progress when teacher expectations were high and instruction was adjusted to the needs of the individual. One wrote, “All of my special education and regular education teachers pushed me hard. They all knew I wanted to go to college and get a job. They did everything they could and then some, because, I think, they believed in my potential.”

Too often, however, the individuals had to fight to overcome low expectations and inappropriate educational activities. One participant, who later went on to complete a master of science degree in astronomy, was discouraged from taking advanced math courses in high school because his teachers did not think an individual with severe physical disabilities could be successful in academically challenging classes.

The responses of the participants provided evidence that a strong education and multiple volunteer and part-time work experiences provided the best foundation for obtaining employment as an adult. Other supports came from assistive technology, government policies supporting employment for individuals with disabilities, and support from the individuals’ families. In addition to educational barriers, the participants identified barriers related to public attitude and discrimination, technology breakdowns, lack of enforcement for government policy, lack of personal care/support services, and poor transportation services.

The study’s participants had recommendations for several professional entities—educators, technology developers, employers, policymakers, and other AAC users—for improving employment outcomes for persons with severe physical disabilities who use AAC. Their suggestions for educators included the following: Use appropriate assessment techniques to learn more about the abilities of students with disabilities; provide appropriate and challenging instructional activities; prepare students with the necessary skills to be productive adults; inform students about job options; and provide opportunities to practice interviewing skills.

McNaughton and his co-investigators are working to spread the message that education is critical to employment success through a variety of formats, including publications, presentations, and Web-based instructional modules. “People who use AAC tell us that one of the biggest barriers they face is the attitudes of others,” he said. “One of our participants, who now has successfully worked as a classroom teacher for three years, told us that he often experienced difficulty in his first job interviews.

He wrote to the discussion group, ‘When people see me, they do not see me. They just see a person in a wheelchair.’ We need to work to change the attitudes of educators and of future employers. We believe that by documenting and sharing these success stories, we can get a better understanding of what it takes to make it work, and, we hope, encourage people to look at what individuals with severe disabilities can do, both in school and in the workplace.”

Penn State's Outreach Office Wins UCEA Award

University Park, Pa. — The Outreach Office of Statewide Programs at Penn State University is the recipient of the University Continuing Education Association’s (UCEA) Outstanding Credit Program Award for 2002, for its program “Applied Behavior Analysis for Special Education.” The award was presented March 30 in Chicago at the annual conference of the UCEA, which is recognized as the nation’s foremost professional association for continuing education.

The Penn State program, which consists of four graduate-level courses, prepares academic professionals who serve behaviorally-challenged students, especially those with Autism Spectrum Disorder. More than 800 special education teachers, counselors, and psychologists from seven states have enrolled since the program’s inception in 1998, according to Outreach Office director Edward Donovan.

“This is a very significant recognition of the fine work that goes into this program,” said David H. Monk, Dean of Penn State’s College of Education. “We are very proud of this program in the College and I think it represents a model example of a successful collaboration between an academic program and an outreach initiative.”

LifeLink PSU Helps Special Education High School Students Experience University Life

University Park, Pa. – Mature high school students with disabilities can benefit from a new program developed and implemented through a collaboration of Penn State University and the State College (Pa.) Area School District (SCASD). LifeLink PSU provides SCASD special-needs students between the ages of 18 and 21 an opportunity to interact with students of their own age in an environment that is socially and academically conducive to continued growth.

Two Penn State College of Education entities—the Rehabilitation Services Program and the Special Education Program—worked in cooperation with SCASD’s Department of Special Education to initiate the LifeLink PSU project, which started this academic year. LifeLink PSU activities take place on Penn State’s University Park campus, where a central classroom has been established in the Hetzel Union Building, Room 301.

The high school participants are accompanied to appropriate classes, lunch, club meetings, and a variety of social functions by volunteer mentors, most of whom are Penn State students. Other activities include holding jobs on campus, using recreation and athletic facilities, and attending athletic events.

Students entering LifeLink PSU have already attended high school for four years. High school students in special education are eligible for public education until the age of 21. Typically, students who remain in high school until age 21 will have attended for a total of eight years, twice as long as students in the regular education population. “This could mean being in high school for seven years with students who are much younger,” said David Monk, dean of the College of Education. “LifeLink PSU offers students an opportunity to interact with age-appropriate peers right here on campus.”

By continuing their high school education in a university setting, LifeLink PSU students experience enhanced educational and social opportunities. Many prominent educators emphasize the importance of appropriate student culture as a critical component for successful transition to adult life.

SCASD’s Sharon Salter, assistant director of special education, said, “One of the unique aspects of this program is that our students are actually attending carefully selected Penn State classes.” Patrick Moore, SCASD director of special education, remarked that “the Penn State faculty have been welcoming our students as guests in their classrooms. This is an exciting opportunity and collaboration.”

The University’s students, in serving as mentors, likewise benefit from the program. Their hours with LifeLink PSU count toward University program requirements for volunteering with special populations. Elias Mpofu, associate professor of rehabilitation services education, commented, “University students taking the Medical Information class, as well as the Job Development and Employment of People with Disabilities class, are excited at the prospect of learning more about disabilities by actually interacting with people with disabilities in a variety of contexts. I require my students to volunteer time toward the enfranchisement of people with disabilities in our community.”

LifeLink PSU continues to seek not only college students, but faculty and staff as well, to volunteer as mentors. “A volunteer can spend as much or as little time as is available,” said Teri Lindner, a teacher in the program and former Disney Teacher of the Year. “There are many ways to be involved with a LifeLink PSU student, such as accompanying the student to a Penn State class, playing video games or pool, tutoring, or going swimming, ice skating, or weight lifting.”

Cory Baker, a Penn State senior in the rehabilitation services program, plans to graduate in December 2002 and is the program’s first intern. He attends classes with the LifeLink PSU students. “This is an excellent opportunity for students who wouldn’t normally have the chance to be a college student,” said Baker. “What a great chance for an intern to work in a different setting. You never know what to expect next. The students never cease to amaze me with the abilities that they have. They are doing things I never expected them to do.”

Sandy Meyer, coordinator of student athletic programs at Penn State, teaches a freshman seminar titled Coping with College. “LifeLink PSU is a mutually beneficial program for both the SCASD students and the student athletes,” she said. “It is a wonderful opportunity for the SCASD students to experience the college environment so that, if they some day choose to attend a university or college, they will have a good idea what to expect.”

The program is popular among its high school participants. Jason Fish enjoys taking Meyers’ Coping with College course, as well as Personal Defense and Persuasive Speaking. “When you’re on campus,” said Jason, “you have the freedom to express yourself. I like being in classes, because we’re with real college students.

“Penn State food is better than most schools,” continued Jason. “I can get extra pickles on my cheeseburger if I want! Professors make classes fun. They are interested in what they’re teaching and they enjoy their jobs.”

Another SCASD student, Jenny Kunkle, is taking three courses: Coping with College, Yoga, and Basic Theater Make-Up. She said, “I like going to classes with my mentor, Cory. He is a college student, so I feel like a college student. Penn State makes me happy and I have so much fun in class. Being here on campus makes me feel grown-up and more independent. I didn’t think I would know where to go, but I am learning. I guess I am learning like all the other students. They look lost, too.”

Luke Aiello enjoys the Coping with College course. He said, “I like that if someone is late to class, the teacher makes them sing. One of the singers sounded like the Back Street Boys.”

Lena Purdum is enrolled in Ballroom Dancing and Campus Choir. When asked if she likes the Penn State atmosphere, she exclaimed with thumbs up, “I love it!”

Merit Scholarships: Who Is Really Being Served

Cambridge, Mass. – A new report released by The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, and co-edited by Donald E. Heller, associate professor of education at Penn State University, examines publicly funded scholarships in the United States. The study is an in-depth series on the issue by a group of accomplished scholars from several academic institutions and a variety of states.

“Who Should We Help? The Negative Social Consequences of Merit Scholarships” studies four of the country’s merit scholarship programs, including three of the nation’s four largest programs, to assess the impact of these programs on their states. The report, edited by Heller and Patricia Marin, research associate at The Civil Rights Project—with foreword by Gary Orfield, co-director of The Civil Rights Project—focuses primarily on the question of whether these programs promote college access and attainment in each state and how well the programs serve the needs of students from different income and racial and ethnic groups.

Upon release of this research, Orfield said “We are in the midst of a destructive set of federal, state, and local changes in higher education policy that limit the ability of minority and low-income families to go to college, damage their future and the future of their communities, and sacrifice too much of the human potential of a society where soon half of all school-age children will be non-white. In our society, individuals and families who have not benefited from attending post-secondary education are far less successful financially, earning less in real terms than they did a generation ago. More than ever before, social and occupational mobility is related to higher education. Therefore, our goal must be to develop policies and programs that increase access to those students who have been overlooked in the past.”

Heller agreed with Orfield, noting that “Policymakers are particularly concerned about the persistent gaps in post-secondary participation between rich and poor, and between racial majority and minority students. Understanding the impact of merit scholarship programs is particularly important in light of the challenges facing higher education in the near future. At the same time the nation is facing these demographic trends, state capacity for funding higher education along with the willingness to do so is being diminished.”

Angelo Ancheta, director of Legal and Policy Advocacy Programs for The Civil Rights Project, concluded that “We have to be especially watchful because merit scholarship programs carry potential risks to equal opportunity for racial and ethnic minority students. The use of criteria such as standardized test scores and grades to determine ‘merit’ has adverse effects on low-income and minority students.”

The authors found that state merit scholarships are being awarded disproportionately to populations of students who historically, and today, have the highest college participation rates. This includes students from middle- and upper-income families, as well as white students. Furthermore, the evidence in this report indicates that the four programs analyzed here do little to provide financial assistance to the students who need it most.

Here are brief descriptions of the four programs examined in this report:

1. The first and best-known broad-based state merit scholarship program is the Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally (HOPE) program in Georgia. Begun in 1993, it is now the largest state-run merit scholarship program in the country, having awarded approximately $300 million in 2000-01. Researchers found that only 4% of expenditures for this program resulted in increased college access in the state; the remaining 96% of the funds subsidized college costs for students who would have attended college anyway.

2. Florida’s Bright Futures Scholarship program, like Georgia’s program, uses the state lottery as a funding source and awards full scholarships to students attending state-sponsored institutions of higher education (and a comparable amount to those enrolled in private institutions). While African Americans represented 22% of all high school graduates in Florida, they received only 8% of the scholarships.

3. Michigan’s Merit Award Scholarship awards one-time grants of up to $2,500 to students who earn high scores on the state’s curriculum-based assessment. The program is funded by the state’s share of the national tobacco settlement. Similar to the findings in Florida, while African Americans represented 14% of the high school students in Michigan, they received only 4% of the scholarships.

4. New Mexico’s Success Scholarship is similar to Georgia’s program in that it awards full scholarships to students who attend state-sponsored colleges and universities and is funded by the state lottery. Almost 80% of the recipients were from families earning more than $40,000 per year, well above the state’s median income of approximately $32,000.

“Merit aid programs are very popular because rewarding students for their academic work seems to be the right thing to do,” said Marin. “While on the surface these programs seem reasonable, in reality they are not only ignoring existing needs but are actually exacerbating problems, such as the racial stratification of institutions, that we already witness in higher education. Of course, the effects on education are just the beginning of a larger chain reaction. Post-education, these programs may lead to larger wage and income gaps along racial lines, increasing the disparities already observed in our society. The potential long-term effects are enormous.”

Heller and Marin suggest that the following principles can help to ensure that state dollars are used in a manner that can help promote educational opportunity for poor and minority students, thus helping move the nation toward the goal established almost 40 years ago by the Higher Education Act of 1965:

1. Expand definitions of “merit” so that financial decisions are not based solely on a single measure (such as scores from the SAT, other standardized tests, or grades) that yield disparate results for underrepresented populations. Set the standard at a level such that students from all types of schools—inner city, rural, and suburban—have a reasonable chance at being able to qualify for an award.

2. Place a reasonable income cap on the scholarships so that funds are directed to students who truly need them to be able to afford college. For example, approximately 95% of federal Pell Grant dollars are awarded to students from families with income below $45,000 per year.

3. Allow qualified low-income students to receive both need-based and merit-based aid. Do not penalize them by forcing a choice between the two.

4. Make the scholarship application process simple and uniform for all who apply. Do not make the process more complicated for low-income students.

America's Religious Private Schools Are the Most Segregated

Cambridge, Mass. – America’s private schools—particularly religious private schools—are more segregated than public schools, according to a recent report co-authored by Sean Reardon, assistant professor of education and sociology at Penn State.

The report, entitled “Private School Racial Enrollments and Segregation,” was prepared as part of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University by Reardon and John T. Yun, Harvard research assistant. Gary Orfield, Harvard professor and co-director of the project, wrote the paper’s foreword. The report is based on data supplied by the federal government’s most recent “Private School Survey,” which covers the 1997-98 school year.

The study shows that, among private schools, there is steeper segregation along black-white lines than between Latinos and whites. White students represent 78% of the nation’s private school enrollment and 64% of public school enrollment. The average black student, if enrolled in a private school, attends a school that is only 34% white; a black student in the public school sector attends a school that is 33% white. For the average Latino student, the figures are 41% and 30%, respectively. Whereas Latinos are more racially integrated than blacks in private schools, they are more isolated in public schools.

Black-white segregation is greatest among Catholic schools, according to the data. Blacks who are enrolled in Catholic schools attend schools that are, on average, 31% white; blacks in non-Catholic religious schools attend schools that average 35% white; and blacks in secular private schools attend schools that average 41% white. Secular private schools are considerably less segregated than public schools.

For Latino students, non-Catholic religious schools and secular private schools are much less segregated than public and Catholic schools. Latino Catholic school students attend schools that are, on average, 36% white; Latinos in non-Catholic religious schools attend schools that average 51% white; and Latinos in secular private schools attend schools that average 50% white. Of Latino private school students, more than two-thirds attend Catholic schools. Segregation levels among Catholic schools are the most significant for Latino students.

The study also revealed that white students are more racially isolated in private schools than in public schools. In private schools, 64% of white students attend schools that are 90-100% white, while in public schools 47% of white students attend schools that are 90-100% white. White students are most isolated in religious private schools, particularly in non-Catholic religious schools, where the average white student attends a school that is 90% white and 69% of white students attend schools that are 90-100% white. In Catholic schools, the figures are 89% and 66%, respectively.

In the southern and the western United States, private schools are much more segregated than public schools. In the South, although 80% of private school students and 58% of public school students in the South are white, black students attend private schools that are, on average, 39% white and public schools that average 36% white. Similarly, in the West, where 65% of private school students and 52% of public school students are white, blacks attend private schools that average 35% white and public schools that are 32% white.

Among private schools nationally, secular private schools have the most racially diverse enrollments and the lowest levels of segregation. Among private schools, non-sectarian schools have the highest rate of minority enrollments (24%, including 11% black, 6% Latino, and 7% Asian). Catholic school enrollments are slightly less diverse (23% minority, including 8% black, 11% Latino, and 4% Asian), while non-Catholic religious schools enroll the least diverse population of students (19% minority, including 10% black, 5% Latino, and 4% Asian).

The higher segregation among religious schools is due in part to residential characteristics, according to the researchers. Most Catholic schools draw students from local, highly segregated neighborhoods. With the absence of any systematic integration mandate, enrollment patterns in these schools usually mirror residential patterns. In addition, unlike most public school districts, religious schools typically do not provide transportation for students, so low-income families rarely have the opportunity to send their children to any private school outside their local neighborhood.

The relatively lower segregation levels among secular private schools may be attributed to broader geographic areas from which to draw students. In some cases, secular private schools actively seek to attract and retain a diverse student population.

Reardon tied the relevance of these findings to recent court decisions regarding the constitutionality of school vouchers. “With clear evidence of racially specific enrollment patterns and segregation within the private school sector,” he said, “it becomes critical to examine what sort of effect large-scale voucher programs will have on the experiences of children entering those programs. Even under a voucher program, most low-income students in urban areas are not likely to have access to a wide range of private school options. Without more careful attention to issues of quality and equality, voucher plans are likely to simply reproduce existing racial and socioeconomic segregation and inequalities.”

Penn State Chosen to Conduct $2M Study

University Park, Pa.-Penn State University's Center for the Study of Higher Education was recently chosen to conduct a new $2 million study to evaluate the achievement of the new initiatives instituted by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology.

"ABET was looking for an external, independent organization who has both a proven track record in evaluation and a deep understanding of higher education. Penn State met those criteria perfectly," said George Peterson, ABET Executive Director.

ABET felt that EC2000 must itself be evaluated to determine if these goals have been achieved and to what extent. The Penn State researchers will focus on ABET's outcomes-based accreditation criteria and the impact it has had on graduates' preparation to enter today's engineering professions. They will aim to answer the question: What impact has EC2000's emphasis on outcomes, innovation and continuous program improvement had?

The findings from the three-year study will be used to improve ABET's quality assurance processes. In addition, they will be setting up the framework and methodological tools needed for ABET to continue to evaluate the impact of its outcomes-based criteria.

The ABET EC2000 Longitudinal Study will be led by J. Fredericks Volkwein, professor and Senior Scientist. The study team includes Lisa Lattuca, assistant professor and research associate, and Patrick Terenzini, professor and senior scientist.

The competitive selection process included proposals from five recognized organizations, all experts in evaluation. The applicants then attended extensive meetings and several ABET project team meetings to hone the study's focus. "We were very pleased with Penn State's proposal," said Peterson.

ABET is a Baltimore-based federation of 31 professional engineering and technical societies that accredits some 2,500 engineering, technology, computing and applied science programs at over 550 colleges and universities nationally. Since 1997, when EC2000 was developed, practices in postsecondary engineering education have dramatically shifted to support its goals. These include enabling programs to innovate and differentiate, creating an atmosphere for continuous quality improvement, encouraging self-accountability, and providing mechanisms to develop best practices.

Technical Training: What it Means Depends on Who You Ask

University Park, Pa. U.S. industries spend enormous sums of money on technical training every year in order to remain competitive in the global marketplace. Two researchers have found, however, that not everyone agrees on the definition of technical training, and this may have serious consequences for training program efficiency.

At first glance, the phrase "technical training" seems to be easily understood. But Penn State human resources specialist Dr. William J. Rothwell and Joseph A. Benkowski, associate dean for workforce development at the University of Wisconsin, have found otherwise, as they point out in their new book "Building Effective Technical Training: How to Develop Hard Skills Within Organizations," published by JosseyBass/Pfeiffer.

After examining what has been written about technical training around the world over the last 20 years, Rothwell and Benkowski concluded that technical training actually has three different meanings. "Use the phrase with factory workers or engineers, and they think you are talking about training on what they do," says Rothwell, professor of workforce education and development. This traditional use of the term also links it to the "blue collar" work performed by craftspeople as plumbers, carpenters, machinists and electricians.

"Say technical training to workers in the still-red-hot field of Information Technology (IT), and they think you are talking about training for people who work in IT," Rothwell adds. This emerging meaning of the term links it to the "gold collar" work performed by a key growth segment of the U.S. economy. For managers or clerical workers, technical training means instruction to help them use the personal computers on which they are increasingly dependent to get their daily work done. With these two groups-so-called "white collar" and "pink collar" workers-technical training centers around the application of computers to their daily work. How did these differences in meaning come about? Rothwell explains: "I think the confusion centers around the 'tech' in the word 'technical.' Some people associate that with technology. Others understand technical to mean 'specialized terminology' or knowledge that is unique to one occupation. I think everyone sees the world based on where they sit in their organizations. Managers see one world; IT people see another; and, union workers or skilled tradesworkers see another."

"It is important that we know what we are talking about," says Rothwell. "If we can't be clear about what groups benefit most from technical training, we cannot establish good government policy about it and cannot make informed management decisions about it in companies."

According to the research conducted by Rothwell and Benkowski, technical training is key to international competitiveness for U.S. industries and economic development for localities. They found numerous economic studies that showed that technical training is critical, sometimes spelling a difference in profitability for companies and international competitiveness for nations. It has been important enough to capture the attention of the Committee on the Education and the Workforce of the U.S. House of Representatives.

In order to assess the value of technical training for workers, Rothwell and Benkowski surveyed 300 randomly-selected past participants in a Technical Instructor Institute held by the University of Wisconsin-Stout. The survey results, analyzed in February, revealed four key reasons for supporting technical training.

The first reason cited was to help organizations "remain competitive." Technical training gives workers the skills they need to improve production and meet or exceed customer expectations. Technical training is the easiest of all training to justify because it is tied directly to the work that people do, and its results can be observed almost immediately after training in improved productivity. The second reason cited was to "reduce downtime." Training may make workers more productive and thus less prone to lose valuable time on their jobs.

The third reason mentioned was to "increase the skills of workers." When based on the work that people do, technical training builds individual skills, where skills mean know-how. The fourth reason cited was to "improve productivity." Not surprisingly, managers and other training stakeholders expect training to provide an ample, and often measurable, return on investment. It helps workers increase their work output.

Other reasons to support technical training also ranked and included "reducing waste," "increasing the performance of workers" and "multiskilling."

"Our research results came as no surprise to us," Rothwell said. "It just makes sense that, when government and private industry invest in technical training, they will realize benefits from a workforce with up-to-date knowledge and skills and improved ability to adapt to technological and technical change."

EDITORS: Dr. Rothwell can be reached at (814) 863-2581 or at wjr9@psu.edu by email.

SCOPE Students Get a Taste of College

Fourteen high school students from across the state spent their summer getting a taste of college life at Penn State. The Summer College Opportunity Program in Education (SCOPE) is an intensive five-week program filled with academic coursework, workshops and informational tours.

The program is in its first year, and director María Schmidt feels that it has been a success. Schmidt says Penn State is hoping to accomplish multiple objectives through the program. SCOPE gives students an opportunity to develop academic skills, while fostering personal success skills such as time management. The program aims to prepare students for the college admissions and financial aid applications process. Another goal is to validate the students as individuals by teaching them to be proud of who they are and where they come from while reinforcing their college aspirations. While the program goals are ambitious, the students also feel SCOPE has been a success. "It builds more confidence, and you learn to be more independent," said Alice Chou.

SCOPE was started by the College of Education and the Office of the Vice Provost for Educational Equity to encourage African-American, Asian-American, Latino, and Native American high school students to consider pursuing careers in education. In addition to shortage of teachers nationwide, there is an increasing disparity between students and teachers of color. The September 2000 report Educating the Emerging Majority, prepared by the Institute on Higher Education Policy, states that nine out of ten teachers nationwide are white, while students of color currently represent 37% of the school population at the elementary and secondary level. Furthermore, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that non-white students are projected to make up 44% of school enrollment by 2020 and 54% by 2050.

Program staff considered several factors when selecting students for SCOPE. The criteria included membership in historically underrepresented ethnic groups, enrollment in a college preparatory program, a grade-point average of at least 3.0, U.S. citizenship or permanent residency, being between sophomore and junior years in high school, having an interest in the field of education, and being a potential first-generation college student.

Since this is the first year for the program, the College had to be flexible with enrollment. Schmidt's team was targeting students with an interest in education, but also accepted students with interests in other social sciences. "This is an age-15 and 16 years old-where students change their mind about careers," said Schmidt. For some students, SCOPE is strengthening their interest in education. "A number of students who came into the program considering education as a career have indicated that SCOPE is increasing their desire to pursue education as a field of study," said Dr. Patricia Yaeger, a member of the SCOPE evaluation team. One student, Lilibeth Diaz, didn't start the program with an interest in the education field. With the program nearing completion, she stated: "It's made me ponder what I really want to do."

During the five-week session, the students earn four college credits. These credits can be transferred to any university the student may choose to enroll in after high school. The students took Language and Literacy Education (LLED) 297A. This class is worth three credits and refines the students' writing and communications skills. Their readings included Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and excerpts from Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities. Students engaged in writing essays on the purpose of education and social issues. Students' final research paper topics included racial profiling, black feminism, terrorism, violence in schools, cloning, stem cell research, AIDS, capital punishment, and poverty in Latin America. The second course, CI 297A, was a one-credit course that teaches students about technology and how to use it to their advantage. Each student designed a personal Web site describing his or her experiences in SCOPE. Students also learned how to use Microsoft PowerPoint to create a slide show for their final presentations on social issues in the LLED course.

When not in classes or in study hours, other activities kept the students busy. They participated in an SAT preparatory course and attended workshops presented by staff members from career services, admissions and financial aid. They also worked and participated in community activities and informational tours through places such as the weather station, the Palmer Museum of Art, and the Bennett Family Center. This summer students even enjoyed a performance by the State College Community Theater of George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man at the Boal Barn Playhouse.

Even as SCOPE provided students with the opportunity to experience college life, because they are minors, the students were closely supervised. For many, this was their first time away from home. "They go through the typical freshman experience, anxious about being away from their families, but becoming more independent," said Schmidt. Three resident counselors lived with the students in the dorms. Two of the resident counselors are graduate students in the College of Education, and the third recently graduated with honors from the Smeal College of Business, making them excellent mentors and role models for the students. In addition to the counselors, numerous other faculty and staff supervised and work with the students and helped them cope with the challenges of being full-time college students while still in high school.

Schmidt feels that it's important for the students to learn to adjust not only to the academics of college, but also to their new surroundings. The program provides the opportunity to become accustomed to all aspects of college life.

The students appreciated seeing what college will be like for them a couple of years from now. "We have gotten a head start on college," said Keyairra Wright. She feels even more strongly about wanting to go to college after going through the SCOPE program.

Fathers of Autistic Boys Share Stories of Pride and Joy

Few things in life are more meaningful than a strong father-son relationship. When the son is autistic, the relationship takes on a much greater significance.

Four fathers of autistic sons shared their insights and expressed their emotions of pride and joy recently at the 2002 National Autism Conference at Penn State University. Their sons range in age from 4 to 29. The panel discussion was moderated by William Stillman, a consultant with Looking Glass Consultants, Inc., an organization that provides technical assistance and training to families and professionals in their relations with autistic people.

The four men shared stories of situations that had occurred over the years. The stories had a common thread: All four boys have an incredible memory. The boys have exhibited detailed recollections regarding travel routes, locations of buildings, and even the precise whereabouts of a favorite book in a public library-recollections that remain keen years later. "Don't second-guess your son when trying to find something while traveling," said Charlie's father. "You'll be wrong and he'll be right."

Each boy has special talents. "Eric is a genius when it comes to fixing broken things," said his father. "His passion is receiving things that are broken. Even at Christmas, his favorite gifts are items that are broken that he can repair." Eric now has his own small business whereby he repairs appliances and other household items. His talent is unmatched by any other family member. "One day my older son called. He told me, 'I don't need to talk to you, Dad. I need to talk to Eric.' His laptop computer had crashed. Eric told him over the phone how to fix it. Finally, my son brought the computer to our house, and Eric was able to make the repairs and save the data."

The four boys, according to their dads, also show passion for the arts, whether it be music, sketching, or movie appreciation.

The panel members offered a variety of approaches that bring out the best aspects of their sons. "It's important to tune in to him," said Eric's father. "Let him be the person that he is." Stillman interjected that trying to force a child to comply to the parents' wishes is not effective. "Compliance for the sake of compliance does not equal success," he said. Christopher's father spoke of the effectiveness of creating schedules. "Schedules give my son structure and control. They enable him to see what's coming up." He also recommended rewarding the child for completing tasks and homework assignments.

Disciplining must be done in a calm, tactful, and positive manner, according to Logan's dad. "You must not let him perceive that you are yelling at him. If you are punishing your child by denying him a reward, let him know that he'll get his award tomorrow, not that he's not ever going to get the award." Charlie's father noted the importance of having his son be a part of the family's decisions. "Get his input," he said. "Positive reinforcement helps. You need to reward him for the good things he does. Also, always prepare him for what's coming next. If an unexpected, unpleasant event occurs, even if you have only two minutes to prepare him, make him feel important by saying, 'Please help Mom and I get through this.'"

The panelists gave advice to parents whose children have been recently diagnosed with autism. All cited the importance of moving quickly beyond the initial parental feelings of denial, depression, and guilt. "Work closely with your spouse," advised Eric's father. "Be a team." Several of the fathers said they felt relief after learning of their sons' disorder, because the positive diagnosis put them in a position to act. In this sense, they felt empowered.

Each of the parents also discussed the importance of talking with other parents of autistic children, through support groups, Internet chats, and conferences. The benefits are two-sided. "Sometimes you can help other parents-those who might be in challenging situations unrelated to autism-by expressing what you've learned in your experiences with your son."

All four men expressed their pride. "I wouldn't trade my son for the most neurotypical child in the world," said Charlie's father. "My wife and I feel blessed." Christopher's dad added, "Our child has been our biggest resource. He has taught us so much."

Autistic Children Benefit from Precision Teaching

University Park, Pa. - Professionals working with autistic children can have a positive impact by using Precision Teaching, a method that incorporates standard units of measurement and a standard graphical display. When the professionals use performance standards, autistic children can retain skills over significant amounts of time and perform at higher rates. This is the theme of "Applications of Precision Teaching for Children with Autism," the presentation of Richard M. Kubina, Penn State assistant professor of education, at the Summer Autism Institute and National Conference on August 1.

"Precision Teaching embodies a set of methods and practice procedures promoting the systematic and precise evaluation of instruction or curricula," says Kubina. "It has evolved into more than just a progress monitoring system. Precision Teaching has been applied in classrooms for studying fluency for over 30 years."

Fluency, the combination of accuracy and speed that characterizes performance, ties into instruction for children with autism, according to Kubina. "After a child has acquired a behavior, then the proficiency, or fluency, stage begins," he said. Published literature outlines the features of fluency as retention, endurance, and application. The fluency of an autistic child can be developed through use of Precision Teaching by measuring changes in performance frequencies and displaying the changes on a Standard Celeration Chart.

According to Kubina, the Standard Celeration Chart shows changes in a student's performance as well as changes in learning. "The Standard Celeration Chart provides a visual display of data," said Kubina. "Research shows that teachers who use data display are more effective than teachers who do not." The hallmark of effective data display, said Kubina, is standardization. "Difference in graphs can affect interpretation of data," he said.

In his presentation, Kubina demonstrates the technical aspects of Precision Teaching and the Standard Celeration Chart. He describes the concepts of frequency and celeration. Frequency represents a standard unit of behavior, and is a measurement of performance. Celeration is defined as the weekly change of a behavior, and is a measurement of learning.

Autism Research to Continue with Increased Federal Funding

University Park, Pa. - Autism research, with the help of increased federal funding, continues to expand scientists' understanding of this disorder, according to Duane F. Alexander, director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Alexander '62 Pre-Medicine gave an update of initiatives and discoveries in autism research in his keynote address Monday at the opening of the 2002 National Autism Conference at Penn State University.

Alexander said that Congress placed a high priority on autism research when it passed the Children's Youth Act in 2000. The bill has opened the way for grants to fund further autism research.

Alexander outlined some of the research that has been conducted and is being planned by the National Institutes of Health. Some important research has recently been done on autistic children's recognition of speech and faces. "Autistic 3-to-4 year-olds prefer computer-generated speech over their over mother's talk, in contrast to typically developing children who showed no preference for either type of speech," said Alexander. "Young children with autism also failed to show normal facial recognition. Very young children don't recognize their mother's face, but do show normal recognition of familiar objects. The neural systems that mediate face recognition exist very early in a child's life, offering the possibility that facial impairment may be one of the earliest indicators of abnormal brain development in autism."

Early diagnosis and recognition of autism also is being studied. "Our researchers found that one-year-old children diagnosed later with autism spectrum disorder can be distinguished from children who are diagnosed later with mental retardation," continued Alexander. "Even at their first birthday, children who were eventually diagnosed as autistic were less likely to look at others who called their names than infants diagnosed with mental retardation."

Other recent work undertaken by researchers includes the relationship of responsive caregivers' behaviors to the development of autistic children's language skills. "This research has strong implications for early-year intervention work for children with autism," said Alexander.

Many studies are planned over the next five years. "We'll be looking at the stability and predictive utility of early language measures for predicting later language processing, communication, and ability to imitate speech," said Alexander. "We'll be investigating brain structure and chemistry and their relation with cognitive measures and developmental changes in brain and behavior relationship between the ages of 3 and 9. We'll be engaged in a genetic linkage study of autism in families with two or more affected siblings with autism in order to search for chromosomal locations for genetic patterns associated with autism. We'll be looking at brain activation and cognitive tests for language, problem solving, and planning speech perception, space perception, and social submission."

Other studies will address abnormal stereotype behaviors common in children and adults with autism, and experimental treatment and the potential for treatment of the disorder. "We're also looking at developing a parental checklist for two-year-olds for early diagnosis of autism," added Alexander.

A disturbing setback, said Alexander, occurred in a study of a possible link between vaccines and regressive autism, a form of the disorder that involves a relatively rapid loss of a child's speech skills and social behavior and usually occurs during the second year of life. The NICHD and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), co-sponsors of the study, encountered an unexpectedly high rate of refusal to participation by the parents of autistic children. Many of these parents had brought lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers and had been advised by their attorneys not to participate in any research related to vaccine relationship. These parents were told that information that would be obtained could jeopardize monetary settlements.

As a result of a reduced number of participants, the study's results will be less reliable, which, lamented Alexander, "will vastly diminish our power to tell whether there is any association between the vaccine and the onset of autism."

"If we are to gain knowledge parents and improve our ability to treat or prevent autism," continued Alexander, "families of children with autism must partner with scientists. Unless parents are willing to take the high ground and reject the greed-based advice of self-interested lawyers, we will never be able to answer the question or know for sure whether the measles vaccine is fully safe for children in the future."

Unexpected Allies Helped Arts Partnership Become Established in Midwest Schools

A strong need exists to reclaim the arts as a central element in America's school, according to Arnold Aprill, executive director of Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE). Aprill was the featured speaker at the 2002 Summer Arts-in-Education Luncheon held July 12 on Penn State's University Park campus. CAPE, a network of public schools, arts organizations, and community organizations based in Chicago, creates partnerships that connect teachers and schools with artists and artistic resources.

According to Aprill, students who learn through the arts perform better academically, and schools that integrate the arts become more rooted in their communities. However, as Aprill lamented, the arts were pushed out of the main curriculum years ago. "Most teachers today have no close contact with the arts," he said, "unlike in past decades when there was a piano in every classroom."

CAPE began working nearly a decade ago to overcome resistance by parents, teachers, and administrators to reintroduce the arts as a central element of school curricula. CAPE's plan was to "develop strategies to reclaim the role of the arts in education."

"CAPE invited parents, teachers, and principals to develop a plan to bring arts into the schools." said Aprill. "We did our homework to overcome resistance by getting voices that could be heard-a mixed group of very vocal people. It is important to make people irritated, because you need irritation to create change. Friction causes growth. You must invite a certain amount of friction to break the glue that holds parties together."

The key, said Aprill, was to look for unexpected allies. The biggest supporters, as it turned out, were the original skeptics. CAPE developed a plan "to allow the skeptical teachers to take that first scary step to get arts into their classrooms," continued Aprill. He recalled that in one school, "one-third of the teachers were gung-ho for the arts, one-third were indifferent, and one-third were resistant, calling us the 'Art Nazis.'" However, through tactful efforts, CAPE was able to overcome the resistance.

"We needed to get the artists and the teachers in conversation with each other," said Aprill. "We looked for the one area where both the teachers and artists were allies: technology." CAPE offered a course on technology in which "the skeptical teachers bonded with the artists. These teachers then nudged the indifferent teachers to accept art in the schools."

CAPE has since grown, and now is composed of 19 partnerships involving 30 Chicago public schools, 45 professional arts organizations, and 11 community organizations that each receive funding to co-plan and co-deliver arts-infused curricula across all subject areas. Aprill outlined the following trends that are emerging across his organization's work in different communities:

1. Long-term relationships between art organizations and schools. Partnerships need to be large enough to develop sufficient momentum and critical mass to have some staying power, yet small enough to maintain a human scale of discourse.

2. Capacity building: The arts organizations must move from a "delivery" mode (in which they provide programs for schools and do things to kids) to a partnership mode (in which they create programs with schools for kids).

3. Multiple voices: The most productive innovations in educational improvement are generated by a "mixed table"-a collaboration among teachers, principals, artists, arts specialists, administrators, parents, and community members stimulating each other by their varied frames of reference.

4. Challenging instruction: The arts, when well integrated into instruction, require learners to take responsibility for their choices and to reflect seriously upon their work, provide a connecting thread across learning experiences, and create a sense of meaning and coherency across multiple opportunities to generate and represent knowledge.

5. Democratic access: The arts are for all students, not just for the most artistic. Learners who benefit most from the arts-those who have special needs and those who are alienated from school-often have the least access.

6. Connecting learners to the assets of the community: Arts-education partnerships connect the existing cultural resources of the community to the lives of children in schools.

7. New roles for colleges and universities: Colleges and universities are just beginning to realize their potential for assisting and supporting meaningful connections between artists and schools in their communities, requiring them to move past deeply ingrained institutional habits.

Succession Planning Can Be Crucial to Company's Long-Term Survival
by Paul Blaum

Companies throughout the industrialized world will soon face a huge shortage of skilled labor, which accentuates the acute need for effective succession planning, according to a Penn State human resources expert.

With a massive Baby Boomer retirement wave close at hand, prolonged vacancies in critical positions could mean a crisis for organizations perhaps equal to that posed by corporate bankruptcies and accounting firm gaffes, says Dr. William J. Rothwell, professor of workforce education and development.

"Succession planning is also needed to address the security issues associated with the war on terrorism," Rothwell notes. "Many people do not know that 172 corporate vice presidents perished when the World Trade Center collapsed. Getting prepared to back up key people in an age of increasing uncertainty about personal safety is a second reason, apart from demographic change, that underscores the need for succession planning." In the past, organizations faced with a scarcity of skilled labor could import reinforcements from overseas. This policy might become less feasible, in light of the current war on terrorism and increased restrictions on visa applications. As a result, succession planning more and more will be based on grooming homegrown talent through competency modeling, which involves tracking company-specific competencies of key players, Rothwell says.

When an organization has easy access to that information, it can deal at once with a succession crisis since it already knows which of its personnel is qualified to step into the breach, says Rothwell, author of "Putting Success into Your Succession Planning," published in the May/June issue of the Journal of Business Strategy. He also is author of the book "Effective Succession Planning: Ensuring Leadership Continuity and Building Talent from Within" (American Management Association), now in its second edition.

All the G7 countries-the United States, Canada, England, Germany, France, Italy and Japan-experienced a baby boom after World War II (1946-64), then a sharp drop in fertility. In the next three decades, 61 million Americans alone will retire, substantially widening the gap between available workers and needed workers. Between 1998 and 2008, the total of American workers age 45 and older will rise from 33 to 40 percent, while the labor force between ages 25 and 44 will decline from 51 to 44 percent.

"If present trends continue, a serious shortage of college-educated talent will develop," Rothwell says. "Traditional methods of solving the problem-such as relying on trained immigrant labor to make up for domestic labor shortages-may not work. A fallout of the war on terrorism means that it is now tougher for many people to get entry visas to the United States or working visas once they are in the United States."

To stay viable, company decision makers must be able to pinpoint the talent they have. To do that, they need a clear understanding of what people know and can do in the organization, says the Penn State researcher.

"The customary job description, which focuses on what people do rather than on what results they should obtain from the work, is neither sufficiently detailed nor company-specific to provide the essential information," Rothwell notes.

Competency modeling, rigorously applied, is based on people analysis, not job analysis. The key is to spot the exemplary performer and discover what sets that individual apart from the average performer in the same job category.

"One reason that is important is that the exemplary performer may be as much as 20 times more productive than his or her average-performing counterparts in the same job category," says Rothwell. "The goal of competency modeling is to develop talent and future leadership aligned with long-term company strategy. It should also be carried out in a way that will raise overall productivity by lifting all performers up to levels closer to those of the superstar performer in each job category. In theory, if that could be done, an organization could get as much as 20 times the output from existing staff."

"Competency models should then be integrated with employees' measurable work results in a given time span. Beyond simply a performance appraisal, this would provide employees with continuing feedback from those they serve, such as customers, and eliminate the organizational barriers that impede their productivity," Rothwell says.

Competency models should also be used to measure the characteristics of employees who fit in with an organization's long-range strategies and objectives, the Penn State researcher adds.

Companies can compare the current skill level of these employees with the skill level that will be required in future years, then narrow the gap by means of individual development plans (IDPs). The IDPs consist of both off-the-job and on-the-job training and a range of other real-time development strategies, which include special assignments to task forces and critical projects. To ensure that IDPs stay on track, companies should institute regular talent review meetings in which supervisors must explain to their own bosses how well they have been cultivating future leaders under the IDP guidelines.

"Demographic realities worldwide are leading to a larger-than-usual number of people becoming eligible for retirement in the next few years," Rothwell says. "Even as some organizations downsize, others scramble to prepare for a larger exodus of experienced talent than they have witnessed in many years. At the same time, an increased urgency to think about the war on terrorism may mean that organizational leaders have to pay attention to replacement needs for key people. The organizations that survive, and even thrive, in the future will be those that are able to be successful with their succession planning."

OP/ED COLUMN
Minnesota's Lessons on School Choice

by William Lowe Boyd
Batschelet Chair Professor of Educational Administration

Minnesota's experience with publicly funded school choice options has important lessons for Pennsylvania and other states. Fears in Minnesota and elsewhere that public school choice options might undermine regular public schools have proved to be unwarranted. A recent study of Minnesota's pioneering choice options that I led found that, although initially controversial, its school choice laws are now widely regarded as beneficial. Fifty civic and educational leaders representing all the important stakeholder groups were interviewed for the study and two surveys were conducted.

Minnesota's public school choice laws are now widely accepted and have produced a number of beneficial effects. This is significant because Minnesota passed the nation's first charter school law in 1991, and its various choice options have been in effect between ten and fifteen years. While Minnesota's overall K-12 enrollment has grown 17 percent since 1988-89, the number of students involved in at least one of the four choice options has grown to 150,000, a 1300 percent increase from the initial choice enrollment.

The four choice laws-authorizing a post-secondary option, open enrollment between school districts, alternative "second-chance" schools, and charter schools-have opened up a wide range of choices that have helped Minnesota's students and have stimulated positive responses from school districts. For example, 30 percent of Minnesota's secondary school students are now involved in one of the options. Minnesota's school districts have responded by enhancing their educational offerings. Most dramatically, the increase in the number of students taking Advanced Placement courses in Minnesota, between the academic years 1985-86 and 2000-01, is more than ten times the increase in A.P. course-taking nationally for the same period.

Based on student and parent reports and limited data about achievement, the Minnesota choice programs appear to be helping students in many ways. The largest number of students in the choice programs are students with whom regular schools have not succeeded, a development neither proponents nor opponents predicted. These 100,000 students are in the alternative "second chance" schools.

Minnesota's charter schools include many that are quite innovative. Indeed, some of them have become famous and have won awards. Contrary to the predictions of opponents, its charter schools are disproportionately serving low-income and minority students. And, contrary to some expectations, the four choice options have proved to be beneficial for special needs children. So, the "creaming" or segregation effects that some feared have not occurred.

Overall, our study concludes that well-designed and properly monitored public school choice plans can produce many benefits. At a time when voucher plans are gaining support, public education can be enhanced and can respond to competition by offering good public school choice programs. But, as with all public policies, the "devil is in the details." That is, school choice laws must be carefully designed and well monitored to ensure that they work equitably and serve the public interest. Each choice plan and the schools participating in it must be monitored carefully.

Thus, our study recommends that Minnesota policymakers retain and improve the four choice options by providing more information to families, examining the supervision and operation of alternative schools and charter schools, examining equity of funding among the options, and promoting more information exchange between "choice" schools and regular schools.

Many of these same matters are issues in Pennsylvania. For example, the status and funding of "cyber charter schools" is a big issue here. These distance education providers were not envisioned under our charter school law, and the requirement that they be funded by local school districts across the state is quite controversial.

Sponsorship and supervision of charter schools is also an issue here. All public schools, whether regular public schools or charter schools, should be held accountable. But the requirement that local school districts agree to sponsor and supervise charter schools is problematic. It creates a conflict of interest for the local school district because charter schools within or outside their borders are competitors for students that they must fund. Supervising charter schools is also an additional cost and burden for school districts. One answer, adopted in Minnesota and other states, is to provide funds for the supervision costs and to authorize other entities, such as universities and foundations, to sponsor and supervise charter schools.

This report was written in collaboration with Joe Nathan and Debra Hare, of the Center for School Change at the University of Minnesota. Readers can find the report on the Internet at: http://www.hhh.umn.edu/centers/school-change/

Contact Dr. Boyd at: wlboyd@psu.edu

Child Care Responsibilities Don't Hinder Student-Teacher Face Time

"Education News from Penn State's College of the Liberal Arts"

University Park, Pa.-While elementary school teachers with children do work slightly fewer hours than teachers without children, child care responsibilities do not shorten the time that teachers are available to students or other faculty members, according to a Penn State labor studies expert.

"In general, the elementary school teachers' workday is 10.3 hours, far longer than the 6 to 7 hours called for by teacher contracts," says Dr. Robert Drago, professor of labor studies and women's studies in the College of Liberal Arts. "While teachers who are parents work less time, they still work more time than contracts require, averaging 9.6 hours a day and spend the same amount of time physically present in school."

In a recent issue of the journal Feminist Economics, Drago reports that working parents find the time to care for their children by working only about 45 minutes less per day and finding the remainder of the time by reducing personal time, passive leisure, educational/computer time and exercise time. This last category could be problematic as the average parents reduced their exercise way below that recommended for good health.

On the school front, the 45 minutes not worked by parents are, he believes, made up for by voluntary extra duties done by other teachers in this predominantly female occupation.

"Non-parent employees may volunteer to pick up the slack for parent employees," says Drago. "Sometimes a particular teacher will, and at other times will not, have substantial commitments to family, so helping out when family commitments are minimal might be accepted and expected."

This life-course approach suggests that the childless teachers realize that they, too, will eventually need others to step in when they are parents and that the teachers with older children realize that someone volunteered in their stead when they were raising little ones.

Drago used information from the Time, Work and Family Project run by Drago and Robert Caplan and David Costanza, both of George Washington University. Data come from four school districts and 46 schools, all urban public schools. Two of the school districts are on the East Coast and two in the Midwest. Three of the four districts were heavily minority and very low income; the fourth was only 23 percent minority and a third low income. Schools like these, according to Drago, put a heavy burden on teachers' time.

The data on working time was collected using a 24-hour time-use diary filled out by teachers on a Tuesday. Teachers were also asked if that day was a representative normal day. Because of the predominance of women in elementary schools, all male teachers were chosen for the survey and then women were picked randomly to fill the remaining spots.

"Because of the norms affecting them, teachers who become parents will strive to minimize the public appearance of commitments to their own children and maximize the appearance and reality of commitment to their students," says Drago.

The norms affecting teachers are the ideal worker norm and the norm of parental care; two norms that at times contradict each other. The ideal worker norm is that of a professional who works long hours with only minimum interruption for short vacations. The norm of parental care, applied in teaching, implies that women are parents both to their own children and to their students. When only single women could be teachers, there was no conflict, but when married women with children began teaching, a tug of war between the norm of parental care as applied to offspring and to students ensued, with the students generally winning out.

In an effort to professionalize teaching, the adoption of the ideal worker norm in teaching fed into the long hours. The Penn State researcher concludes that regardless of parenting responsibilities, teachers work very long hours and uncompensated, voluntary and arguably unfair transfers of working time from parents to non parents occur in elementary schools where at least 80 percent of the teachers are women."

Some solutions to these problems may include increased compensation for the long hours, reducing the overall length of the workday, integrating work and family life, and publicly provided or subsidized child and dependent care initiatives.

"I believe that some mixture of all four approaches makes sense," says Drago. "Each approach responds to the concrete issues of long working hours and difficulties in meeting simultaneous commitments to work and family."

**aem**

Contacts:

A'ndrea Elyse Messer (814) 865-9481 aem1@psu.edu

Vicki Fong (814) 865-9481 vfong@psu.edu

EDITORS: Dr. Drago may be reached at 814-865-0751 or at drago@psu.edu

As the Supreme Court Considers Voucher Issue, New Report on Public School Choice in Minnesota Describes Progress and Problems

A major new study of Minnesota's 15-year-old Public School Choice Laws reveals that the state's school choice options, while sometimes creating problems, are immensely popular and have been successful both for individuals and school systems-often in ways neither opponents or proponents had predicted.

The two-year study examined Minnesota's Post-Secondary Options, open enrollment, Second Chance and charter schools. The study was conducted by Dr. William Lowe Boyd, Batschelet Chair professor of educational administration at Penn State, and Dr. Joe Nathan and Debra Hare, of the Center for School Change at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute. Major findings were that:

* While Minnesota's overall k-12 population has grown 17% since 1988-89, the percentage of students involved in at least one of the 4 major public school choice laws has grown 1300%. The number of participants in the 4 major statewide choice laws has grown to more than 150,000 in the 2001-2002 school year.

* More than 30% of Minnesota's secondary school students enrolled in one of Minnesota's statewide choice programs, as of the 2000-2001 school year. This has major implications for people planning secondary education.

Results of the study could have national implications as the battle over school choice intensifies. Further data suggest that the claims of school choice critics that choice initiatives, including claims that it would help more upper and middle class white Americans than the poor and/or minorities have been unfounded. For instance, the study says:

* Charter schools are serving a disproportionate percentage of students from low-income families, students of color, and students with disabilities, unlike what opponents predicted.

* The largest number of students are involved in choice programs for students with whom traditional schools have not succeeded, something neither proponents nor opponents predicted.

While most of the news is good, the study says there are significant problems with some alternative schools, and the way some districts deal with these schools. Problems develop when there is not careful investigation of people proposing new schools, or little monitoring of student achievement and financial operations.

Overall, the study concludes that well designed public school choice plans can produce many benefits. However, each plan and participating schools should be monitored carefully. The study urges that policy-makers retain and improve the options by providing more information to families, examining alternative school and charter school procedures, examining equity of funding among the options, and promoting more information exchange among schools.

The research was carried out via interviews of 50 state leaders, including proponents and opponents, new surveys, and an extensive review of research on the topic - some of it never before published. The Ruth and Lovett Peters Foundation supported the study.

Elementary PDS is #1 Teacher Education Program in U.S. with SCASD Partnership

We are #1 again! The Penn State/State College Area School District Professional Development School (PDS) program has been selected by the Association of Teacher Educators (ATE) as the winner of the Distinguished Teacher Education Program Award for 2002.

The award is given to recognize and honor outstanding teacher education programs that exemplify collaboration between local education agencies and institutions of higher education in program development and administration. It is designed to stimulate development and innovation that will bring into harmony all groups that have direct involvement in the preparation of teachers. It emphasizes the Association's concern for quality in teacher preparation.

Professional Development Schools were established to help meet the unique needs of today's students, and to provide new models of teacher education and development. Professional Development Schools support the learning of prospective and beginning teachers by creating settings in which novices enter professional practice by working with expert practitioners, enabling veteran teachers to renew their own professional development and assume roles as mentors, university adjuncts, and teacher leaders.

They also allow school and university educators to engage jointly in the research and rethinking of practice, creating an opportunity for the profession to expand its knowledge base by putting research into practice and practice into research.

The PDS has several hallmarks that distinguish it from other programs: inquiry, technology, and a drive to prepare teacher leaders as change agents in schools.

The State College Area School District is very honored to be the joint recipient with Penn State's College of Education of the Distinguished Teacher Education Program Award for 2002," said Cameron Bausch, assistant to the superintendent at SCASD. "The Professional Development School collaborative is so beneficial to our elementary students, teachers, and principals."

Nancy Dana, associate professor of curriculum & instruction and PDS co-director, said inquiry "involves teachers problematizing their practice, systematically studying their practice, and taking action for change. Our focus on inquiry has facilitated changes, including enhancing student learning via technology."

Carla Zembal-Saul, assistant professor of science education, notes the technology enhancements. "Interns experience learning with and about a variety of technology tools-both general productivity tools and discipline-specific tools-as part of their course work, and then have opportunities to design and teach technology-rich lessons. In doing so, mentor teachers also experience ways in which to use cutting-edge technologies to enhance children's learning."

Dana notes that the overall goal of the PDS is to change the profession itself. "We are preparing teacher leaders," she said. "Through the process of inquiry, they are learning ways in which to question their own practice and support decisions they make in the future. One graduate spoke eloquently to the judges in Denver about changes she is making in her school as a first-year teacher."

The final defining feature of the program is its true collaborative nature. It is veteran teachers, prospective teachers and teacher educators coming together to think about issues and practices in education.

"The creation of planning teams of faculty, mentor teachers, principals and curriculum support teachers has been unique," noted Jim Nolan, professor of curriculum and supervision and PDS co-director. "These teams work together to redesign methods courses for preservice teachers and to plan and deliver professional development for veteran teachers."

"When those groups come together, a synergy is created that helps each individual group excel in ways that neither one could do on their own," added Dana.

The program is institutionalized both at Penn State and the SCASD. The collaborative has received important external funding from a Lucent Technologies Foundation K-16 Partnership Grant. While those funds help, program designers ensured the core activities of the program could be supported via the collaborative. "We've learned that these programs die when the external funding ends," said Dana.

Being recognized nationally will bring added recognition to Penn State and SCASD along with the ability to provide leadership. "The award provides well-earned recognition that is due the university and school district professionals who have worked so hard to effect the PDS Collaborative in our elementary schools during the past seven years," said Bausch.

Penn State is one of the few programs in the nation that has been able to actualize the idea of inquiry, especially for undergraduate students. Other universities can now look to Penn State for leadership. The program also hopes the momentum and inspiration from the award will help expand collaborations with other Penn State units and help to draw additional external funding.

The group's presentation theme at the ATE conference was "Simultaneous Renewal Through Inquiry," and they were able to show that they were affecting the profession itself, the renewal of veteran teachers, and the renewal of teacher education programs.

"We kept coming back to inquiry as the core of what we do, connected to renewal in these three areas," said Dana. "We ended our presentation with a song we performed called 'Doing Inquiry' to the tune of 'Dancin' in the Street.' Judy Kerr from one of our PDS schools wrote it, and we got a standing ovation after performing it at the awards ceremony."

Low Income Students Who Dream of College Swim Against the Tide

Public policy aimed at helping low-income students succeed in college must include not only financial aid, but also a wide-reaching, multifaceted program of preparation beginning as early as elementary school, according to a Penn State study.

"Current pre-college intervention programs are doing a good job, but most of them focus on one or two areas of need, rather than the full array of students' needs. Current programs also concentrate on individual students, rather than on whole cohorts or age groups of students in low-income schools," says Patrick T. Terenzini, professor of higher education and senior scientist with the Center for the Study of Higher Education. "The goal should be to give all low income students an equal shot at preparing for college. But significant numbers of these young people start falling behind in their readiness and awareness of what's needed for college by the 6th or 7th grade and never make it to the starting line."

Terenzini and Dr. Alberto F. Cabrera, associate professor of higher education at Penn State and senior research associate with the Center, along with Elena M. Bernal, director of the International Research Office at Bryn Mawr College (PA), and a doctoral student in higher education at Penn State, are co-authors of the monograph, "Swimming Against the Tide: The Poor in American Higher Education," published as Research Report No. 2001-1 by the College Entrance Examination Board.

"In the 8th grade, the desire to go to college is about as high among low income students as among their affluent classmates. Whereas nearly all of the latter will realize their aspirations, only about two-thirds of the former will do so. Closing the aspiration-realization gap will require action on a broad front. Intervention strategies to aid low-income students have to begin in the 5th and 6th grades, not on the eve of college attendance," Terenzini says.

Compared to their wealthier peers, low income students face major obstacles when it comes to preparing for college, making the academic transition from high school to college, and maximizing the college experience itself both from an educational and occupational standpoint, the researcher says.

Lower income students grow up in cultures where access to education is much more difficult. They do not receive as much reinforcement or guidance from parents and schools, with the result that they are less inclined or able to pursue a rigorous high school curriculum. "The role of culture can scarcely be exaggerated," Terenzini says. "For low income students, being the first family member to go to college can involve a subtle but powerful psychological break from family tradition. Parents wonder, not without reason, whether those children who go to college will ever come home again as the same people. This holds particularly true for daughters in Hispanic families."

Often low-income students come from single-parent households, which can generate little or no savings for college, Terenzini adds. Seventy-six percent of low income young people have parents with no college experience, compared to 98 percent of high income students who have parents with college backgrounds and expect their children to carry on the pattern.

In 1998-99, total federal and state financial aid for college students reached $64.1 billion, an 85 percent hike in constant dollars over the past decade. This increase in financial aid programs has enhanced opportunities to attend college on all socioeconomic levels, but class disparities clearly persist."An unintended consequence of the growing reliance on loans in packaging student financial aid may be to push some low income students who fear an unmanageable loan debt to choose instead to work longer hours to pay their educational expenses," Terenzini notes.

"The evidence shows that working longer hours, particularly off-campus, reduces students' chances to become academically and socially involved in their institutions, thereby reducing the likelihood that they will complete their degree programs."

Putting disadvantaged students on the road to college commencement means reaching their parents when their children are still in grade school, says Terenzini. The parents need information on financial planning for their children's college education and what will be required in the way of their children's high school curriculum and other aspects of their academic preparation. Parents and children alike also need help in making the best match between the children's aptitudes and available degree programs. This would permit low income students not only to obtain their degrees but also to do so in the shortest, least expensive amount of time.

For this to happen, a more tightly knit, long-term partnership is required between the federal government, state agencies, colleges and universities, schoolteachers and administrators, parents and students across the K-16 spectrum, Terenzini says.

"In thinking about lower income students hoping to achieve a college degree, the metaphor of swimming against the tide is almost inescapable," says Terenzini says. "The image is that of a large mass of swimmers struggling against a strong tide, in the grip of forces far stronger than they and ones they little understand. If the swimmers make any progress at all, it is slight. More often, they appear to be losing ground. The end is predictable. In the end, the question is whether we, as institutions, states and a nation, are willing to sit on the shore and watch."

University Park, Pa. -- The superstar status of the "Harry Potter" novels can be traced more to the universal appeal of their themes than to mass corporate marketing, a Penn State educator says.

"Harry Potter" has in many respects been an exception to the rule, catching the publishing industry by surprise, says Dr. Daniel D. Hade, associate professor of children's literature. Its popularity has been driven by readers, thanks in large part to the pervasive, democratizing influence of the Internet.

Usually, a book popular in the United Kingdom needs a year to become popular in the United States. Actually, this has more to do with the clarifications involved in global publishing. In general, a book is released in its home country before rights are sold to foreign publishers. Typically, a book originating in Britain would take a year before it would be ready for publication in the United States. American publishers generally "translate" the British edition into American English and give the book a new cover and graphic design. This was not the case with "Harry Potter," which, soon after its release, reached its "tipping point" or the point at which it became a larger cultural phenomenon. By the fourth book, "Harry Potter" was being published simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic, Hade says.

The fact that "Harry Potter" was written by a British author, J.K. Rowling, also proved an advantage because British publishers are less uniformly market-driven than heavily corporatized American publishers. In Britain, a truly unique book may have a better chance of bypassing the marketing gatekeepers and reaching a general audience, the researcher notes.

The "Harry Potter" novels, which feature a story within a story, are interesting from a structural standpoint, according to Hade.

The main character is an orphan with no knowledge about his parents and is therefore mysterious and set apart -- an effective formula in fiction. Rowling furthermore weaves her narrative with considerable skill, making sure that each chapter ends on a cliffhanger.

" `Harry Potter' has demonstrated that it is possible to reach large numbers of children through books. By the time the fourth book came out, 'Harry Potter' had already sold 3 million copies," Hade notes. Even more interesting is the fact that the fourth "Harry Potter" book had virtually no pictures, even though the book ran 734 pages. The story lets young people use their imaginations, says Hade, author of the article, "Curious George Gets Branded: Reading as Consuming," in the summer 2001 issue of the journal, Theory into Practice.

"The huge multimedia companies such as Viacom and HarperCollins that own the publishing companies want a book that is not only a top seller but offers strong brand name possibilities," Hade says. "These corporations like books that can hold up as a movie, TV show, board game, jigsaw puzzle, video game and T-shirt logo. `Harry Potter' should qualify on all these counts, as children rush out to buy Hogwart sweaters and Quidditch games on CD-Rom."

However, the attraction of Rowling's novels as literature can be measured by how carefully Warner Brothers made the movie while remaining true to the ongoing tale of Harry Potter. Hade says, "It's like filming stories from the Bible. You can only take so many liberties or you lose the true believers."

"On a final note, there is no proof that the 'Harry Potter" novels encourage young children to dabble in the occult," Hade adds. " 'Harry Potter' is strictly a work of the imagination. It is not trying to convert anybody."

EDITORS: Dr. Hade can be contacted at (814) 865-2215. His e-mail address is ddh2@psu.edu

Women's Studies Programs Still Struggle for Legitimacy on Campuses

University Park, Pa.— Now in their third generation, women's studies programs are struggling more than ever to achieve equal status with other university disciplines, a Penn State study says.

Many people, on and off campuses, perceive women's studies as more feminist ideology than scholarly substance. This viewpoint, along with structural obstacles within academe, conspires to make women's studies a second class discipline, says Dr. Carol L. Colbeck, associate professor of education and senior research associate with Penn State's Center for the Study of Higher Education.

Colbeck traces the malaise afflicting women's studies to an underappreciation of the relevance and rigor in feminist scholarship. She admits that feminist instruction has its ideological bent, but she disputes the premise that ideology makes feminist scholarship less scholarly. She defends the essential mission of women's studies, which reinterprets the role and contributions of women in all aspects of culture -- the arts, science, politics, the family -- in an attempt to fill in gaps and broaden perspectives. Women's studies, in her view, also answers the question: In the historical canon, why weren't women's voices incorporated to begin with?

The good news, Colbeck says, is that attitudes, policies and resource allocation can all be changed to accommodate the growth of women's studies throughout higher education.

Colbeck and co-author, Dr. Deborah A. Burghardt, associate professor and director of the women's studies program at Clarion University in Clarion, Pa., surveyed 20 women's studies faculty at 4 state universities with well established women's studies programs. Their findings, "Women's Studies Faculty: Claiming Feminist Scholarship in a State University System," was presented at this year's annual American Education Research Association (AERA) conference. The paper, which did not look at private institutions, was based on Burghardt's doctoral dissertation at Penn State, completed last year.

At these particular state universities, as at most across the country, women's' studies had been marginalized from the beginning by being given program, rather than departmental, status. The faculty themselves had been assigned to traditional disciplines primarily in the humanities and social sciences. To teach women's studies courses, they had to secure department approval and in effect be loaned to the women's studies program, a state of affairs that further stamped women's studies at their schools with a badge of inferiority, the authors note.

The study compared two groups of faculty, the first being what Burghardt and Colbeck referred to "interdisciplinary scholars" (IDS), faculty who gave close attention to feminist principles and developed more women's studies courses strengthening the women's studies curriculum. They were also more inclined to challenge the status quo in academe. The second group, called "disciplinary scholars" (DS), felt a less intense commitment to feminism and were not as likely to be involved in a feminist network. In the interest of securing tenure, they were more willing to subordinate research on gender issues to research in a traditional discipline, according to the researchers.

"Disciplinary scholars saw limited resources as a reason to publish their findings in journals judged as more prestigious and credible by departmental heads or colleagues who recommend them for tenure and promotion. Some disciplinary scholars chose work they believed their departments valued even if that meant putting women's studies scholarship on hold," Burghardt says.

"On the other hand, interdisciplinary scholars responded to tenure and promotion pressures and resource limitations by seeking grant funds or personally financing their own attendance at feminist conferences," says Burghardt. "In some cases, they worked extra hard or became more committed activists to ensure that their feminist values and work would not be compromised by formal organizational values."

Both interdisciplinary and disciplinary scholars in the study reported that at times they received low marks from students, who expected a more top-down, hierarchical style of teaching.

"Many students are used to seeing the teacher as the full vessel of knowledge who will fill their empty vessel. Because women's studies challenges the traditional role of students, as well as teachers, some students have trouble with that. Pedagogy as practiced in women's studies grants students more power but also more responsibility for their own learning. This in turn means more work for students," Colbeck notes.

"Women's studies is losing valuable feminist scholarship as too many faculty contort themselves to fit into or struggle against their perceptions of what institutions, departments and students value," Burghardt says. "For example, titling work in ways that do not reveal the content focus on women or the application of feminist and gender analyses may only reinforce fears of rejection by disciplinary journals and conference committees, or concerns about the perceived importance or rigor of their work among departmental colleagues. Women's studies work may then go unclaimed and uncounted."

Burghardt and Colbeck urge that women's studies faculty teaching cross-listed courses stress their association with a women's studies program at every opportunity, both in professional conferences and on their curriculum vitae.

"Women's studies faculty can acknowledge each other's contributions to the curricular stability of their women's studies program, transformation of their disciplinary department curricula and the retention of women students. They can request that departmental committees endorse this work as well," Burghardt adds.

VR Acceptance Rates Show Continued Racism

Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) seeks to provide for the rehabilitative needs of children and adults with disabilities. Disabilities covered by VR fall into six classifications: visual impairments, hearing impairments, orthopedic impairments (with the exception of amputations), absence or amputation of a major or minor member, traumatic brain injury, and physical and psychological impediments of unknown etiology. The last category includes by far the largest percentage of disabilities (64.3), including autism, drug abuse, cleft palate, and sickle cell anemia.

Until recently, it has been widely agreed upon that European Americans with disabilities were far more likely to be accepted for VR than similarly disabled African Americans, Native Americans, Alaskan Americans, and others. Keith B. Wilson, assistant professor of rehabilitation education at Penn State, however, has recently completed two studies that indicate that this may or may not indeed be the case.

In one study, Wilson limited his study to clients of state vocational rehabilitation agencies, such as the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation. The results of his study indicate that through the percentages alone, not even considering any intentional or unintentional discrimination, White Americans are more likely to be accepted for VR than other applicants, such as African Americans.

Wilson's other study, however, argues that this might not always be the case. In this study, Wilson's research is based on the entire U.S. VR population rather than on the VR population of individual states. The results of this research indicate that African Americans may be encountering less discrimination during the eligibility process of VR acceptance in the U.S. than was previously thought. More specifically, Wilson's research shows that African Americans are 2.12 times more likely to be accepted than European Americans, and that Native American or Alaskan American ethnicity is also positively associated with being accepted for VR services.

This is the first study to report that African Americans are more likely to be accepted into VR when compared to European Americans with similar disabilities. Previous research on VR acceptance has indicated that African Americans and other racial populations were less likely to be found eligible for VR services than European Americans. "These results are very important," Wilson says, "because racial minorities tend to have more reported disabilities and significant disabilities in the United States. Based on that demographic backdrop, the findings of this study are not surprising to me." If African Americans enter the VR system in greater need and with fewer resources, the results of this investigation confirm a logical expectation of what might be anticipated after examining multiple variables on VR acceptance in the United States, continues Wilson.

There is a history of individuals in the United States being "underserved and underrepresented," Wilson says. One of the main purposes behind a VR agency is to assist individuals with disabilities to acquire and/or maintain employment. For this reason, Wilson adds, the implications of his research are even more important for rehabilitation educators, VR administrators, and counselors working with people in the VR system.

Currently, there are few vocational rehabilitation counselors and administrators who are people of color, Wilson notes. "According to the most current figures, 93 percent of VR counselors and 92 percent of VR administrators classify themselves as European American. These practitioners may be swayed by stereotypes that in turn influence their decision making about clients and the ability of clients to complete tasks. Negative stereotypes trigger negative evaluations, which may or may not be intentional."

An increase in the number of VR counselors and administrators who are people of color might help the situation, claims Wilson, a certified rehabilitation counselor with 15 years of experience working with people with disabilities. However, he adds, "what might be an even more effective solution is to ensure that students training to be rehabilitation counselors have adequate experience with the groups that they will be counseling. Part of their practicum/internship, for instance, should be counseling in minority neighborhoods, schools, and counseling centers. Association with others who are different in appearance and behavior leads to greater empathy and understanding. It also makes people of any color more willing to exchange negative stereotypes for more positive and authentic images."

Federal Grant Allows Study of GEAR UP College Preparedness Programs

The notion of increasing access to higher education has been around for some 35 years, said Patrick Terenzini, professor of education and senior scientist in Penn State’s Center for the Study of Higher Education (CSHE). “The Higher Education Act of 1965 provided financial aid in various forms for lower income students, as well as a series of programs to help them make the transition to higher education,” he said.

Many other programs were added over the years at the institutional, state and federal levels. Though he believes each was a step in the right direction, Terenzini described these early efforts as “atomistic, discrete, oftentimes unrelated efforts.” These diffracted efforts are not in alignment with what we know works best for making college a real opportunity among America’s disadvantaged, adds Alberto F. Cabrera, associate professor of education and senior research associate at CSHE. According to Cabrera, decisions to go to college are the results of a long-term process, which begins as early as the seventh grade and ends when the high school student enrolls in college. This process is complex and links together family and school related factors. Both Cabrera and Terenzini call our attention to a new program that seems to take into account the holitistic nature of the college choice process—GEAR-UP.

As recently as three years ago, the federal government introduced GEAR UP, which stands for “Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs,” in an effort to bring together partnerships for promoting higher education access for low-income students around the country. These partnerships, consisting of institutions of higher education, community organizations, school districts and area businesses, work to meet as many objectives as possible in order to encourage and support access to higher education for lower income students. GEAR UP efforts are comprehensive; they start in the seventh grade and follow students through high school graduation to provide information on early preparation for college and an understanding of the essential elements for higher education access such as financial aid, parental support, and academic preparation. All in all, in terms of focus and intervention strategies, GEAR-UP appears to address what matters most said Cabrera.

According to its literature, GEAR UP helps “to strengthen student achievement by establishing tutoring programs, raising the academic expectations of students, parents, and teachers, helping to plan college visits, improving counseling services, and providing college scholarships.”

Since GEAR UP was introduced, about 235 partnerships serving more than a half million students have been funded. This past year, however, was the first in which partnerships were required to report on the things that were happening in their areas, for example, the proportion of children in their districts reading at the prescribed 8^th grade level. Each partnership must file an annual performance report. The reported information is entered into a database that contains specific information on partnership activities, programs, and outcomes.

Because the information contained on this database offered a rich opportunity for new research, Terenzini and Cabrera applied for a grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement. Effective April 1, 2001, the federal government awarded the researchers nearly $700,000 for a three-year, longitudinal study, The Dream Deferred: Increasing the College Preparedness of At-Risk Students. Terenzini and Cabrera will take advantage of the information in this untapped database to study the relative, and aggregate effects of GEAR UP’s programmatic components.

“What is really exciting to us as researchers,” said Terenzini, “is that GEAR UP partnerships have within them many of the activities and interventions that research has suggested are effective in promoting college for lower income students. They bring what had been scattered points together in one place.”

In addition, GEAR UP programs follow an entire grade cohort in low-income school districts, rather than focusing on individuals in a specialized program. “GEAR UP is trying to change a culture,” Terenzini explained. “It is trying to change the way families in lower income school districts think about college access at a time when it is early enough to do something about preparing for it.”

Many individual intervention programs have been studied before, but a comprehensive study to identify practices and policies that involve multiple stakeholder groups at all levels of the educational system that promote college success for low-income children has not yet been done. Terenzini and Cabrera’s study will change that. The information in the GEAR UP database incorporates most of the elements of similar programs into an integrated, collaborative, systemic, and very large national effort. Students in GEAR UP programs will be compared to their low-income counterparts, who are in programs without GEAR UP in their school districts, in order to ascertain differences in preparing for college.

Helen Caffrey, CSHE director of external relations, touted the study as “truly a unique opportunity, because it will be the first use of this database and the first opportunity to analyze the individual and combined effects of different interventions on the college-going rate among disadvantaged students.

“This particular study is such a nice fit for what we consider to be CSHE’s mission,” Caffrey added. “It falls so uniquely into our priorities to both encourage student access to higher education and to have an impact on public policy development.”

Caffrey said the changing demography and number of school-age children in the United States makes “it is essential for the economic well-being of the country to have an educated work force. Through this study, we want to be able to determine what individual and combined elements have the greatest impact on assisting low socioeconomic status students in their decision to pursue postsecondary education.”

“The dream should be the same for low income kids as it is for others,” concluded Terenzini, which is why, he explained, the study is being called The Dream Deferred, after the famous Langston Hughes poem. “The Higher Education Act of 1965 provided equal access to higher education, but access to the benefits of a college education is still not equitable. The results of this study will be valuable to people designing these programs and to public policy makers.”

Racism Still Evident in Vocational Rehabilitation?

In one study, Wilson limited his study to clients of state vocational rehabilitation agencies, such as the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation. These agencies form part of the federal Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA), which in turn is a division of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services (OSERS) within the U.S. Department of Education. The RSA, from which provided the data for this study, manages the daily operations of the federal VR program, which does not include the various profit or non-profit VR providers.

The data sample from RSA consisted of 162,590 clients (91,082 males, 71,508 females) of various races who sought vocational rehabilitation services in the United States from October 1, 1997 through September 30, 1998. Within this sample, European Americans make up 76 percent of all federal VR clients; African Americans, 22 percent, Native Americans or Alaskan Natives, 1 percent; and Asians or Pacific Islanders, 1 percent.

These numbers indicate that through the percentages alone, not even considering any intentional or unintentional discrimination, White Americans are more likely to be accepted for VR than other applicants, such as African Americans.

Wilson's other study, however, argues that this might not always be the case. In this study, Wilson's research is based on the entire U.S. VR population rather than on the V.R. population of individual states. In looking at the data sample, he examined and analyzed the different effects of race, gender, education, work status at application, and primary source of support at application as potential influences on VR acceptance in the United States.

The results of this research indicate that African Americans may be encountering less discrimination during the eligibility process of VR acceptance in the U.S. than was previously thought. More specifically, Wilson's research shows that African Americans are 2.12 times more likely to be accepted for VR than European Americans, and that Native American or Alaskan American ethnicity is also positively associated with being accepted for VR services.

Whether acceptance into a VR program is now more likely for African Americans and other racial populations than it was in the past is somewhat debatable. At least one study (Wilson's) seems to indicate that this is so. But this is not to say that discrimination, intentional or not, does not exist. Arguably, an individual in need of vocational training will not only be looked at as someone with a physical or psychological disability, but also as someone who is of a particular race, ethnicity, or gender.

There is a history of individuals in the United States who have been "underserved and underrepresented," Wilson says. One of the main purposes behind a VR agency is to assist individuals with disabilities to acquire and/or maintain employment. For this reason, Wilson adds, the implications of his research are even more important for rehabilitation educators, VR administrators, and counselors working with people in the VR system.

Wilson's findings were presented this summer at a conference of the Australian Society of Rehabilitation Counselors and will also be published in an upcoming issue of Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin. Wilson is a recipient of the prestigious Bobbie Atkins Research Award from the National Association of Multicultural Rehabilitation Concerns (NAMRC).

Single Parenthood Disadvantages U.S. Children in Math and Science

Anaheim, Calif.- Children in single-parent homes in the U.S. are at a greater disadvantage in math and science than children in single-parent homes in other industrialized countries, according to Penn State researchers.

"Most of the research linking single-parenthood to children¹s school performance has been done with single nations," says Dr. Suet-ling Pong, associate professor of education and sociology and demography. "We do not know much about the impact of single parenthood across cultures and countries."

The assumption in the United States is that single parents have lower economic resources than two parent homes and that single parents also have less available time to spend on getting involved with their children¹s educations. Pong, working with Gillian Hampden-Thompson, graduate student in educational policy studies at Penn State and Dr. Jaap Dronkers, professor of sociology, European University Institute, Firenze Ferrovia, Italy, suggested that children of single-parent households living in countries with stronger family policies would fare better than those in countries with weak family policies because the financial and support benefits of strong family policies would compensate both for money and time.

The researchers looked at 9-year-old third and fourth graders who participated in the Third International Math and Science Study from 25 countries. From the total group, they then chose 10 industrialized countries with similar cultural traditions to the U.S. for comparison. These countries were Canada, Norway, Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Austria, Scotland, England and Ireland.

"For both academic subjects (math and science) the largest performance gap between children from single-parent homes and those from two-parent families is found in the U.S.," Pong and Hampden-Thompson told attendees at the American Sociological Association meeting today (Aug 21) in Anaheim. "In other words, the U.S. ranks bottom among the 11 developed countries in terms of the equality of school performance between children from these two types of families."

Data from all 25 countries suggest that two-parent households predominate, but the percentages of two-parent homes are highest in Southeast Asia and lowest in the North America and the Pacific Rim countries of Australia and New Zealand. Over half the countries have negative associations with single-parent families and math and science achievement, but the U.S. and New Zealand show by far the greatest effect. Even after adjusting for family resources and other variables, the U.S. single-parent students are still worse off than Australian, Icelandic and Dutch students in math and than Austrian, Australian, Icelandic, Irish, Dutch and Norwegian students in science.

The researchers found that in the 10 countries compared with the U.S., children of single-parents in countries with strong family policies are less negatively affected in their math and science studies than children in countries with weak policies. Strong family policies include financial benefits, child or family allowances, childcare costs and paid maternity leave.

"The U.S. is clearly behind the other industrialized countries in providing financial and child care assistance to poor and single-parent households," says Pong. "At the same time, the U.S. also ranks last on academic resilience of children from single-parent homes."

Public discussions of the U.S. welfare system, especially by politicians, often suggest that family or welfare policies may reinforce undesirable behaviors and create non-traditional families.

The researchers believe that their data do not lend support to this argument. Iceland, the Netherlands and Australia, for example, have more generous welfare systems than the U.S. and these countries have lower poverty rates. They also have lower teenage fertility rates and a lower percentage of single-parent families than do other countries.

"The U.S., by contrast, has the least generous welfare system, and hardly any family policies, yet its teenage fertility rates are high, and single-parent families are more prevalent than in any of the countries we studied," says the Penn State researcher. "The U.S. also ranks first in terms of poverty rates."

Contacts: A'ndrea Elyse Messer (814) 865-9481 aem1@psu.edu

Vicki Fong (814) 865-9481 vfong@psu.edu

EDITORS: Dr. Pong is at (814)-863-3770 or at pong@pop.psu.edu by e-mail.

Ms. Hampden-Thompson is at (814)-863-6013 or at gmh140@psu.edu by e-mail.

College Degree No Substitute for a Realistic Career Goal

Without realistic career goals and planning, a college degree may not lead to automatic job success or satisfaction, a Penn State educator says.

"In the 1960s, a university degree by itself was a virtual guarantee of access to professional and managerial employment," says Dr. Kenneth C. Gray, professor of vocational education. "Unfortunately, for today's generation of young people, this is no longer true, because now there are more 4-year college graduates than there is commensurate employment. Ironically, a number of good-paying, prestigious jobs are still available that do not require a college degree but which continue to go begging."

Gray notes that many high schoolers, even those who dislike formal studies, opt for college because they don't know what else to do with their lives. Well-meaning parents and guidance counselors encourage them in this course, thinking that they can muddle through and find a sense of direction.

College by itself is not a plan, but a means to execute a plan that leads to career success and fulfillment. For the unprepared and unwary, it often amounts to a postponement of responsibility in the real world. "It can be an extremely expensive one at that, for students, parents and society at large," says Gray.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, out of 2.8 million high school graduates in 1997, sixty-seven percent had enrolled in college by the following October, Gray notes. Within 2 years of graduation, 72 percent were enrolled. But, while college enrollments have reached unprecedented levels, so have college dropout rates, not to mention the number of remedial classes needed to keep marginal students in the classroom.

"The sad fact is that only 25 percent of college students graduate on time, get through school without the need for remedial courses and find employment that matches the level and type of education pursued," says Gray, a former high school teacher and counselor and author of "Getting Real: Helping Teens Find Their Future," published by Corwin Press.

Two out of 3 college students withdraw at least once before they finish school, and more than one-half will need 6 years to graduate. Out of all arts and humanities graduates, only one third will find employment in line with their academic experience. For all graduates, regardless of major, the figure is one-half.

Because one-half of the students who start a four-year degree program graduate in 6 years, and of those who receive a degree only one-half find commensurate employment, the final success rate for college students is one in four. In the worst case scenarios, college graduates find themselves working at a mall gift shop and struggling to pay off their financial aid debt with near minimum-wage incomes. This kind of career failure does not build confidence or character, Gray says.

"Teens have two choices. They can let fate and labor market Darwinism decide their future, or they can be proactive and plan for success," Gray points out. He adds that parents, teachers and guidance counselors can assist young people by stop telling them, "You can be anything you want to be." Contrary to conventional wisdom, this belief can be a recipe for disaster. Instead of promoting false dreams, parents should encourage teenagers to look long and hard at their prospects, size up reality and plan their post-high school lives accordingly.

High school students, especially those less confident or focused, have to be taught to balance hopes and aspirations with talents and opportunities, says Gray. Ultimately, teens have to ask themselves where they want to go in terms of a career and then ask themselves if college is the best vehicle to take them there as opposed to a technical school, an apprenticeship program or even the military.

By the 10th grade, all students should have taken part in curricular or extracurricular activities that help them pinpoint several tentative career interests that they can pursue after high school. The West Virginia State Board of Education already requires all high school students to select career majors by the 10th grade, Gray says.

The current workplace makes use of very few academic skills. What most employers are looking for are occupational job skills, which often are quite technical in nature and becoming more so, notes the Penn State researcher.

"While increasing numbers of college graduates were ending up in low-wage service jobs, the nation's economy was generating record numbers of unfilled positions for technicians in high-skill and high-wage technical jobs," Gray explains. "The problem was not an under supply of college graduates, but rather an under supply of technically skilled graduates."

In the face of this crisis, American companies have been compelled to turn down contracts because of the scarcity of skilled workers and have sought authorization from Congress to recruit technically skilled workers from other countries using H1-B visas, Gray says.

In 1995, Gray and Dr. Edwin L. Herr, Distinguished Professor of Education at Penn State, co-authored the book, "Other Ways to Win: Creating Alternatives for High School Graduates," also published by Corwin Press.

Penn State Provides First-Language Program to Chilean Teachers

University Park, PA-Media reports have exposed the persistent gap between the technology expertise of teachers and the technology resources of U.S. schools. In many other countries, that gap is a canyon.

Dr. Armando Villarroel, executive director of the Inter-American Distance Education Consortium (CREAD), points to Chile as an example of a nation with serious obstacles to using technology in education and an equally serious commitment to overcoming those barriers.

"Chile, because of its southern geographical location, is as isolated as Australia, but it has an aggressive program to outfit all the schools with Internet technology. For the last six years, the Chilean Minister of Education has encouraged educators to engage with other countries in order to break the natural isolation and to experience what other countries are doing with technology and other aspects of education," he said.

This year, CREAD was awarded a grant from the Minister of Education to provide that experience through a technology education program for Chilean teachers. One of just 8 such projects hosted throughout the world, the program is intended to further CREAD's mission to develop educational projects and to assist in the improvement of distance education in the Americas.

CREAD, a 10-year-old nonprofit organization based at Penn State, in cooperation with Penn State's College of Education, will offer the six-week Technology Enhanced Teaching and Learning Institute for twenty Chilean primary teachers beginning Monday, October 1, 2001 in State College, Pa. Designed for teachers of grades one to eight with little to moderate experience using technology, the program will offer the opportunity to explore the need to develop technology skills in today's world.

All activities and events will be delivered in the Spanish language, with translation assistance provided by bilingual lecturers and graduate assistants. This, Villarroel explained, is the most exciting challenge of the program.

"We are very excited about this opportunity to offer a Spanish-language learning institute. In the recent history of outreach programs, we have not made such a commitment to teach so many students in their own language for so many weeks. This program underscores Penn State's commitment to international outreach and marks the beginning of a series of Spanish-language projects CREAD is working with Penn State to deliver in the future," Villarroel noted.

"We appreciate the help and open-mindedness of the University. Together we have been able to meet the challenges," he added.

As part of the program, each participant will have a mentor teacher from a local, public school. Using a variety of interactive strategies, including hands-on individualized technology training, group discussion techniques and a course of study in a public school, they will learn how to develop a web-based teaching unit. The program will also prepare the teachers to develop and teach web-based curriculum units in science, social studies and the arts and humanities. Participants will gain hands-on experience in the College's Technology Education Center, the same training lab used by Penn State faculty interested in technology development.

Travel study seminars are also part of the program curriculum. They include a visit to New York City, where participants will tour public schools and a trip to Washington D.C. to meet with officials from the Department of Education and the National Education Association.

Editor contact: Armando Villarroel, 814-863-0488 or axv4@outreach.psu.edu

The Mentor Project: Using the Internet to Give Individuals with Communication Disabilities a Voice, a Friend, a Role Model

By Susan J. Burlingame

Augmentative and alternative communication, or “AAC” is known to few. But for certain people, AAC can mean the difference between being alone and being connected to other people. In a nutshell, there are many people who, for any number of reasons, cannot communicate by talking. Their mouths cannot form the words their brains comprehend; their disability prohibits speech in some way. For these individuals, using AAC can mean everything.

AAC is defined as using alternative means to speak. There are machines, computer programs and other non-technical methods that all can be considered AAC. Prominent scientist Stephen Hawking, for example, uses a speech synthesizer to give him the voice which his degenerative physical condition takes from him.

A project introduced by Penn State College of Education’s David McNaughton, assistant professor of special education; and the College of Health and Human Development’s Janice Light, principal investigator and professor of communication disorders, is bringing together AAC users in a new way. Dubbed The Mentor Project, this program pairs young (13-24 year old) individuals with cerebral palsy with more experienced AAC users, also with cerebral palsy, as mentors who are trained to help their partners in a number of ways. Adolescent and young adult partners (also known as “proteges”) might seek advice about college, about social situations, about how to make friends, about career decisions. All of these and many more questions become the basis for the mentor/partner relationship.

“Adolescence is challenging for anyone,” explained Janice Light, when asked why she and McNaughton first became involved with the project. “It’s an even greater challenge for people with physical and communication difficulties, especially from an educational and vocational point of view. This is the beginning of the move toward independence from parents.”

Because Light and McNaughton had contact with many adults who had “successfully negotiated the challenges of adolescence,” Light added, “we realized they were a tremendous resource in terms of mentoring adolescents.”

Funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, The Mentor Project uses the Internet and specifically email as the vehicle for communication for the mentoring pairs. Its two distinct objectives are: 1) to develop, implement and evaluate the outcomes of a leadership training program conducted via the Internet to teach adults who use AAC to use effective mentoring skills (i.e. positive communication skills, collaborative problem solving strategies, and access to disability-related information and resources); and 2) to develop, implement, and evaluate the outcomes of a mentoring program for adolescents and young adults who use AAC, delivered via the Internet by adult mentors who use AAC.

Use of the Internet was essential to the project because of the “incredible opportunities it offered for linking people across the United States,” Light said, describing how difficult it would be for people with physical and communication challenges to meet face to face. “It is very, very exciting because the Internet allows people to compose in their own time at their own pace.”

The project began with investigators putting out a national call for people interested in becoming mentors. The mentors needed to be AAC users and have a certain level of literacy skills in order to be effective communicators with their proteges. Next, the mentors were involved in a three-module Internet-based training program that included development of listening skills, problem solving skills, and knowledge of disability resources.

“To develop the training program for the mentors,” said McNaughton, “we tried to identify essential skills and then we provided instruction and role playing situations to help the mentors learn these essential skills.”

Potential partners were then nominated to the program by teachers, parents and others, and a matching system was used to identify which of the mentors best suited the needs of the individual partners. All of the matching was done over the Internet.

“For some of the younger partners,” McNaughton explained, “this was the first time they were meeting someone who was just like them – people who used AAC and who have gone to university or who have learned to live independently. We looked for people who had achieved some of the things the partners would want to achieve themselves. We also looked for role models, people who had solved some of the problems the partners themselves would face someday.”

“This program is extremely important for people who use AAC because the mentor has direct experiences with the issues that the partner has,” said Randy Kitch, one of the mentors chosen for the project. “I wish I had a mentor when I was a teenager to give me advice and options so I could relate to someone else who used AAC.

“I feel like I have helped my partner by being there and listening to her issues,” he added. “Giving her options to decide on has also helped because they give her different ways to solve problems.”

According to McNaughton, thirty pairs of mentors and partners from all over the country were “matched” and the initial communications between them were monitored to ensure mentors were applying the skills they had learned.

The project met with success beyond the project investigators’ expectations. It began, McNaughton said, “with a goal of trying to help younger individuals link up with someone who could provide helpful advice.” It turned into “both helping people make important decisions about their adult life, like going to university, getting a job, getting a first apartment and being able to support the development of rich and important friendships. The younger individuals have gotten good advice and moral support, and the mentors have received the satisfaction of helping others.”

We thought the relationships would be more problem-solving based,” he added, “but found that, in fact, they established friendships first which allowed the level of trust needed for problem-solving interactions. We found the mentors to be altruistic. They wanted to share their life experiences with the next generation.”

According to Light, another project goal was to build leadership capabilities in the proteges so they could become advocates for others. “We are now finding,” she said, “that we have some in our group of proteges who have done so well that they are ready to become mentors themselves.”

For parents and teachers too, McNaughton remarked, the project has been significant. “It has been important for them to see success stories and know that by matching their children or students up with these mentors, the students would be communicating with like individuals who could be a positive influence.”

The project’s funding source, the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, has shown interest in using The Mentor Project model for other disability groups. Though the model would need to be adjusted depending on the target population, Light pointed out, “the skills we teach are not specific to any one group. It would be a very simple process to adapt the model for others.”

Besides professors Light and McNaughton, six Penn State graduate students: Maija Gulens, Jessica Currall, Alexandra Galskoy, Marleah Herman, Jennifer Kent, and Julie Auker, as well as two individuals with disabilities: Carole Krezman and Michael Williams, both from Augmentative Communication, Inc. of Berkeley, Calif., have played key roles in the project.

As The Mentor Project wraps up and the funding ends, the investigators hope to create a free-standing training program model that can be passed on to disability groups. To date, the findings have been presented at three national and two international disability conferences.

“The first group [of mentors and partners] is just finishing up,” Light said. “But they have all indicated they will continue to maintain relationships with each other beyond the scope of the project.”

A result of The Mentor Project that cannot be measured is the relationships that have evolved. “It has totally surpassed our expectations,” Light remarked. “It has been one of the most exciting projects we’ve been involved with . . . to see individuals who use AAC systems be able to provide support and collaborative problem solving.”

“It has been very gratifying to have the chance to bring together people who otherwise would not have met each other,” McNaughton reflected, “and to see lifelong relationships come out of that. We are happy that we were able to be a part of making that happen.”

For more information about The Mentor Project, visit its Web site at: http://mcn.ed.psu.edu/~mentor/Public/index.html

ECSEL Program Raises the Standard for Engineering Instruction

Most College of Education alumni and faculty already know what the research shows. The research says that students learn better when they are in a tolerant environment that employs active and collaborative learning methods.

But old habits die hard. Research by Finkelstein, Seal & Schuster, 1998, revealed that more than 75 percent of collegiate faculty rely on lectures rather than other methods of instruction. In addition, there are differences in what men and women and minority groups want most in order to feel confident about the education they are receiving.

These problems are especially evident in Engineering programs. The ECSEL (Engineering Coalition of Schools for Excellence in Education and Leadership) program provided research and recommendations for improving some long-standing yet less-effective practices in the engineering fields. ECSEL is a coalition of institutions, including the University of Washington, The City College of the University of New York, Morgan State University, Howard University, MIT, the University of Maryland and Penn State. Its goals are to integrate an instructional design across engineering curricula and to make engineering attractive to underrepresented minorities and women.

The Center for the Study of Higher Education (CSHE) at Penn State was responsible for evaluating the impact of ECSEL at all seven schools. Researchers included co-principal investigators Carol Colbeck, assistant professor of higher education, and Pat Terenzini, professor of higher education, along with Alberto Cabrera, associate professor of higher education.

Their evaluation included assessments of teaching practices, classroom climates and student learning. The assessment instrument looked at 1) pre-course characteristics—such as aspirations, parental education, ethnicity, etc., 2) course characteristics—such as teaching practices and classroom climate, and 3) gains/losses in professional competencies and self-perceptions.

“This program is important to the development of women and minorities as engineers,” said Colbeck, “and it also helps all engineering students by helping faculty to realize that the methods they use do make a difference in how well students learn. We hope more faculty will modify their methods to become more effective instructors for all students and to provide a classroom climate receptive to underrepresented groups.”

Colbeck, Terenzini, and Cabrera’s research concluded that gains in students’ problem-solving skills, group skills, and understanding of what it means to be an engineer can be improved when faculty interact frequently with and give regular feedback to students, make their expectations clear, and assign students to work collaboratively. Women engineering students’ self-confidence is enhanced when faculty are organized and clear, while men’s confidence grows from faculty interaction and feedback. Further, the researchers asserted that “teaching practices have more impact on gains in professional competencies than students’ pre-course characteristics.” For women and minorities, these factors are augmented by the equitable treatment of all groups in the classroom.

These findings suggest a number of modifications in the way engineering instruction is delivered to today’s college students. But the research team does not place the responsibility solely on the faculty; administrators must also provide training and support to faculty. Colbeck, Terenzini, and Cabrera further suggest using incentives to help persuade engineering faculty to use more effective teaching practices.

Training Teachers Requires Understanding of Referral Process and Evolution of Teachers’ Roles

By Susan J. Burlingame

“The role of the teacher in the U.S. has evolved from being school marm, to being a trained educator, to being a professional who educates, evaluates and refers students,” says Gerald LeTendre, associate professor of education.

Citing data from a 1996 study, LeTendre explained that there was an increase in the early 1990s in school violence, absenteeism, and classroom disruption. It has also become increasingly more important for schools–and, consequently, teachers in day-to-day contact with students–to identify and refer students, for any number of reasons, to appropriately trained professionals such as school counselors, health professionals, special education teachers or school administrators.

According to LeTendre, these trends make it crucial for teachers to see themselves as much more than instructors or purveyors of subject matter.

Because teachers have the most contact with students and can forge relationships beyond the traditional student-teacher model, LeTendre believes “it is the teacher who is going to see the problem, even though the teacher does not have the power to counsel, arrest, etc. The teachers become the important point persons for referral for learning disabilities, emotional difficulties and behavioral problems.”

It is unfortunate, he added, that teachers do not get extra time off to get to know and develop social relationships with their students. Neither do they receive a reduction in classes or extra pay. “But it really is the teacher who knows the kids best.”

“School districts vary enormously in how they support teachers in that role,” LeTendre elaborated, as he described the continuum of support in school districts. Some, he said, are very in tune with the referral process of students from a very young age. Others are more reactionary and “don’t have a system in place. In some districts a lot of information flows from the teachers up through the system. In other districts, this doesn’t happen at all.

“Many schools do a really good job once a student is identified,” he continued. “There are child study teams, IEP’s [Individualized Education Plans], etc., but the difficulty is in having a system in place to identify and refer students in the first place.”

For his book, Learning to be Adolescent: Growing Up in U.S. and Japanese Middle Schools, published in October 2000 by Yale University Press, LeTendre conducted field studies at middle schools in the two countries. Though the schools differ in many ways, LeTendre’s research showed that “Japanese and American teachers alike face significant tasks or problems that are not related to subject matter content . . . they will need to address a whole range of nonacademic issues . . .

“Veteran teachers on both sides of the Pacific give the same advice to novice teachers: you cannot reach a class of students until you have established a basic social relationship with the students,” LeTendre asserted early in the book.

After attempting to describe and define the adolescent, LeTendre looked at and compared ways in which the two educational systems deal with the problem of responsibility, puberty and sexuality, self-control and academic goals, managing crises, disruption and defiance, and creativity and self-expression. LeTendre found differences in the way teachers in both countries motivate and reach their students, different expectations teachers have for students, and different responses to the adolescent behavioral changes associated with puberty.

In Japan, for example, compulsory education only extends to the ninth grade. Students need to pass entrance examinations to get into high school, and the high school they are admitted to can make a huge difference in the students’ future vocation and pay. Academic competition is intense at this stage and students in the adolescent years in Japan tend to get more serious about school as they prepare for entrance exams. Adolescent American students tend to be somewhat less motivated as they apply themselves to the academic pursuits of middle school.

Another interesting difference between the two systems is that the Japanese tend to teach students to have an extended community responsibility – their actions reflect on the entire group. United States students, on the other hand, are taught to have individual responsibility – they must face the consequences for their own actions.

The American school day is in a state of constant change, which seems to give students more opportunities to misbehave – even though there is almost always a teacher or other adult supervising the students. Plus, from school district to school district different standards and priorities are set. Conversely, students in the Japanese system are part of a set of standards recognized nationwide. The stable, predictable structure of the Japanese school day allows students to be left to police themselves–with little or no resulting disruptive behavior–several times each day.

The systems, however, have common themes, which, LeTendre purported in his book, “appeared again and again: volition was a prime consideration of teachers and parents; maturation and self-control were central concerns of teachers; beliefs about puberty were richly detailed.”

Most importantly, LeTendre discussed how American perceptions of the period of adolescence seem to be based on old research and theories. While Japanese teachers see adolescence as a natural step toward maturity and attribute, without consternation, a period of “resistance” to that period of life, American teachers “struggle to maintain control against twin tides of disruption: sexual awakenings and rebellious attitudes. Crisis, conflict, confrontation, and identity are inextricably linked with the notion of adolescence.” This notion, LeTendre said, “makes educational reform at the middle grades level very difficult.”

However, LeTendre noted that Japan’s poor referral system often overburdens teachers. As Japan faces increased problems in its schools, the old model of making teachers responsible for all facets of a student’s life is inadequate. Teachers need a support system of trained professionals, and few Japanese teachers get this kind of support. On balance, American school districts do a much better job of referring students with severe problems to professional care.

These studies and comparisons caused LeTendre to draw conclusions about how today’s colleges can better prepare teachers for the situations they will face, not only in the middle school classroom, but at the elementary and high school levels as well. “Teachers need to have knowledge of their area, but also practical experience,” he began, pointing out that understanding the additional roles today’s teachers play “has been largely missed in how we educate these professionals.”

In the ideal model for educating teachers, LeTendre said, “placement in the classroom [for student teachers] would have, of course, curriculum instruction, lesson planning, how to give a quiz and evaluate its effectiveness, but would also have a classroom management component, a component on behavior and emotional disturbance referrals, and a component on identifying learning disabilities, gifted and talented students, etc., so that when the teachers we are training get into the classroom, they have honed these skills.”

LeTendre suggested three main points for better identifying and referring students, and for reforming the understanding of teachers’ roles in the educational process:

school districts need to do a better job organizing their support services and review the educational processes for supporting teachers in that role,
schools of education need to take into account the various roles teachers play and provide training so that teachers can reach a minimum competency in these areas, and
components sensitive to these topics should be added to the education of administrators, counselors and other support providers as well.

LeTendre’s book aptly concludes: “We must reformulate our understanding of education as a formal method of transmitting knowledge and reconsider the rather old understanding that education is a form of self-development or self-improvement that can alter, for good or bad, our basic capabilities.”

Media Literacy Teaches Skillful Bias Detection

For young people, being media literate is more than enjoying and learning from popular TV programs, music or Internet sites. A major component of multimedia literacy is the ability to detect even the most subtle biases in print and electronic media.

“Most students, having been raised with ‘Sesame Street’ and having seen 5,000 hours of TV programming before they ever come to school, are reluctant to accept the fact that the media contains prejudices of all kinds—racial, economic, gender, political and moral,” says Ladislaus M. Semali, associate professor of language and literacy education.

“They need to be aware that, while not all bias is deliberate, it is nonetheless insidious, because the belief in journalistic objectivity is so well entrenched. In reality, every news story is influenced by the attitudes and background of its interviewers, writers, photographers and editors,” notes Semali, author of a new book, Literacy in Multimedia America: Integrating Media Education Across the Curriculum (Falmer Press).

Bias results automatically from the very process of selection as well as the placement of the story; the headline; photos, captions and camera angles; the use of names and titles; statistics and crowd counts; source control; and word choice and tone. Bias in a story is produced as much by what is left out as what is put in.

“The media are not neutral conduits of messages, but rather thy actively create notions of what constitutes truth, values, racial relations, biases, stereotypes and representations of people,” he adds.

As an illustration, Semali asked his students to dissect a London-based 1994 Associated Press story. The story recounted an experimental malaria vaccine, SPf66, used on a sample of 586 Tanzanian children between ages one and five in the village of Idete. Unidentified “scientists” administered three doses of the vaccine to 274 children, while giving the rest placebos. A year later, “investigators” determined that 31 percent of the children vaccinated were less likely to suffer from malaria, thus providing, in the writer’s words, “...a glimmer of hope that doctors may one day conquer the global killer.” The reporter added that “...malaria...kills one million to three million children every year, the vast majority in Africa.” He later noted two other times the virulence of malaria in Africa compared to South America.

The AP writer concluded that, while the results were encouraging, more work was needed to improve the vaccine, using as a source Nicholas J. White, a “researcher” at the Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Programme in Bangkok, Thailand.

On the surface, the story seemed a straightforward account of medical research. After a close perusal of the article, the Penn State students began to see an overall pattern of bias. They asked a number of questions, beginning with how can one claim an experiment having a 31 percent success rate as successful? They questioned that the principal investigator of this malaria experiment was not named specifically—he or she may or may not have been White. They also pondered the connection between the dateline (London), the research program where White was located (Bangkok), and the Idete village in Tanzania. They asked other questions such as: Were there no doctors in Tanzania to comment on the results? Why are African doctors silent in this article? Wouldn’t these African doctors, who work in countries where this fatal disease is prevalent, be more knowledgeable? Why is a doctor in Bangkok being employed as a spokesperson?

“As the students observed, the reader of this story is not told who invented the vaccine and is led to believe that the inventor must be found at the Oxford Tropical Medical Center in Bangkok or in a European or North American lab,” Semali says. “The inventor was, in point of fact, a physician from Colombia, like Tanzania, a `developing country.’ ”

The handling of the story, with its threefold emphasis on malaria as the particular scourge of Africa, appeared to accentuate the stereotype of Africa as “the dark continent,” says Semali. This in turn confirms the view held by many media executives that Americans are little interested in news from such a backward and blighted region, he adds.

The Penn State education researcher says, “All this testifies to the power of language in manipulating myths, stereotypes and values. New technologies and new literacies such as the information superhighway only make it easier to disseminate biases. Neither are school textbooks free from bias, because they mirror the society that published them and thus are rarely, if ever, neutral.”

Students, fortunately, can be taught the critical viewing, reading and thinking skills that allow them to resist manipulation and find alternatives to the explanations given by the media. This involves acquiring a kind of healthy, inquiring skepticism that is to be distinguished from cynicism. By being aware of biases imbedded in texts and imagery, students can sort out truths from half-truths, accuracies from inaccuracies, fact from fiction, and reality from myth.

“Because of long-ingrained habits of processing media messages, students do not master these interpretative skills overnight,” Semali said.“However, the rewards of media literacy are well worth the effort, since students can use this knowledge to become both better citizens and better people.”

Penn State's American Indian Leadership Program Celebrates Thirty Years

University Park, Pa. —The American Indian Leadership Program (AILP) at Penn State University will celebrate its 30th anniversary here on March 29-31, 2001 with a weekend of alumni programs that will culminate in Penn State’s first-ever, traditional pow-wow.

More than 180 students have earned graduate degrees from the Penn State AILP. The program is nationally recognized as a top program for American Indians and Alaska Natives in education.

Returning alumni and guests will be invited to attend a reception, a symposium on current American Indian issues, a panel discussion, and the pow-wow, which will feature the Allegheny River Dancers of the Iroquois Nation along with dancers and singers from the Plains Nations and the Ohio River Valley.

The AILP offers fellowships to American Indian and Alaska Native students to earn graduate degrees in Educational Administration or Special Education.Thirty-eight students who have earned doctoral degrees, and 117 have earned master’s degrees. More than 95% of AILP graduates work in areas related to Indian education.

The AILP started in 1970 with 15 students under the direction of Patrick Lynch. The program has successfully prepared American Indian and Alaska Natives for leadership roles in the field of education. Dr. John Tippeconnic (Comanche) is both the current director and a graduate of the program. Dr. Anna Gajar is the co-director of two external supporting grants, and Dr. Frances Rains (Choctaw) teaches and provides student support.

The event will kick off with an AILP alumni reception on Friday, March 30. On Saturday morning, a symposium titled American Indian Issues Today will be followed by a luncheon that will recognize and honor past directors and key supporters of the program. The keynote speaker will be Dr. Gerald Gipp, executive director for the American Indian Higher Education Consortium and the first AILP student to earn a Ph.D. from Penn State. Dr. Gipp previously worked for the National Science Foundation and is the past president of Haskell Indian Nations University.

The afternoon will continue with a panel on Indian Education Leadership that will feature AILP graduates who are leaders in Indian education. Friday and Saturday afternoon events will take place at the Nittany Lion Inn on campus. The pow-wow will be held at the Penn Stater Conference Center.

For more information, contact Dr. John Tippeconnic, director, American Indian Leadership Program: College of Education, Penn State University, at 814-863-1626.

Education Experts Available on the Web

University Park, Pa.—The Penn State College of Education has created an on-line faculty directory and expertise listing on the Web. Education reporters may bookmark the site at http://www.ed.psu.edu and use it to do topic and alphabetical searches for Penn State education experts.

Also available are recent press releases, book reviews and links to College of Education publications. Bookmark it for quick reference to Penn State experts.

This site augments Penn State’s University-wide Experts Guide on the Web, which includes a limited number of faculty experts from many disciplines. The University-wide expert database is part of a reporters source site at: http://www.psu.edu/ur/presspass/ and click on the top left button: Find a Faculty Expert.

Student Victimization: The Impact of Educational Systems on School Violence in 37 Nations

University Park, Pa.—School violence is an issue of international concern, yet there are no comprehensive studies of the cross-national factors that cause school violence—until now that is.

David Baker, professor of education and sociology, teamed with Gerald Le Tendre, associate professor of education, and Motoko Akiba, a Penn State graduate student in education theory and policy, to develop an understanding of how macro-sociological factors—such as the presence of shadow education or overall levels of academic competition—are important links in understanding the correlations and causes of violence in schools.

“In this paper, we utilized a little-analyzed section of the Third International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) data,” Baker said. “We wanted to 1) explore how much school violence there is in the world; 2) determine whether or not previous theories of juvenile delinquency and school violence held up in cross-national analysis; and 3) test whether factors related to the educational system itself were associated with levels of school violence,” Baker added.

The 1994 TIMSS data used for this research contained multiple measures of violence: two types of violent behaviors based on student reports, two types of delinquent behaviors based on teacher reports and six types of violence behaviors based on school reports.

“We found that violence is widespread in schools around the world,” Baker noted.

Of the U.S. students surveyed, 25.7% stated that they got hurt or were threatened to get hurt at least once a month. At the high end of the scale, about 75% of the students in Hungary and 67% of Romanian students felt the same while more than 6% of students surveyed from Denmark felt the same. In that category of questioning, the worldwide sample mean was 27.8%.

When teachers were asked “How much is your teaching limited by threats to your personal safety or student’s safety?” only 7.6% of the U.S. respondents responded positively that a risk of violence existed. This is significantly lower than the mean response of 13.7%.

“The U.S. is not very high on the violence scale in each category of questioning,” shared Baker. “We’re not trying to downplay the seriousness of events like Columbine; yet overall, American schools are not significantly more violent than schools in other countries throughout the world,” Baker said. “We do tend to ‘be more violent’ than other industrialized nations though,” he added.

“Previous theories do not adequately explain the structural causes of violence; a combination of poor-quality public schooling combined with strong academic competition is significantly associated with higher levels of student victimization,” Baker said. “When you put kids in special remedial classes with little resources, you’re just asking for trouble,” Baker warned.

One surprise finding notes that schools that are more effective at teaching math tend to report less acts of violence. Schools that have a spread or variation of math scores strongly produce more violence (with some classroom to classroom variation).

In addition, analysis results show that national patterns of school violence are not related to general patterns of violence or social disintegration, and that school-related factors appear to be more powerful predictors of system-wide levels of violence.

Penn State Receives $6M Endowment to Create Family Literacy Institute

University Park, Pa.—As part of a substantial educational spending bill signed by President Clinton in December, Penn State’s College of Education will receive $6 million to establish the Institute for Research in Family Literacy at Penn State—an initiative spearheaded by Congressman William F. Goodling. In his honor, it will be named the Goodling Institute for Research in Family Literacy.

Goodling recently retired from the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served as chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, and has been a champion of education programs throughout his Congressional career. He has been a nationally recognized leader in the adult literacy community during his 24 years in Congress. David Monk, dean of Penn State's College of Education is in discussions regarding a potential future role for Goodling with the new Institute.

“We will overcome the barriers to greater literacy across America through aggressive research,” says Monk. “This Institute, which Mr. Goodling has been so helpful in establishing, guarantees that this research will go forward.”

Penn State was selected as the site for the Institute based on its long-term commitment to quality literacy programming. The College of Education is already home to the Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy, and the two Penn State institutes will collaborate to develop and publish course materials and one or more courses in family literacy to be offered through the Penn State World Campus.

The Goodling Institute will also collaborate with the National Center for Family Literacy, based in Louisville, Ky., to provide high quality, research-based instruction and programs in family literacy, as well as a certificate program with credits applicable toward a Penn State master’s degree in Adult Education or Early Childhood Education. The Goodling Institute will be housed at Penn State’s University Park and York campuses.

Pennsylvania is a national leader in family literacy and one of only a few states to offer such programs on a state-wide basis with support from both federal and state funds. In a recent Penn State report on the statewide evaluation of family literacy programs to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, Governor Tom Ridge said, “Education is the ultimate tool of empowerment...and reading is the foundation of a quality education. Family literacy programs literally can turn lives around.”

“This is a tremendous opportunity to join forces with the National Center for Family Literacy to conduct research, help providers apply the results to their practice, and promote the value of family literacy,” said Barbara Van Horn, senior research assistant in the Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy and co-director of the new institute at Penn State.

Family literacy programs provide a unified program of educational services to parents and children. They provide interactive literacy activities between parents and their children and age-appropriate education directly to children. In addition, services include training for parents on their role as the primary teacher of and full partner in educating their children, and adult basic education for parents that leads to economic self-sufficiency.

Director of Development and Institutional Advancement Appointed

Ellie Dietrich has been appointed as the College’s Director of Development and Institutional Advancement. Dietrich comes to the College from the Penn State Alumni Association where, for the past seven years, she has been Director of Program Development and Enrichment. The “institutional advancement” concept is gaining ground in higher education these days, and the use of these terms in her title reflects an intent to think of alumni relations, public relations, and development as a seamless effort that involves helping people to understand the College and its needs.

Dietrich received her B.S. in Education from the University of Wisconsin-Stout and has completed postgraduate study in design and career development theory. She has been a secondary teacher in Wisconsin, worked in training and development with IDS Financial Services, and managed a career development program in Minneapolis. She began her career in higher education at the University of St. Thomas (St. Paul) as the program director of Graduate Career Services. In 1987 she became the Director of Career Planning at St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD and then moved to college relations within the U.S. General Accounting Office. She came to Penn State in 1991 as the MBA Career Specialist. She has been with the Penn State Alumni Association since the summer of 1993.

Wary of Harry

Once upon a time, a magician learned a fantastic potion that taught children to read. “The end of illiteracy,” he thought.

He began using his spell, and soon children were in such a frenzy that they were reading books of enormous length such that no adult ever thought possible. Funny thing about people, though. They have so many different opinions.

A movement arose to stop the use of the potion in public places where children were required to be present. Very soon the potion vanished from these areas, though it became increasingly popular elsewhere to the point where all four versions of it were on the best-sellers list. The disparity in availability was striking.

That’s essentially what happened with the Harry Potter series. While wildly successful, the objections of some people have effectively removed Potter’s voice from most public schools.

Despite his popularity, it seems that everyone is wary of Harry these days—some for reasons you might not have considered. First, there are the folks you’ve read about in the news who think that the witchcraft and wizardry in the books have no place in public schools.

Then there are the teachers who are wary of reading the Potter books aloud to their students for fear of the former group’s backlash—or their administrator’s. And then there are the people who are looking beyond the pages of the book to the corporate culture that produced it and the effect that marketing and consumerism are having both on the children’s book publishing industry and on the children themselves.

There is no lack of wariness, uncomfortableness or even fear when it comes to Harry Potter. And he’s just a fictional 14-year-old boy (OK, wizard).

The fuss that has made news, of course, is that some people have tried to ban the Potter series from public schools, because they supposedly “promote” magic and witchcraft. Others have argued back that what the series promotes is creativity and imagination in children that spurs them on to become skilled readers and creative thinkers.

Potter’s author, J. K. Rowling, said in a 1999 interview by Judy O’Malley, “I don’t believe in censorship for any age group. The book is really about the power of the imagination. What Harry is learning to do is to develop his full potential. Wizardry is just the analogy I use. What I’m saying is that children have power and can use it, which may in itself be more threatening to some people than the idea that children would actually learn spells from my book.”

Direct censorship has thus far failed, but indirect censorship prevails. Potter books are on district lists of books to avoid reading aloud in class for fear of the backlash from parents. District administrators have been forced to create policies on such books in spite of the logic they see in approving or restricting a given book and in spite of their personal feelings.

Many districts make the Potter books available to anyone who wants to read them but instruct teachers to not read them aloud in class. It is important to note the distinction of free will here.

In making the books available, the district allows students and their parents to decide which books they will read. In disallowing the books to be read to a captive audience in a classroom, the district is not forcing the material into a child’s mind. State College Area School District, for example, employs this type of policy.

Other districts follow slightly different policies. One does permit the books to be read aloud, but any student whose parent objects may be given an alternate assignment to do in a quiet area, a hallway or another room. Some people lament that option because of the inherent stigma associated with separating children from the group.

Still, many teachers have the feeling that they are being censored anyway.

“More than overt censorship, most of it is self-censorship,” says Dan Hade, associate professor of language and literacy, who realized in talking with teachers that there was a widespread, sometimes unwritten ban on reading Potter aloud. Unfortunately, that self-censorship is not always in the children’s best interest. Often it is based on the real fear that a parent will cause trouble.

“Teachers and administrators say, ‘I don’t need this kind of grief,’ ” says Hade, who thinks a bigger concern is that “Harry doesn’t seem to have much free will. He is less an actor and more of a reactor.” Yet he says magic invokes passions that educators try to avoid.

“Many educators have the opinion ‘It’s a good day when nothing bad happens.’ They just want to avoid trouble.” agrees Steven Herb, education librarian, director of the Pennsylvania Center for the Book and former chair of the American Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee. “Decisions on which books to use are sometimes not based on community standards, as the Supreme Court has ruled, but on repression.”

Stevie Rocco ‘90, instructional materials designer for Distance Education/World Campus and a former 10th grade English teacher at Mifflin County School District (who once snuck a copy of Catcher in the Rye to an in-school suspension), said she felt some “paranoia” about reading such books or encouraging her students to read them. “Maybe my paranoia wasn’t justified,” she says, “but you don’t know that the administration would be OK with it.”

“I won’t leave a teacher unsupported out there,” says Joyce W. Lee ‘74 M.Ed., ‘77 D.Ed., coordinator of K-12 Reading, K-6 Language Arts/Social Studies at State College Area School District. Lee said it is important to back teachers and that administrators need to be clear about what they will and won’t support, both to teachers and to parents. Lee has indeed talked with her teachers. “I’ve asked them to be sensitive. As long as there is a choice—that we don’t prevent children from reading the book,” says Lee, “we feel it is appropriate.”

Herb, whose largest criticism of Rowling is that her female characters have a second-class role in the Potter books, notes that there are differences among reading a book aloud to a captive audience, promoting a book with a display, and simply stocking it on a shelf, And he takes a stronger stand. “A book should be chosen based on its positives, not rejected for all potential negatives.

“This is America. Censorship is one of the most un-American ideas,” says Herb. “We ridicule despots of other countries for it, but many people attempt to do that very same thing here in the name of protecting children. Rather, censors are not trusting children.”

In the censorship debate, fear of the books can be stirred by the Web. The Onion, a satirical newspaper from Madison, Wis., published an article that mocked religious concerns about Harry Potter by inventing a description of how the book had pulled children into the occult. People believed the false article as it spread across the Web without attribution and used it as anti-Potter fuel. Other groups, like Muggles for Harry Potter, formed to thwart any efforts to ban or repress the books. (FYI, The Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-School of Education maintains a Web page with direct links to Potter-critical articles, professional reviews and distinctions, at www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/hpreview.htm).

Despite the controversy, most educators seem enthralled by Potter’s abilities to inspire children.

“I just started reading the first Harry Potter book to my remedial 8th graders. These ‘tough’ kids love this book!!! And they are listening to it!” says Connie Stewart ‘77 EK ED, ‘92 M.Ed., a reading teacher in Bellwood-Antis School District.

“I bought the first Potter book for one of my students who was incarcerated at 18,” says Rocco. “Normally he wouldn’t read if his life depended on it, but he finished the Sorcerer’s Stone in two days. He identified with Harry Potter’s horrible family life, but also with his desire for structure, his secret need for approval and his need for friends.”

She added another note for censorship advocates. “I’d challenge them to look at the books as an allegory about ethics and power-over versus power-from-within,” says Rocco. “Of course, since power-over is usually the purpose of censorship, I rather doubt they’ll get my point.” She says the books can give kids an escape from an otherwise bleak world.

Herb agrees and says the books exemplify several of Carol Bly’s Six Uses of a Story. First, they give us a “sense of other”—of the world beyond that which we experience firsthand. “Some kids just have the here and now,” says Herb, who notes that a book called Half Magic was the one that opened his eyes to the larger world when he was young. He also notes that some school districts have employed technology to search for certain words contained in books and eliminate books with the chosen words from their libraries and classrooms. Ironically, some books that were critical of and opposed to some themes, such as magic, have been removed from schools simply because they contained the word “magic.”

>Herb notes that Bly’s second use is to teach us to despise evil. Potter is a battle of good and evil, and good is winning. “It’s a good parable,” he says.

Suzanne M. Wolfe ‘92, director of Harmonic Progressions, a private education enrichment/tutoring program in State College, adds, “The Potter Books underscore Bruno Bettelheim’s theme in The Uses of Enchantment—‘the enormous and irreplaceable value of fairy tales and how they educate, support and liberate the emotions of children.’ I love to watch what happens when there is peer pressure among my students to READ. All of us should enjoy hearing a parent report: ‘Oh, Caitlin might be a little tired. She was up late last night...reading the new Harry Potter book in bed!’ ”

Potter critics, of course, would enjoy hearing that the least (next to hearing that a child tried to perform “magic.”)

But perhaps the fictitious magic of Harry Potter and the real magic of children reading both pale in comparison to the magic of marketing, in which such a book takes on a life of its own.

“The marketing of Harry Potter is just beginning,” says Hade. Among the merchandise you can expect to see are watches, plushes, collectible dolls, Halloween costumes, cards, action figures and even a Christmas ornament. Agreements between publisher Scholastic and a variety of market outlets include boutiques at 1,215 Toys “R” Us stores and 140 Warner Brothers Studio Stores. Then, of course, there is the soon-to-be-released movie and subsequent videos.

Harry Potter is just the tip of the insidious marketing iceberg. Money itself is just a start. The real brass ring is brand loyalty that will keep the dollars rolling in. Kellogg’s, for instance, now offers the Kellogg’s Froot Loops! Counting Fun Book, published by HarperCollins. It’s hardly the only one. A front-page New York Times article noted that books starring brand-name candies and snacks like Cheerios, M&M’s, Pepperidge Farm Goldfish, Reese’s Pieces, Hershey’s chocolates, Skittles, Sun-Maid raisins and Oreo cookies are now available. Publishers and authors pay licensing fees to the food companies who, according to the Times, see it as “a novel opportunity to market to toddlers.” Market to toddlers?!?

The goal of Kellogg’s and the others is clear. In the Times article, Kellogg’s spokeswoman Meghan Parkhurst said, “It is a great way to get the Froot Loops brand equity into a different place, where normally you don’t get exposure—taking it from the cereal aisle and into another area like learning.” Never mind that Kellogg’s intentionally misspells “fruit” in its product name (not because it espouses whole language, but because it thinks “froot” will sell better). The goal of teaching kids to count is just a by-product of the ultimate goal—to make a buck and to convince these future consumers to be loyal to Kellogg’s brand. Does it even matter whether the books are good as long as they sell?

If a product injures a child, it can be proven that the company was at fault. It would be difficult to prove that our children do not read as well because they were given inferior books published by greed-driven corporate executives rather than education-driven authors and teachers.

“These books are cross-promotional,” says Hade. “When you are reading them and being entertained, you are also being advertised.” Great for the company; probably not so great for our kids.

Hade adds, “It’s all about brand loyalty,” noting that the real goals of Scholastic and other publishers—increased profits, not teaching children to read or count—are written most openly on their “investor resources” Web sites. And there is a bigger censorship issue than just one teacher avoiding Potter in a classroom.

Says Hade, “There are more books by more publishers today, but the percentage produced by the big houses is higher. The top ten now produce more than 50 percent of children’s books, and the percentage of good reviews is even higher.”

The problem with that, of course, is that if the trend continues and mergers continue, an unhealthy monopoly could emerge—one in which books become published not for their literary value but for their marketability—and, worse, to the exclusion of non-commodified books/ideas.

“The industry is looking for property (books) that can extend beyond the book itself,” says Hade—i.e., something that can be turned into a movie, TV show, action figure or other commercial product.

“The concern is that we will get to a point where the pipeline is controlled by only a few producers and that the only stories published will be those that are commercially viable. With the mergers in the publishing industry, Simon & Shuster, for instance, now has the structure of Viacom above it. They have to meet the larger company’s bottom line and sales goals or worry about being dropped, sold or reorganized,” says Hade.

He argues instead that “the value of an idea lies in the idea itself rather than in its commercial power.”

Rowling herself admitted in the interview referenced earlier that Scholastic’s editors were interested from the start in publishing sequels—implying that the book was much more likely to get published if it would lead to more of such books, rather than if it stood on its own literary value.

This corporate-driven world is not lost on Henry Giroux, Waterbury Chair of Secondary Education, who has long been critical of America’s corporate culture.

“Growing up corporate has become a way of life for American youths,” wrote Giroux in “Education Incorporated?,” published in Educational Leadership (Oct. 1988). “Within corporate models of schooling, young people and the institutions they inhabit are subject to the same processes of ‘corporatization’ that have excluded all but the most profitable and efficient from the economic life of the nation. No longer representing a cornerstone of democracy, schools with an ever-aggressive corporate culture are reduced to new investment opportunities, just as students represent a captive market and new opportunities for profits.

“Growing up corporate suggests that as commercial culture replaces public culture, the language of the market becomes a substitute for the language of democracy...commercial culture erodes civil society as the function of schooling shifts from creating a ‘democracy of citizens [to] a democracy of consumers,’ ” says Giroux.

So, is it wrong for corporations to market to kids this way? As long as the integrity of education remains intact, perhaps not. But Giroux, Hade and others argue, to varying degrees, that corporations do not have children’s best interests at heart, but rather their own profits. So how do you stop an entire corporate culture?

At the end of the Sorcerer’s Stone, the character Dumbledore says, “There are all kinds of courage. It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.” In other words, it takes courage for parents with moral objections to say them, and it takes equal courage for educators to remain steadfast against outright or coerced censorship while maintaining the individual rights and freedoms of each family.

But what courage does it take to stand up to America’s corporate giants? Can we stop them from using children as nothing more than consumers who will one day serve only to perpetuate consumer culture?

“I am against all kinds of censorship—the obvious form displayed by politicians and others who consider some books offensive and want to prevent young people from reading them, and also the type used by corporations that through sheer influence of money and power impose on schools brand-name curricula and outright commercial affronts that displace non-commercial knowledge and social relations,” says Giroux “I am for keeping schools as commercial-free as possible.

“Should we ban advertisements and other commercial interventions that fill pedagogical space with ad slogans? I think so,” he adds.

Even if society does not go so far as to ban commercial intrusion into our schools, Hade says we can teach our children the perils that lie within that culture.He says we should teach children to be vigilant about the motivations of the corporate world and be wary of a future ruled by the bottom line.

Bernreuter Lecture Tackles Childhood Problems

University Park, Pa.—The Robert G. Bernreuter Lecture in School Psychology, sponsored by the Penn State Chapter of Phi Delta Kappa and the Penn State School Psychology Program, will be held Tuesday, October 17 at 7:30 p.m. in the State College Area High School South building.

“Tough Childhood Problems: Practical Management Strategies for Teachers and Parents” will be given by William R. Jenson, professor and chair of the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Utah, whose research includes management of severe students, practical classroom behavior management, behavioral assessment, academic interventions, and parent training.

Jenson graduated from Utah State University in 1976 with a degree in Applied Behavior Analysis/School Psychology. After eight years as director of the Children’s Behavior Therapy Unit for the Salt Lake Mental Health Center he joined the School Psychology program at the University of Utah where he rose through the ranks to his current position. His publications include the Tough Kid Book, Tough Kid tool Box: A resource book,, Understanding Childhood Behavior Disorders, Best Practices: Behavioral and Educational Strategies for Teachers, and the Homework Partner Series. In addition he is the author of several classroom computer products including Get’m on Task and the Functional Assessment and Interventions Program.

The lecture series honors Robert G. Bernreuter, who came to Penn State in 1931 to start a psycho educational clinic and retired in 1965 as Vice President of Student Affairs. The series was established in 1982 as part of the annual conference for school psychologists at Penn State. Now an endowed fund, it is used to provide outreach programs and to enrich graduate study in school psychology.

Attendance and parking are free and open to the public. Light refreshments are available afterward in the cafeteria.

PT3 Grant
Technology Roadmap, New Assessment Standards May Pave The Way

Many industries have established technology criteria standards or certifications to show competency in a given field. Construction workers can’t operate a wrecking ball without being certified. An anesthesiologist can’t put you under without proper certification either. But how do educators of today and tomorrow know what technologies they must master and employ to maximize their students’ learning potential? No standard skill set for teacher technology aptitude exists…yet.

Kyle Peck is leading an initiative, Assessing Educational Competency with Technology (AECT), to identify such skill sets. These certification standards will help teachers from a variety of disciplines gain and demonstrate the ability to effectively teach with today’s emerging technology.

Peck, professor of instructional systems and the overall project director, will begin by forming a consortium of other universities, professional organizations, teachers representing diverse disciplines and technology-based corporations to develop technology competency skill sets. Susan Land, assistant professor of instructional systems, serves as the director of lesson development, and, senior research associate, is the project’s director of assessment.

Thanks in part to funding from a federal Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers for Technology (PT3) Catalyst Grant, $1.64 million will be allocated over the three-year project–federal PT3 funds will supply 50 percent and the other half will be university/partner sponsored.

Titled Technology-Adept Teachers for Educational Reform, its goals include:

1) Define technology skills for 37 teaching roles;

2) Establish a nationally recognized assessment and certification process;

3) Assist teacher preparation programs to model tech-based learning experiences;

4) Develop tech-based tools to help teachers assess student technology competencies;

5) Offer training, assessment and support to other teacher preparatory programs.

“A middle school art teacher would need different technology skills than would a high school physics teacher,” Peck said. “These competency sets will guide teachers and the institutions that prepare them, and the presence of certificates will place pressure on higher ed institutions to change their courses to ensure that teachers leave prepared.”

If accepted, the nationally recognized assessment and certification process could be made available through Penn State’s World Campus.

“If constructed correctly, this could be a national program with both on-line assessments and courses as well as face-to-face training sessions and assessments,” Peck explained.“The program could improve face-to-face pre-service and in-service courses on campus, continuing education outreach efforts, and the World Campus offerings.”

According to Peck’s estimates, there are more than three million teachers that need to keep up-to-date with technology. Even if five percent of them desire to go through the technology certification this initiative envisions, it could serve as many as 150,000 teachers.

The partnership includes three other universities, the National School Boards Association (NSBA), the Association for Educational Communications Technology (AECT), and the Agency for Instructional Technology (AIT)

Urban Education Program Fills A Need

By Debbie Blanton

The second grader keeps taking his shoes off and putting them back on. The girl in the seat across from him is grouchy and finding it hard to concentrate. Obviously, it’s two more cases of attention deficit disorder, right?

Well, maybe in some schools, but Darlene Watkins and many other first-year public school teachers are discovering that the diagnosis here is more complicated. The young boy fidgets because his shoes are two sizes too small, and the girl can’t concentrate because her family’s food stamps have been cut and she’s hungry.

Situations like these are frequently, although not exclusively, encountered in urban schools, including those in Philadelphia. And fourteen new teachers - all graduates of the Urban Early and Middle Childhood Education program at Penn State Delaware County - feel they are better equipped to cope with these problems because of the nature of the Penn State curriculum. Twenty-nine students graduated from this program last spring (the largest class ever) and fourteen of them are now teaching in the Philadelphia School District, including the Belmont School and the John Barry School.

Darlene Watkins, a 3rd grade teacher at the Belmont School, finds her Penn State education invaluable as she copes with problems of the urban classroom. “Nothing compares to on-the-job experience, but I came better equipped to handle the problems,” she said. “I think teachers with an urban education background are more likely to stay in the city schools. My hope is that more come and don’t leave.”

“A unique aspect of this program, available exclusively at Penn State Delaware County, is its highly intensive field-based focus,” said Dr. Grace Stanford, assistant professor of education at Penn State Delaware County. “As early as the students’ junior year, they will observe classes and participate in daily activities in a school in the Philadelphia area. The mission of the Urban Ed program is to give the potential teacher an understanding of the unique realities the urban individual, family, and community face.”

The reality of something as simple as walking to school past crack houses and remnants of recent violence and homelessness, can have a major impact on the child’s life. “But among the desolation there are families who are deeply concerned, administrators with close ties to the community, and bright talented young teachers coming into the urban school,” Stanford said.

Watkins, whose love of teaching is evident as she talks about her first year experience at Belmont, is honest about the challenges she faces daily working in the Philadelphia school system, including lack of resources and lack of parental involvement. “It forces you to be creative,” she said. “If you don’t have visual aids and other materials to teach mathematics, you have the children become numbers and group themselves into math orders and structures. You also work hard to arrange field trips to expose them to experiences they normally do not have access to.” she said.

Watkins also notes that most of the parents are caring and concerned and do try their best, but the majority are working and it’s difficult for them to be involved. I’m working on alternative ways to reach them too, Watkins said.

Watkins feels that today’s urban teachers have to take on the role of social worker, nurturer, role model, as well as educator. “Many new teachers don’t understand the commitment of time, energy, and effort that’s needed to work in an urban school,” she said. She feels a closer collaboration among universities, public schools, and the communities they serve is essential to teacher preparedness and student teacher field experience.

Stressing the need for teachers to be role models, Stanford cites Curtis Fisher, a fellow Penn State graduate and former classmate of Watkins. Fisher completed his student teaching requirements at the John Barry School with an additional difficulty: Fisher is blind. Fisher’s creativity and inventiveness inspired not only his students, but other school employees as well, including Andrew Little, the Barry school’s security officer.

Little said he often watched Fisher teach his lessons in utter amazement. “He moved about the classroom with his cane, delivering the lesson in his soft but direct voice. You could not imagine, if you were just walking by the classroom hearing the small chatter of the children participating in the lesson, that Mr. Fisher is blind,” said Little.

Like Watkins, Fisher’s job of keeping his kids involved and interested was difficult, but he handled it just as any teacher would. Fisher explained how he could ‘hear’ his students working and he would praise them for it, motivating the others to work just as hard. “Challenge yourselves and strive toward your goals despite the set-backs and barriers along the way,” Fisher tells his students.

The issues Fisher and Watkins struggle with are very familiar to Marcy Kaufman, who has observed many student teachers at Barry Elementary. Kaufman, a second grade teacher who has been at Barry for the past eight years, is also one of Penn State’s cooperating teachers and one the urban ed program’s strongest supporters. “Urban students present a number of unique difficulties for teachers. Some parents are unemployed, some are in jail, some are missing. Many of the students are homeless and must live in foster homes,” she said. “These kids have a lot on their minds.”

What Kaufman sees as the difference between teachers graduating with the traditional education degree and those with Penn State Delco’s Urban Education degree is an awareness, tolerance, and flexibility. Many of Kaufman’s student teachers, without the urban ed advantage, don’t understand the complexities and disadvantages of poverty and urban blight, and aren’t prepared for the urban experience.

“Urban educated teachers are much more aware of situations that can occur in the classroom and outside,” she said. “The teachers must get to know the neighborhood, community, and families, and to recognize the many good things the urban experience contributes to the child. “These children live in a community enriched in culture and heritage. Most parents will do anything to help their children succeed in school, but it can be very difficult for them,” Kaufman said. “Many parents are children raising children.”

Marcy feels not only do the children benefit from the urban ed experience, but so do the teachers. The families have embraced Kaufman, inviting her to their homes for dinner and even to an adoption party. “I have gained something very special and life enriching from my urban education experience,” Kaufman said.

Watkins is in heartfelt agreement with Kaufman. Her childhood dream of becoming a teacher has finally been realized. And, even though this is her first year, Watkins has not only given much to her students but she has already gotten so much in return. “If you can reach just one student, you’ve made a difference. Personally, I feel I am reaching more than just one,” Watkins said. “Sometimes it’s the spark in their eyes or their enthusiasm that let’s me know what I do matters. You have to celebrate small successes along with the big ones.”

Science Education Program Receives Provost's Special Award

Each year the provost recognizes two programs, one at University Park and one at another campus location, on the basis of demonstrated commitment to improving teaching and learning through a collaborative process. This year, the Science Education Program will receive one of the $15,000 awards for their collaborative instructional activities.

Science Education faculty Barbara Crawford, Tom Dana, Vince Lunetta and Carla Zembal-Saul worked with other College faculty, graduate students, and numerous faculty from the Colleges of Engineering and Agricultural Sciences to develop a program that embodies the notion of integrated teaching, outreach and research.

The commendation leading to the award stated, “The instructional activities of the Science Education Program are transformative in their development of collaborative practices in which teaching scholarship is a shared enterprise. The faculty have successfully developed an environment in which there is an integration of teaching, research and outreach that lends itself both to a view of teaching and learning as discovery, and of teaching as a fundamental element of professional scholarly work.”

The purposes of the Provost’s Award are twofold: to recognize and reward academic units demonstrating successful collaborative activities toward the improvement of teaching and learning, and to identify exemplary approaches for all academic units to consider as they conduct their instructional planning and programming.

According to the award recommendation submitted by Dean Monk, the Science Education Program uses four strategic initiatives to anchor their work. The program is developing a series of science content courses, redesigning methods courses with technology, developing opportunities for prospective K-12 teachers to teach using technological tools and techniques, and developing web-based portfolios for supporting learning and assessment.

Perhaps Dana captured the essence of the program when he said, “A great College of Education doesn’t do great work on its own; it must build trust and support between groups to facilitate collaboration.”

This attitude of collaborative outreach permeates many of the program’s initiatives, and this Provost Award will bring them even closer to optimizing the program’s impact.

Tracking In Middle School Works Against Poorer Children

According to recent Spencer Foundation funded research of Gerald K. LeTendre, curriculum tracking in U.S. middle schools, particularly in math, tends to work against poorer, minority and non-English-speaking students.

Two principal factors conspire against the poorer middle school students, albeit unintentionally,” says LeTendre, associate professor of education. “One seems to be the attitude of ‘don’t worry now–everything will work out’ projected by the schools themselves. This fits in all too well with the pattern of decision-making customarily shown by young adolescents, who take their cues from the school in determining what courses to take next year. If the school recommends that they follow a particular track, that’s what they do.”

“The second is the complexity of the choices offered to students, especially in math, which makes decision-making tough on students and parents alike. This applies especially to low income families lacking an ethic of education, social networks and skills at dealing with information overload,” LeTendre notes.

LeTendre conducted a random survey of students, teachers and parents in urban, suburban and rural middle schools in California, Georgia and Pennsylvania and interviewed 50 students, parents and teachers. The student body in these schools ranged from nearly all white to schools with no single ethnic majority.

In LeTendre’s study, most school districts offered only a single “math” class in the 5th grade. The situation changed in middle school, with the schools offering at least two levels of math in the sixth grade and at least three in the eighth grade.

“Most of the schools have a math/pre-algebra course in the 6th grade and continue with math/algebra or pre-algebra distinctions in 7th and 8th grades,” Le Tendre said. “In addition, there is often a ‘special education’ or ‘resource’ math designed primarily for low-ability students.”

Occasionally, schools will offer ‘GATE’ math for students identified as gifted and talented or they may offer specific courses in geometry or ‘college-prep’ math in the 8th grade. Clearly, students in the three states are being tracked or streamed into very different curriculums.”

Grades and teacher recommendations were the key factors in determining placements into these high or low-tier classes. Teachers stress faithful attention to homework as a key component of grades, yet often students do not receive immediate feedback regarding homework or see its connection with grades.

When this is the case, young adolescents often take a no-worries attitude, concentrating their energy on cramming before tests or quizzes. This is less true, of course, in families where education and upward mobility are placed at a high premium, and adolescents realize that failure to do their homework is no option, according to LeTendre.

“Even low-track students in middle school see their options as wide-open and believe that, if they have to, they can improve their grades enough to go to college. During the middle school years, school systems do little to discourage this lack of perspective and foresight until reality sets in,” LeTendre says. “In the meantime, the system with its general attitude seems to encourage students and their families to accept the placement offered by the school rather than question or contest it.”

Secondly, the complexity of course work offerings and the ambiguity of some of the course titles works against families hampered by language barriers, low educational levels and the general struggle to stay afloat financially, LeTendre noted.

“More educated parents are more likely to challenge the school system, enjoy better informal contacts with other parents or teachers and are better able to monitor whether or not their child is on the correct path in terms of curriculum,” LeTendre added.

What can be done to address these issues? LeTendre offers numerous suggestions:

1. Formalize links between schools at the entrance to and exit from middle school. Currently, not all schools even have yearly meetings where teachers can discuss placement. At minimum, elementary and middle school teachers (e.g. 5th grade and 6th grade) should meet to briefly discuss placement, rather than relying solely on test scores. In the same way middle school and high school teachers (e.g. 8th and 9th grade) should meet to discuss placement.

2. Include parents in the decision. Upon entrance to middle school, parents should receive a chart that shows the different levels of middle school math available in the school as well as the classes offered in the first year of high school that most students in the district should attend. The chart should indicate the possible trajectories a student could have, so parents determine where students will end up in the first year of high school.

3. Classes should have some consistent ranking as to level of difficulty to avoid the current confusing and idiosyncratic systems in place. Even a system as simple as the four-level classification used in the survey would help parents and students understand the aims of each class.

4. To the extent they can, schools should provide parents and students with the minimum basic skills needed to enter given math or science classes. Parents and students could then gauge the interest or motivation students have in a given subject, and be better able to estimate the amount of work needed to attain a given level.

Math Education Wins Major NSF Grant

University Park, Pa.— A nationwide shortage of mathematics education professors prompted the National Science Foundation to award a major competitive grant to Penn State and several other universities this summer to establish a new Mid-Atlantic Center for Mathematics Teaching and Learning in hopes of reversing the trend.

At a time when states are moving toward higher academic standards for all subjects, including mathematics, the nation is producing far fewer mathematics education professors than the country needs. More than 200 mathematics professorships were available last year, yet the nation produced less than 100 qualified graduates. If the shortage continues, math instruction in public and private schools could falter.

The mathematics education program received $3 million of a $9 million NSF grant through the University of Maryland to provide substantial support of graduate students in the program as well as research initiatives to learn how mathematics educators acquire the requisite knowledge in the field.

“With this grant, we are building the mathematics education infrastructure,” says M. Kathleen Heid, professor of mathematics education at Penn State and co-principal investigator for the three-university project.

The grant addresses two problems associated with the shortage. First, it provides substantial funding for graduate students in mathematics education. It will support 15 doctoral students at each of the three universities.

As Patricia Campbell, Professor of Mathematics Education at the University of Maryland and co-principal investigator of the Center, observes: “Since doctoral students in mathematics education are frequently experienced and exemplary K-12 teachers, a substantially higher than usual stipend is needed. This level of support will be provided for the Mid-Atlantic Center fellows.”

Second, it seeks to improve the quality of education these future professors receive. The coordinated efforts are handled by a newly-formed center that combines the resources of three universities – Penn State, the University of Maryland, and the University of Delaware. Students will have access to the best faculty and facilities of these three institutions.

“With refinement of knowledge and access to new technologies, we are changing what we should teach and how we teach it,” says Heid. “We need forward-thinking leaders in mathematics education to continue the progress made thus far. This grant enables us to move forward on several initiatives.”

A third part of the program is the development of courses with mathematics faculty, including Mark Levi, professor of mathematics at Penn State. These courses will be designed to give mathematics educators the deep knowledge of mathematics that they will need to give quality instruction to future mathematics educators. Other Penn State mathematics education faculty include Glendon W. Blume and Martin A. Simon, professors of mathematics education.

The grant also provides funding for research into how math educators learn and how they might use new technologies to improve math education.

The program requires each participating university to establish a partnership with a regional school district. Penn State’s partner is the Pittsburgh Public Schools.

The mathematics education program at Penn State has been growing steadily since its inception in 1983 but has shown remarkable strength in numbers and prestige in recent years. It is now one of the top ten such programs in the nation and in 1997 won an unannounced five-year, $2 million grant to develop the CASIM program, which is building curricula to engage high school teachers in using new technologies to teach mathematics.

This most-recent NSF grant also meshes with Heid’s work in developing the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) standards, which focus on the development of mathematics knowledge throughout a student’s lifetime in the education system. Work with the new grant will help further define standards for mathematics education professors and help them to gain the requisite knowledge and skills necessary to instruct future teachers in how to meet the NCTM standards with public and private school children.

Penn State’s strengths are in its secondary math education program and in the use of technology. The program’s national reputation in these areas helped attract the grant, which was one of only two awarded by NSF for mathematics education. The program has also applied for funding to host an international mathematics education conference this February.

Local Businesses Benefit From Training Grant

Three local businesses will soon have a better-trained and more productive workforce thanks to a new state grant that partners industry with adult education – and one of those “workforces” consists of players on the CrossCutters Baseball Team.

The non-English speaking players for CrossCutters will receive English lessons from the Lycoming Literacy Council, an affiliate of the Pennsylvania Workforce Investment Network (PA WIN).In addition, OHD Thermacore of Williamsport will receive training to provide effective communication skills for production employees, and M.W. Farmer and Company will receive basic safety training and reading skills – both from another affiliate – The Pennsylvania College of Technology. The training is made possible by the PA WIN grant.

PA WIN is coordinated by the Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy at Penn State, under a grant awarded by the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Bureau of Adult Basic and Literacy Education (ABLE). It is designed to encourage and support the expansion of adult basic education organizations’ abilities to provide customized foundation skills training for employees in their workplace.

The seed money was meant to foster an employee-training relationship between the companies and the local education affiliate, said Laura Beach, state coordinator for the PA WIN program.

“This whole project is to help companies experience some successful foundation skills training so that they can see how it might benefit their bottom line to train their workers,” Beach said.

For many years, industry has focused its continuing education efforts on upper-level management, she said.But with an exploding economy and record levels of employment, companies are more likely to hire workers who lack some skills.

PA WIN estimates who at least two million Pennsylvanians need to improve basic foundation skills, which include listening and reading comprehension, problem-solving, communication and technology.

Grants are awarded for up to $5,000 each and are only available to PA WIN affiliates. Businesses may contact their nearest affiliate to request training assistance or call (814) 863-3777 or visit PA WIN on the Web at www.ed.psu.edu/pawin.

Homeschooling Statistics Show Disparities

Over a decade ago, the Commonwealth of PA passed Act 169, amending the Compulsory School Attendance Law, to allow for education by “a parent or guardian, or legal custodian.” Since that time, many polarized opinions have developed about the relationships that should and shouldn’t exist among school districts, home schooling participants, and the government entities that establish and maintain home schooling requirements.

Recent research from Steven Melnick, associate professor of education and Director of the Center for the Improvement of Teaching and Learning at Penn State Harrisburg, compares legislation that permits home schooling in PA with other state government regulations. Melnick requested statistics from all fifty states and surveyed hundreds of parents and school administrators in Pennsylvania to analyze current practice in PA regarding the “controversial topic” of home schooling.

The study addresses many of the most prevalent issues in the home schooling arena:

How should student progress be monitored and by whom?
Who should accept the financial responsibilities associated with home schooling?
How effective is the communication between representatives of the districts and the individual home schooling programs?
What extracurricular and academic participation opportunities should exist for home schooled children?

Data from 34 state government respondents show that Pennsylvania offers “more structure and control of home schooling than do most states,” said Melnick. According to the current state legislation, school districts are required to fund and provide resources to review and monitor individual portfolios on an annual basis to assess the progress of each student.

But when the question of monitoring work is raised, both parents and district representatives agreed that parents should monitor the progress of their own children. Although districts felt strongly that they should develop guidelines for student monitoring, parents did not.

According to 240 of 501 school administrators (representing 48 percent of PA’s districts) who responded to Melnick’s survey, Pennsylvania public school districts expend an estimated $3.1 million each year to monitor home schooling. In fact, Melnick foresees districts being faced with an “undue financial burden” in areas of the state where lofty numbers of home schoolers are rapidly increasing.

A large majority of the school districts in the study do not believe they should bear any additional expense of home schooling.

“Although home schooling parents value their independence, many want the district to bear more of the cost,” said Melnick. “It seems inconsistent to be independent yet receive district assistance without any accountability,” he added.

Despite the fact that most home schooled students surveyed do “A” or “B” work (78%) and appear well prepared for adult life, district monitoring shows that there are still many others that do not rise to that level. “In these cases,” advised Melnick, “the district may need to monitor student progress more frequently and, if necessary, revoke the right to home schooling.”

Communication between parents and the district representatives seems to be another hurdle.

“Although both groups believe increased positive communication is desirable, there is an obvious disparity in how home schoolers and districts perceive their communication with each other,” said Melnick.

“Only 17 percent of the 228 parents with the PA Homeschoolers Association whose children participated in fall testing agree the district welcomes communication from them; 65 percent of the districts believe they welcome communication,” Melnick reported.

“These two groups often perceive each other as the enemy,” Melnick offered. The reality is children schooled at home may not be able to take full advantage of the available resources without better communication among the two parties.

Parents in the survey expressed an interest in student opportunities within existing district programming: access to libraries and computer labs and participation in sporting and music groups. A large number of parents (75%) would like the option for their children to take selected academic courses at the local school, but almost two thirds of the districts (65%) disagree.

District policies vary widely regarding participation of home schoolers in extracurricular activities and academic courses. “Some districts permit students to participate in school activities,” shared Melnick. “Others take the position that home schoolers must either be ‘in the system’ or remain out of it entirely.”

Perhaps parents are sending mixed signals regarding cooperation and participation with school districts. Clearly much discussion and legislation review needs to occur between state policy makers, district administrators and home schoolers before the educational needs of all 20,000+ children currently home schooled in Pennsylvania are met.

Metro Segregation Rising

With falling White student enrollment shares in U.S. metropolitan public schools, "segregation between White and minority students is on the rise," said Sean Reardon, assistant professor of education.

“School segregation between Whites and non-Whites—presumably ended by federal legislation and court rulings in the Sixties—is making a noticeable comeback, primarily due to residential housing patterns and population shifts from urban to suburban school districts. In some cities, the U.S. Supreme Court has authorized a return to segregated neighborhood schools. This resegregation trend may require a return to desegregation initiatives that two decades ago were thought unnecessary,” shared Reardon.

“Our data for the school years 1989-95 show declining levels of segregation among various groups of minority students (Black, Hispanic and Asian). But they do show increasing levels of segregation between White students and all other minority students,” Reardon notes.

The study by Reardon and fellow researchers of 217 U.S. metropolitan areas makes clear that the most rapid changes in racial and ethnic diversity are occurring in metropolitan areas.

“Although Black, Hispanic and Asian students comprised only 37 percent of the total enrollment in metropolitan areas in 1989, minority enrollment growth accounted for four-fifths of the total metro area enrollment growth between 1989-95,” Reardon says. “White public school enrollment grew by less than four percent over this period, while the total combined Black, Hispanic and Asian student enrollment rose by 23 percent. Minority enrollment growth occurred equally in city and suburban schools, but increases in White enrollment growth were due entirely to suburban growth; in fact, White enrollment in urban schools actually declined between 1989 and 1995.”

Eighty percent of multi-racial public school segregation in the 217 metropolitan areas, both within districts and between districts, could be traced to segregation between Whites and various non-Whites. Only 20 percent was due to segregation among Blacks, Hispanics and Asians.

“Traditional within-district segregation remedies can affect only a third of the total segregation in metropolitan areas,” Reardon notes. “The remaining two-thirds of segregation is due to between-district segregation resulting largely from residential patterns. These patterns must be addressed through policies aimed at promoting equal access to housing markets, particularly in the suburbs, where between-district residential segregation is increasing most rapidly.”

Between-district desegregation plans were largely frustrated by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1974 Milliken vs. Bradley decision, which limited the ability of the courts to mandate between-district school desegregation. The time may have come for the highest court to reconsider that decision, according to Reardon.

Reardon, John T. Yun, a doctoral student in education at Harvard University, and Dr. Tamela McNulty Eitle, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Miami-Coral Gables, are authors of “The Changing Structure of School Segregation: Measurement and Evidence of Multi-Racial Metropolitan Area School Segregation, 1989-1995,” in the August issue of the journal Demography.

They measured segregation by comparing the level of multi-racial and multi-ethnic diversity in individual schools with the diversity of their metropolitan area school enrollment. A district was considered completely segregated if each of its schools was monoracial, with no student attending with any member of another racial group. A metropolitan area where the level of diversity in each school matched that of the entire district was considered thoroughly unsegregated.

The researchers received their funding from the Spencer Foundation Small Grants Program and the Harvard Children¹s Initiative Postdoctoral Fellowship in Evaluating Children’s Programs.

Charter School Provides Fertile Ground for Research

Josephine Pirrone ’98 Ph.D., the lead teacher and chief academic officer of the Centre Learning Community Charter School, describes her teaching experience as “dynamic and trying, exhausting yet exciting.” You can tell by the sparkle in her eyes that she loves every minute of it.

Centre Learning Community (CLC) fosters a different and demanding environment for both teachers and learners. The teachers act as educators as well as administrators. Students have a multi-grade level relationship with a teacher; students in sixth grade get the same teacher they had for fifth grade.

“From a teaching perspective, there’s no having to learn all over again what motivates each of your students,” Pirrone said. “You can hit the ground running in the second year since you already know what your students’ skills are and where they need the greatest support for their learning.”

Pirrone, like the other educators on this upbeat CLC team, observes and analyzes constantly to optimize the learning environment that has formed over the past year. “Our goal is to create an atmosphere where learning is emphasized,” she explained.

CLC students are provided choice over many of the projects that they undertake and develop. Teachers work with the students to help them understand the importance of the work that they are doing. In keeping with a “goals approach” to learning, CLC educators create individual learning plans for each student that focus on continued progress toward appropriate learning goals. At CLC, the students are actively involved in the goal setting and assessment of their work. It is learning that is the focus of these plans and not the product being produced.

Do different learning approaches foster motivation? This research-rich environment provided the ultimate setting for co-founder/lead teacher, Mark Toci ’87, Lib; ’92 M.Ed.; ’00, Ph.D., to assess what impacts an adolescent’s motivation to learn compared to what might happen in a more traditional educational setting.

Toci’s dissertation viewed the movement of student motivation toward either an intrinsic or extrinsic pole of learning based on well-known professor of motivation Susan Harter’s Five Dimensions: Challenge, Curiosity, Independent Mastery, Independent Judgment and Criteria. For example, when considering an adolescent student’s view of challenge, the intrinsic pole means the child prefers hard, challenging work while a student near the extrinsic pole likes the easier assignments and subjects.

The twelve-month comparison analyzed data in each of the five criteria from fifth and sixth graders during the first year of CLC operations and from their counterparts in the State College Area School District.

Because of differences in teaching methodology and learning environments, Toci believed that the Centre Learning Community students would exhibit greater movement toward the intrinsic pole or less movement toward the extrinsic pole when compared to the norms on the Preference for Challenge, Curiosity/Interest, and Independent Mastery subscales. He also proposed that the CLC students would exhibit no significant differences in the Independent Judgment and Internal Criteria subscales.

What happened? The CLC data consistently depicted movement toward the intrinsic pole or, in areas where there was a tendency for students to regress toward the extrinsic, the movement was less than the norm or did not occur at all.

“I found that fifth graders demonstrated changes that were significantly more intrinsic than the change in norms for all of the subscales except in the Independent Judgment subscale in the 12-month comparison,” Toci said. “Sixth graders demonstrated changes that were not significantly different than the norms, with the exception of the Challenge subscale at 12 months,” he added.

The younger CLC students demonstrated more movement toward the intrinsic pole. “Perhaps the most interesting finding of this study was the split between fifth and sixth graders,” shared Toci. “The earlier you can intervene, the better chance you have to get students intrinsically motivated rather than if they learned in a teacher-centered environment,” Toci said.

Toci’s study suggests that an appropriately designed learning environment can positively impact students’ motivation.

“Educators should create learning environments that allow students to both enhance skills and knowledge and also develop important attributes that will help them to be better prepared to lead happy, successful and fulfilled lives,” Toci proclaimed. It sounds like the educators at CLC are striving to do just that.

Employers Have New Resource to Meet Training Needs

University Park, Pa.–Pennsylvania’s fight to improve its workforce in the face of a global economy has a new weapon. Employers can now tap into literacy and foundation skills training through the PA WIN program, which has established 15 affiliate locations around the state.

PA WIN, the Pennsylvania Workforce Investment Network, is coordinated by the Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy at Penn State, under a grant recently awarded by the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Bureau of Adult Basic and Literacy Education (ABLE).PA WIN is designed to encourage and support the expansion of adult basic education organizations’ abilities to provide customized foundation skills training for employees in their workplace.

“In essence, PA WIN will help merge the education expertise of adult basic and literacy educators with the foundation skills training needs of employers,” explained Laura Beach, PA WIN Coordinator.

Fifteen ABLE educators with experience in providing high quality, customized foundation skills training services have been selected as PA WIN Affiliates. These affiliates will help employers develop the essential core skills and knowledge that their workers need to function effectively and safely in the workplace. These foundation skills are keyed to effective performance in a broad range of jobs, used together (integrated), and are portable across workplaces. They apply to both those who speak English and those who are learning to speak English as a Second Language (ESL).

PA WIN can help employers assess whether production, quality or safety issues are related to the foundation skills needs of their employees. For more information, contact your nearest PA WIN Affiliate, listed below, or contact PA WIN (814) 863-3777 or via the Internet at www.ed.psu.edu/pawin

Couple Establishes Scholarship in College of Education

The College of Education will award five first-year students $6000 annual scholarships, thanks to a gift of $120,000 from A. Joseph and Phyllis Garner of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.

The first of the A. Joseph and Phyllis K. Garner Scholarship in Education awards will be given this fall. Initially, they will go to academically talented undergraduates in the College with preference for students whose majors focus on teaching. This includes majors in secondary, special and elementary education.

After the first year, each recipient’s award may be renewed annually for three additional years.

The goal of the Garner Scholarship is to help the College recruit and retain outstanding students who plan to become teachers.

A. Joseph Garner, who attended Penn State after serving in the military during World War II, was chairman of the board of Central Storage and Transfer, a Harrisburg transportation business started by his father in 1921.

Interested students may apply immediately. To learn more about the scholarships, visit Dan Grow, the College of Education’s coordinator of recruiting programs, certification, and academic services, in 228 Chambers Building at University Park, or contact him by phone (814-865-6999) or email (dxg2@psu.edu).

Divorce Hurts Financially

Pre- and Post-Divorce Financial Pinch, Not Divorce Itself, Increases Dropout Rate Among Middle and High School Students.

University Park, Pa. - Children of divorced or separated parents are more likely to drop out of middle or high school because of the related economic hardships than because of the family disruption itself, a Penn State researcher says.

"This group of young people are two or three times more likely to drop out of school than classmates whose families stay together. This is true even for children who, following the divorceor separation of parents, become part of a blended, stepparented or guardian family," notes Dr. Suet-Ling Pong, associate professor of education and sociology.

Children of divorce most often find themselves in a single-parent, usually single-mother household, with the mother's income dropping as much as 35 percent. The resulting financial stress raises the odds of offspring dropping out of school to supplement the family income. However, what is often overlooked is that many of these disrupted families were poor before the divorce or separation. Low income is the cause of both family disruption and school dropout. Poverty was "reshuffled" from two-parent families to single-parent families, according to Pong.

"While our research shows that divorce and single motherhood are associated with children's chances of dropping out, the blame should not fall on single mothers," says Pong, research associate with the University's Population Research Institute. "Our findings in fact support welfare programs that help poor children generally, regardless of family structure, as well as alimony payment enforcement that assist single mothers suffering dramatic losses of income after divorce. These policies would effectively reduce the likelihood that their children will drop out of school."

Pong and co-researcher Dong-Beom Ju from Korea's Kyungpook National University, a Penn State Ph.D., based their findings on data from the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) of 1988, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center. The researchers' sample was comprised of 11,094 eighth grade students living in two-parent households in 1988. Follow-up studies of these students in 1990 and 1992 yield information about the change in family structure and dropout status.

Pong and Ju are co-authors of the article, "The Effects of Change in Family Structure and Income on Dropping Out of Middle and High School," which appeared in the March issue of the Journal Of Family Issues.

Pong says, "Among all detrimental outcomes in the U.S. educational system, dropping out before high school graduation carries perhaps the most serious consequences since it can lead to future economic problems in the form of unemployment, low earnings, propensity to crime and drug abuse."

Pong adds that future attention should be given to income limitations that accompany never-married mothers, who are a growing segment in the population of single-parents. More children are currently being born to never-married mothers. The proportion of children ages 0 to 17 who were living with never-married mothers was only 0.1 percent in 1940 and 3 percent in 1980. By 1988, this percentage had risen to 6.7 percent and 16 percent in 1992.

EDITORS: Dr. Pong can be contacted at (814) 863-3770. Her e-mail address is pong@pop.psu.edu

College of Education Welcomes New Associate Dean

University Park, Pa.--Patricia Nelson, associate professor and Head of the Education Department at Susquehanna University, has been appointed associate dean for outreach, cooperative extension, technology, and international programs in the College of Education at Penn State University.

Nelson, who will assume the position effective July 10, 2000, will be responsible for coordinating the College of Education’s outreach and continuing education programs, including the Pennsylvania Educational Partnership Program (PEPP). She will also have responsibility for enhancing the use of instructional technologies throughout the College and will be the coordinator for international programs.

“Patricia Nelson brings a wealth of curriculum, outreach and technology experience.” said David H. Monk, Dean of the College of Education. “We are confident she will enhance our current initiatives and further establish Penn State’s College of Education as a pace-setter in the field of education.”

Nelson’s education career spans the nation and the globe; she holds Certificates of Recognition from both La Universidad Nacional Abierto in Caracas, Venezuela and from La Universidad de Guadalajara in Jalisco, Mexico. Nelson has served as an associate professor and the head of Susquehanna University’s education department since 1992. She spent the two years prior as assistant director of the Independent Study Program for the Division of Continuing Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

While an assistant professor at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks from 1986-1990, she served on the statewide committee on Technology and Distance Education. She served as a curriculum specialist in Region 20 Curriculum Center in Detroit, Mich. where she addressed curriculum and training needs for a population of 600,000 students of varied ethnic and language backgrounds–the third largest education service region in the nation.

Nelson received the Christa McAuliffe National Fellow Award in 1988, recognizing her as one of the nation’s educational pioneers for her contributions to education and technology by the National Foundation for the Improvement of Education. She also served as a mentor for the National Education Association’s Road Ahead Project–a project funded by Bill Gates and Microsoft Corporation to infuse technology into the nation’s schools.

Nelson has written numerous articles and special reports including “An Open Letter to President Clinton,” an invited report written for the National Foundation for the Improvement of Education and National Education Association. She co-wrote a book, Paths of Science, which will be released this year.

Nelson earned her doctorate in curriculum and instruction from Brigham Young University

in 1985. In 1979, she received her M.A. in educational administration from Eastern Michigan University and in 1976 she obtained her M.S. Ed. in special education from Northern Illinois University.

©2000 The Pennsylvania State University
College of Education
For More Information Contact Suzanne Wayne
Coordinator of College Relations
Department of Development, Public Relations, & Alumni Programs
EdRelations@psu.edu

Recent College of Education Press Releases

By Susan J. Burlingame

By Susan J. Burlingame

Recent College of Education
Press Releases