The Mechanics' Institute is New York's oldest technical school; providing tradesmen and workers with tuition-free evening instruction in trades-related education since 1820. The school was opened under the banner of The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York. "The aims of the society were to provide cultural, educational, and social services to families of skilled craftsmen," according to the Institute's catalog.
Alongside the technical school stands The Library of The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, which has been open to the public and researchers for almost two centuries. The library houses more than 110,000 volumes as well as museum pieces and historical displays of manufactured items such as locks, blueprint designs, books and other significant cultural collections. The library continues to promote an understanding of urban work and its history.
The school offers tuition free technical programs in different construction trades and disciplines, such as electrical technology, HVAC systems, construction documents and design, project management, plumbing design, facilities management, AutoCAD and many more. The admissions process is simple. Applicants only need a current vocation in the intended field of study, college transcript, H.S. diploma or GED, and official documents to accompany the application. Additionally, students must complete an entrance evaluation "to assess entry-level competencies."
The institute is founded on the principles to help tradesmen to rise beyond their current standing by instilling them with the knowledge necessary to do their jobs more efficiently. With the slogan, "By hammer and hand all arts do stand," they continue to provide, "privately endowed free evening instruction to respectable young men and women to improve themselves in their daily vocations, and to assist those who were obliged to become wage earners before completing their desired education."
The Mechanics' Institute is located on 20 West 44th street, and is marked on the list of the National Register of Historic Places. With more than 180,000 alumni, it continues to be a hidden gem in New York City. Visit www.MechanicsInstitute.org for more information.
In San Bruno California, elementary school students are learning fractions by playing music. The program is called Academic Music. Students in the program are taught math concepts under a curriculum that revolves around music. The curriculum was designed by two individuals; Endre Balogh, a music instructor and Susan Courey, a San Francisco State University researcher. The creative program is crescending, and will eventually be available for other teachers to use in classrooms.
In Allen Elementary School, students learn the essentials of reading notes and from there learn how to add notes, "which is essentially adding fractions," writes Caitlin Esch of NPR. "A recent study found that students who went through the program tested better on fractions. The average score of the Academic Music students was nearly double that of students in the regular math class."
High-needs schools in New York City are failing students in the most basic of ways, due to budgetary restraints that prevent schools from hiring enough teachers to provide necessary programs. A report by The Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College released this month studied 34 of these schools in New York City, finding that many of them are not providing services they are required to provide by law.
“Although the decisions of New York’s highest court in Campaign for Educational Equity (CFE) v. State of New York had led the legislature to enact funding reforms that promised high need districts throughout the state substantial funding increases, the governor and the legislature have reneged on these commitments. This year’s state aid budget cut over $2 billion in education funding.”
The report, entitled “Reviewing Resources: An Assessment of the Availability of Basic Educational Resources in High-Needs New York City Schools,” states that:
"In spite of new rhetoric about preparing students for college and career, schools reported substantial gaps in the basic curriculum, including deficits in science, math, social studies, English language arts, technology, languages other than English, health, physical education, art, music, and library skills. [The 34 schools] also reported a paucity of experiential learning opportunities and inadequate offerings for more academically advanced students. Schools noted significant gaps in their capacity to provide of an ‘expanded platform of programs for at-risk students’ including insufficient school-based supports; insufficient supports after school; insufficient resources for Saturday programs; and inadequate availability of summer school for struggling students.”
Read the preliminary report in its entirety here (Word document).
Universities and colleges across the nation are experiencing a building boom, yet budgets and resources are declining. According to Mcgraw-Hill Construction, around $11 billion in new facilities have been created in each of the last two years, which was twice the amount spent on facilities a decade ago.
Jon Marcus from the Hechinger Report writes, "More than $384 million in projects are in process and another $515 million are in the planning and design stages at the University of Buffalo, part of the State University of New York, a system whose budget has been cut by $1.1 billion over the last three years. Virginia Tech has $696 million in construction newly finished, under way or ready to start, and the University of Nebraska has nearly $600 million."
With all the new construction, more cuts and changes are being made across the board: universities are decreasing enrollment, boosting tuition, removing jobs and falling into debt. "The public University of California system has $8.9 billion in construction going up at its 10 campuses and five medical centers, and the California State University system has $161 million. California has cut billions of dollars in operating money from its public universities," writes Marcus. "At UC campuses, student fees rose 18 percent this year. Since the beginning of the fiscal crisis, 4,400 employees have been laid off and 3,570 positions have been eliminated in the UC system."
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights released data showing the disparity in educational resources and attainment for minority students. The National Education Access Network highlighted some key findings from the OCR’s Civil Rights Data Collection study:
"Only 29% of high-minority schools offered calculus courses, though 55% of schools with the lowest Black and Hispanic enrollment offered calculus.
Teachers in high-minority schools were paid, on average, $2,251 less per year than their peers teaching in low-minority schools in the same district.
While Black students make up only 18% of students surveyed, Black students account for 35% of students suspended more than once and 39% of school expulsions.
56% of all 4th graders retained at the end of the 2009-2010 school year were Black.
Taken together, Black and Hispanic students represented more than 70% of total cases referred to law enforcement."
The OCR will soon be releasing the results from their longitudinal study, chronicling the changes in the data set over time.
In the last two years, there has been steady decrease in law school entrance tests (LSAT). The Law School Admission Council reported that the number of test takers has decreased to about 25 percent in the last two years; this is the largest decline in more than a decade. The legal market is seriously affected by the economic crises gripping the U.S. Additionally, as legal technology becomes ubiquitious, cost-efficient and "handled overseas", more companies and individuals will turn from expensive legal firms.
New lawyers are overburdened with debt, and the strict job market is not helping. Undergrads are no longer looking at law school as a lucrative field. David Segal of the New York Times writes, "Word is getting through that law school is no longer a safe place to sit out an economic downturn — an article of faith for years — and that strong grades at an above-average school no longer guarantees a six-figure law firm job."
Environmental factors are overlooked in managing and changing behaviors of children with ADHD, LD and NVLD. Class time and curricula are getting the focus of the scientists and those charged with improving our teaching methods for this group that has for generations slipped through the cracks of our traditional educational platform. Considering that most school days consist of no more than seven periods of 45 minutes, or 5 hours and 15 minutes of direct instruction, or 26 hours and 15 minutes over the course of a five-day week. There are 168 hours in a week.
So, how are we doing with our children during the almost 142 hours that exist around these academic time periods? What kind of consistency exists during the many hours that habits are being learned? For that matter, is there consistency in the academic model of our middle and high schools that promote the transference of novel learning experiences to long term memory storage by means of repetition and positive reinforcement?
Children need to feel connected. For young people, who we become as adults, is actually a compilation of the experiences that we encounter. Certainly, genes play a major role in predispositions to learning skills, social behaviors, and general mental and emotional wellness. However, the power of environment, around the clock and over the course of calendar years, can truly neutralize just about any flaw that our predisposed genetics suggest.
Keeping children connected with their educational and after school/weekend environments is as impactful as a sharp, responsive, tailor-made educational experience. “Does what I think or do matters? Am I valued and needed in my community? Do adults and peers expect the best from me?”
Once we understand the deep and powerful impact of a consistent, supportive and thoughtful environment on positive developmental growth of our children, then we will truly have solved the riddle of how to best educate and inculcate positive values into our children, making them healthy and productive citizens not only of our country, but of our global community. Twenty-six hours of classes is only 15 percent of the hours that our children live weekly.
It is in this 85 percent of time spent living and learning where I have experienced that boarding school environments have a large advantage in restoring positive life habits and self-image of our middle school boys who have experienced the damaging mismatch between their learning style and traditional education practices and environments. How to translate some of this consistency and control over these fragmented, inconsistent, and fast-paced lives of our children is a pressing issue that demands our attention in the discourse of how we best raise and educate our children to keep them, and ultimately our country, competitive and healthy.
—By James A. McDaniel, Headmaster of Linden Hill School
The Census Bureau annual Educational Attainment report was released last week, and depicted the percentage of bachelor degree holders in the United States is at a record level. In the United States last year, 30.4 percent of people over age 25 held at least a bachelor’s degree, and 10.9 percent held a graduate degree, which has risen from 26.2 percent and 8.7 percent 10 years earlier.
As women continue to pursue higher education, they will soon outnumber their male counterparts who hold bachelor's degrees. Figures also represented that all demographic groups have made strides, even though the gap between blacks/Hispanics and whites widened. The percentage of Non-Hispanic whites holding bachelor's degrees grew from 28.7 percent to 34 percent, whereas the black and latino demographic only experienced a three to four percent increase.
In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, Henry M. Levin and Cecilia E. Rouse argue that increasing high school graduation rates in the United States is vital for the country's well being and will even "pay for itself."
They write: "When the costs of investment to produce a new graduate are taken into account, there is a return of $1.45 to $3.55 for every dollar of investment, depending upon the educational intervention strategy. Under this estimate, each new graduate confers a net benefit to taxpayers of about $127,000 over the graduate’s lifetime. This is a benefit to the public of nearly $90 billion for each year of success in reducing the number of high school dropouts by 700,000 — or something close to $1 trillion after 11 years."
As state officials apply pressure to colleges to increase their graduation rates, colleges are thinking about removing remedial courses. Remedial course provision costs American colleges and universities at least $3.6 billion, according to the Alliance for Excellent Education, national advocacy organization in Washington, D.C. At least 14 states have reduced funding on remedial education, by limiting funding to colleges and universities.
Despite the exorbitant costs, remedial classes are still needed, said Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and a former governor of West Virginia. Many high school graduates are ill-prepared for college-level mathematics and sciences. Across the board, some 44 percent of students at community colleges and 27 percent at four-year institutions had to take at least one remedial course in 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Yet, college students' frustration with remedial and difficulty in higher education classes contribute to high dropout rates.
Another solution, which Jim Petro, chancellor of the University System of Ohio, wants to solve the problem by focusing on students, while they are in high school. He believes high school preparation for college is key for recruitment. Others suggest that the focus should be on private high schools, whose students usually perform better than public school students.
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The End of College Remedial Courses?