Research Centre Finance Administrator job with UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS | 206139  Times Higher Education (THE)

The funding will allow the National Science Resources Center to validate its LASER (Leadership Assistance for Science Education Reform) Model. LASER, a systemic approach to reform, is a set of processes and strategies designed to help state, district and school leadership teams effectively implement and sustain
high-quality science education for elementary, middle and secondary school students.

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“Places of Invention,” a planned 3,500-square-foot exhibition at the National Museum of American History scheduled to open in 2014, will feature a selection of “hot spots” of invention and innovation—places where a critical mass of inventive people, networks, institutions, funding and other resources come together and creativity flourishes.

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The Smithsonian Science Education Center (formerly NSRC) was formed by the Smithsonian Institution and the National Academies in 1985 with the mission to improve the learning and teaching of science in school districts in the United States and throughout the world.

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File: Los Angeles Unified 6th-grader Jack Spiewak performs as Macbeth at Eagle Rock Elementary School. District schools can now use a major source of federal funds to incorporate the arts into academics.; Credit: Maya Sugarman/KPCC

Los Angeles Unified School District officials have cleared the way for principals to tap into a major source of funding for arts programs targeting low-income students starting this fall.

Although state and federal officials previously said national Title I dollars, allocated to help disadvantaged students improve in academics, could be used for the arts instruction, some district officials had been reluctant to move ahead. The latest decision reverses the district's long-standing practice and opens the door for Title I-funded arts instruction that helps students improve their academic performance. 

"This has been a long time coming and this really is a day of rejoicing, quite frankly, in LAUSD," said Rory Pullens, the district's executive director of arts education. 

RELATED: For Pasadena school, arts plus math is really adding up

A two-page memo issued Thursday from Pullens, Deputy Superintendent Ruth Perez and Karen Ryback, executive director of Federal and State Education Programs, confirms the arts as a core subject and allows schools with high percentages of low-income students to use Title I funds for the arts.

Those schools "may utilize arts as an integration strategy to improve academic achievement," the directive reads. However, Title I funds are not allowed "to fund programs whose primary objective is arts education," according to the memo. As an example, the funds could be tapped to help students learn a character's point of view in a lesson that requires acting out a skit. 

Title I funding, developed in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty, has been used historically to increase students success in reading and math. The funds have paid for efforts like reading coaches or math tutors, supplemental software programs and professional development for teachers to improve low-performing students' test scores.

At $14 billion a year, the Title I funds make up the federal government's largest expenditure for grades K-12. The majority of LAUSD schools receive Title I dollars.

Arts advocates have long sought to get the second-largest district in the country to shift its stance on Title I arts funding, arguing that the arts have been shown in research to boost student academic performance. 

LAUSD joins just a handful of districts around the state that have committed to a district-wide Title I plan including the arts. San Diego Unified, Sacramento City Unified and Chula Vista Elementary School District are among them, according to Joe Landon, executive director of the California Alliance for Arts Education. 

Landon says beyond these districts, the decision to use Title I for the arts is largely playing out on a school-by-school basis. Some principals are using Title I funds for the arts, but they're doing so largely under the radar, some fearing that state monitors will say the funds were used incorrectly. 

"At each level, there are people that are afraid," Landon said. The reason: schools are accountable for how Title I dollars are spent and misuse could cause schools to lose a valuable funding source. Despite the state and federal directives on Title I allowing arts instruction in academics, school officials have been hesitant to make changes because Title I spending is monitored so closely. 

Landon explained that a decision to use Title I funds for the arts is momentous for schools.

"When districts begin to move," he said, "that really changes it."

Attention turns to principals, funding gatekeepers

When Los Angeles Unified brought on Pullens, attracting him from a well-known arts school in Washington, D.C., he took on the task of securing Title I funding in his early months on the job. He said budgeting would be a huge challenge in increasing access to the arts for more of the district's students. 

The deed now done, Pullens said: "This was clearly a very high priority of what we wanted to accomplish and we are just so thrilled that this has finally come to pass."

It'll now be up to school principals to decide how much of their Title I funding to allocate for arts instruction. Pullens said plans to train principals on the benefits of arts integration are underway.

While the Title I arts spending is not mandatory, he expects the new directive to free up significant funding for the district's arts efforts. He didn't have exact estimates, but pointed out that schools' Title I funds range anywhere from hundreds of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars per school. 

As KPCC reported in July, only about 70 of the district's more than 500 elementary schools were on track to provide all four art forms (dance, visual arts, music and theater) for the 2014-2015 school year — a legal requirement under the California education code. 

Cheryl Sattler, senior partner with the Florida-based consulting firm Ethica, has worked closely with about 100 school districts nationwide and estimates only two have used Title I funding for the arts.

“The urgency is to try to get kids to read," she said, "and if you have kids, for example, in the 10th grade who are reading at a 3rd or 4th-grade level, it’s really hard to think past that, because that’s the emergency.” The arts are often left out of the conversation, according to Sattler, which means they're left out of funding.

“I think the issue is that largely principals, and school improvement committees, and other folks who are worried about academic performance don’t always look to the arts and they don’t always know the research about how powerful arts can be,” she said. 

The LAUSD directive described examples of arts integration activities that schools might consider:

• Invite community members to demonstrate or share their talents with students as a prompt for a writing assignment.
• Have students create models that display mathematical data pertaining to each planet of the solar system: distance from the sun, length of day and night, length of year, and day and night surface temperatures.
• Ask students to create a small piece of dance/movement that models their understanding of geometric concepts.
• Encourage students to explore the science of sound by utilizing rubber bands, oatmeal containers, coffee cans, balloons, etc. to construct one or more of the four families of musical instruments: strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion.
• Have students write and perform a short skit to illustrate a literary character’s point of view.
• Provide a lesson on utilizing a software program to create an animated film that highlights key historical events that occurred during the Civil War (In this instance, the cost of the software program would be an appropriate Title I expenditure). 

Supporting Title I Schoolwide Program 2-19-2015

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

To ensure that minority students who are poorly prepared for school are not assigned to special education for that reason, educators should be required to first provide them with high-quality instruction and social support in a general education classroom before making a determination that special education is needed.

A report released today by the National Research Council presents a new framework for K-12 science education that identifies the key scientific ideas and practices all students should learn by the end of high school.

Educational and business leaders want todays students both to master school subjects and to excel in areas such as problem solving, critical thinking, and communication

A series of educational modules has been developed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to help students in professional schools – law, public policy, medicine, journalism, and business – understand science and its role in decision making.

Despite their potential, many English learners (ELs) -- who account for more than 9 percent of K-12 enrollment in the U.S. -- lag behind their English-speaking monolingual peers in educational achievement, in part because schools do not provide adequate instruction and social-emotional support to acquire English proficiency or access to academic subjects at the appropriate grade level, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Policymakers, employers, and educational institutions should take steps to strengthen the nation’s skilled technical workforce, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Monitoring the quality and impact of undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education will require the collection of new national data on changing student demographics, instructors’ use of evidence-based teaching approaches, student transfer patterns, and other dimensions of STEM education, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

High-quality early care and education (ECE) is critical to positive child development and has the potential to generate economic returns, but the current financing structure of ECE leaves many children without access to high-quality services and does little to strengthen the ECE workforce, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

An emerging body of evidence suggests that integrating STEMM fields (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine) with the humanities and arts in higher education is associated with positive learning outcomes that may help students enter the workforce, live enriched lives, and become active and informed citizens, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recommends substantial changes to U.S. graduate education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in order to meet the evolving needs of students, the scientific enterprise, and the nation.

The Gulf Research Program (GRP) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine today announced awards for nine new grant projects totaling $3.2 million.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have joined with over 40 colleges, universities, and research institutions to launch an Action Collaborative on Preventing Sexual Harassment in Higher Education.

A centralized, consistently reported system of indicators of educational equity is needed to bring attention to disparities in the U.S. education system, says a new report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

The federal government should foster collaboration and decrease obstacles that can keep foreign atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physicists from working in the United States, if the nation is to maintain its position as leader in these fields, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Engineering is emerging as an important topic in K-12 education in the U.S., and is being incorporated into education standards, instructional materials, and assessments.

A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine urges systemic action to change the culture in STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine) to address the underrepresentation of women in these fields.

Students walk outside Detroit's Pershing High School in 2017. A lawsuit claims the state of Michigan failed to provide the city's students with the most fundamental of skills: the ability to read.; Credit: Carlos Osorio/AP

In a landmark decision, a federal appeals court has ruled that children have a constitutional right to literacy, dealing a remarkable victory to students.

The ruling comes in response to a lawsuit brought by students of five Detroit schools, claiming that because of deteriorating buildings, teacher shortages and inadequate textbooks, the state of Michigan failed to provide them with the most fundamental of skills: the ability to read.

For decades, civil rights lawyers have tried to help students and families in underfunded schools by arguing that the U.S. Constitution guarantees children at least a basic education. Federal courts have consistently disagreed. Until now.

The ability to read and write is "essential" for a citizen to participate in American democracy, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday. One cannot effectively vote, answer a jury summons, pay taxes or even read a road sign if illiterate, wrote Judge Eric Clay, and so where "a group of children is relegated to a school system that does not provide even a plausible chance to attain literacy, we hold that the Constitution provides them with a remedy."

"Like a daycare"

The 2016 complaint alleges that Michigan's then-Gov. Rick Snyder and the state's board of education denied Detroit students their fundamental right to literacy. It cites textbooks that were tattered, outdated and in such short supply that teachers could not send work home. The suit also describes school buildings that were in shocking disrepair: broken toilets and water fountains, leaking ceilings, shattered windows.

In warmer months, the complaint says, a lack of air-conditioning caused some students to faint; in winter, students regularly wore hats, coats and scarves to class. Students became accustomed to seeing cockroaches, mice or rats scurrying across the floor.

"You're sitting down in the classroom, and you see rodents in a corner. Or you can hear things crawling in the books," says Jamarria Hall, a plaintiff in the class-action suit, who graduated in 2017. "But the saddest thing of all was really the resources that they had, like, being in a class where there's 34 students, but there's only six textbooks."

Given these conditions, the five K-12 schools named in the complaint also struggled to retain teachers. Many classes were taught by paraprofessionals or inexperienced teachers placed through the Teach For America program. Often, Hall says, when teachers quit suddenly or didn't show up, students would simply be sent to the gym.

"For days on end — weeks on end — if the school didn't have a substitute or couldn't fill that gap, the gym was basically the go-to place. Or they would set students down in the classroom and really put on a movie, like Frozen... like a daycare," Hall remembers.

At one school, the complaint says, a math teacher quit soon after the school year began "due to frustration with large class sizes and lack of support. ... Eventually, the highest performing eighth grade student was asked to take over teaching both seventh and eighth grade math. This student taught both math classes for a month."

The complaint delivers a crushing assessment of these schools' failure to educate students: Proficiency rates "hover near zero in nearly all subject areas," it says.

"Illiteracy is the norm."

Previous legal efforts to argue that families in low-income, underfunded schools deserve better have run headlong into the U.S. Constitution, which makes no mention of the word "education," let alone a right to it.

One of the most famous cases, San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, made it all the way to the Supreme Court before the justices, in a 5-4 decision, ruled that families in poorer districts have no federal right to the same levels of funding as wealthier districts. They essentially said: The system isn't fair, but the U.S. government has no obligation to make it so.

In fact, the first judge to hear the current, Detroit case came to much the same conclusion.

U.S. District Judge Stephen Murphy dismissed the Michigan suit in 2018, writing that, yes, "literacy — and the opportunity to obtain it — is of incalculable importance," but not necessarily a fundamental right.

The students' lawyers disputed Murphy's reasoning and appealed his ruling, and, on Thursday, two of three judges took their side.

"We're not asking for a Cadillac"

In the past, many of the arguments used to pursue educational equity in the courts have been inherently comparative. Using the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, lawyers have focused on disparity — how one school or one district's resources compare to another's.

"This [case] is different," says Tacy Flint, a partner at Sidley Austin LLP and a lawyer for the plaintiffs. "It's not comparative. It's not a question of some people being treated worse than others. This fundamental right to a basic minimum education is a right that every child has."

Flint and her co-counsel focused more on a different pillar of the 14th Amendment, the Due Process Clause, saying the Constitution protects essential rights that "you can't imagine our constitutional democracy or our political life functioning without." And, Flint says, "access to literacy clearly fits that description."

Put simply: The plaintiffs' lawyers did not set out to level the playing field for all students. Instead, they attempted to use the appalling conditions of five Detroit schools to establish a floor.

"This case focuses squarely on literacy as the irreducible minimum," says Kristine Bowman, professor of law and education policy at Michigan State University.

And that minimum is pretty minimal.

"We're not asking for a Cadillac, or even a used, low-end Kia. We're asking for something more than the Flintstones' car," says co-counsel Evan Caminker, a former dean of the University of Michigan Law School.

In his dissent to Thursday's decision, Circuit Judge Eric Murphy argued that accepting literacy as a constitutional right would open a Pandora's box for states, and force federal courts to wrestle with questions beyond their purview: "May they compel states to raise their taxes to generate the needed [school] funds? Or order states to give parents vouchers so that they may choose different schools? How old may textbooks be before they become constitutionally outdated? What minimum amount of training must teachers receive? Which HVAC systems must public schools use?"

Murphy wrote that history, and legal precedent, are on his side: "The Supreme Court has refused to treat education as a fundamental right every time a party has asked it to do so."

After all, the judge reasoned, food, housing and medical care are also "critical for human flourishing and for the exercise of constitutional rights," but the Constitution "does not compel states to spend funds on these necessities of life." Why should education be any different?

A spokesperson for Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer says her office is reviewing the court's decision before it decides what to do next. Whitmer's office also said in a statement that "the governor has a strong record on education and has always believed we have a responsibility to teach every child to read."

While the ruling is historic, it comes with several caveats. Basic literacy is a remarkably low standard to set for schools. As such, legal experts say, this ruling won't have an immediate impact on children in underfunded schools.

"We're not talking about the court having to recognize a broad-based, free-floating, generalized right to education," says Michelle Adams, a professor at Cardozo School of Law in New York City. This will not "open the floodgates of litigation. We're talking about a situation where students are being warehoused and required to be in school and yet they literally cannot read."

The case is also relatively young. The court's decision could be reviewed by the full 6th Circuit, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, or returned to play out in District Court. Whitmer's office has not yet indicated how the state will respond.

"The fight is not done yet," says Jamarria Hall, who is now living in Tallahassee, Fla., and taking classes at a community college. "We were fighting just to get into the ring. Now we're in the ring. Now the fight really starts."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Chris Hemsworth and Rudhraksh Jaiswal in Extraction.; Credit: Netflix/Extraction (2020)

Larry Mantle and KPCC film critics Christy Lemire, Angie Han and Wade Major review this weekend’s new movie releases on streaming and VOD platforms.

• "Extraction" on Netflix

• "Bad Education" on HBO

• "Circus Of Books" on Netflix

• "Why Don't You Just Die!" on VOD (iTunes, Amazon & Google Play)

• "Beastie Boys Story" on Apple TV+

• "Robert The Bruce" on VOD (iTunes, Amazon, FandangoNOW & Google Play)

• "1BR" on VOD (iTunes) & DVD

• "The True History Of The Kelly Gang" on VOD (iTunes, Vudu & Google Play)

Guests:

Angie Han, KPCC film critic and deputy entertainment editor at Mashable; she tweets @ajhan

Christy Lemire, film critic for KPCC, RogerEbert.com and co-host of the ‘Breakfast All Day’ podcast; she tweets @christylemire

Wade Major, film critic for KPCC and CineGods.com

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

A new report commissioned by UNESCO has reviewed several case studies of national progress in learning and education for sustainable development (ESD). There are a wide range of approaches but, at the heart of all initiatives, are multi-stakeholder and collaborative partnerships which aim to instigate social change towards a more sustainable future.

DDoS attacks during the first three months of this year have seen a significant spike in attacks on educational websites.

DDoS attacks during the first three months of this year have seen a significant spike in attacks on educational websites.

...

The rejuvenated Yunnan Garden, a sprawling open space of greenery, waterscapes and heritage landmarks, will officially open at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) on 13 February 2020. The 9-hectare heritage precinct – bigger than 12 soccer fields – preserves the Garden’s legacy while enriching it as an educational and recreation hub, making it a go-to place not just for the NTU community, but also for the residents who live in the wider Jurong neighbourhood....

There's no such thing as too much education, right? What if there's not enough education?

As marketers use Earth Day to hock anything and everything, including a 'Real Housewives' episode, bloggers weigh in on the ridiculousness of it all.

Kids spend less time outside than ever — but some innovative educators want to change that.

Read the latest Education Articles from ArticleGeek.com

With the internet flooding with new knowledge and resources on not just a daily basis, but on a second by second basis, why are we limiting ourselves to the possibilities of a better education outside of the classroom?

Nursing education provides the basic building blocks of medical, scientific, and nursing knowledge, but competence in the nursing profession requires an ongoing process of continuing education. How does the busy working nurse find the time or courses though?

Worse, if you listen to your child after a long day at school you may also get an uncomfortable feeling. Yes, it does seem that the educational system is broken

Online education is one of the best things that the internet has to offer. Thanks to online education, people who would have never thought they could get the education they have always dreamed of are now achieving their educational goals.

I took my family to Winterfest this past weekend. Science North, a science museum had an interactive workshop, we had to go. It was a good thing no one told the kids these were educational toys, it may have quieted the shouting, laughter and astonishment.

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Hip hop is inherently political, the language is political. It uses language as a weapon -- not a weapon to violate or not a weapon to offend, but a weapon that pushes the envelope that provokes people, makes people think.

One in 13 children live with food allergies; nearly 40 percent have experienced a severe allergic reaction

More than 1300 students to benefit

Mr. Harcourt gives back through 25 consecutive years of table sponsorships for Santa Fe, New Mexico's UNESCO recognized Institute of American Indian Arts annual August Scholarship Gala

Ms. Schall coached basketball, track and volleyball in addition to teaching

Dr. Miller parlays her extensive knowledge to others through various roles advocating for gender equity in surgery and the integration of palliative medicine and surgical ethics into the care of surgical patients with serious illness.

Jaemes Hunt of 1st Line Global recently returned from a business summit in Chicago, where he was given the opportunity to develop his knowledge on the ever-evolving sales and marketing industry.

Academics, arts and athletics will be a key focus of the new college preparatory institution, which plans to select six centers of excellence for focused instruction in areas such as: bioscience, engineering, e-sports, ice hockey, baseball and film