Canadian officials are working to recruit more Chinese students to the country’s high schools, colleges and universities. As of 2008, there were about 42,000 Chinese students studying in Canada, and officials believe those numbers grew about 20% last year. However, some say that the US and Australia are ahead of Canada in terms of education and student visa policies, and they lead in the recruitment of Chinese students.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) (16 Mar.)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/recruiting-chinese-students-a-work-in-progress/article1501529/

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A draft of common national standards for English and math was released today by the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers. The proposal includes specific benchmarks that students should achieve at each grade level. For example, by the end of eighth grade, students should be able to “informally explain why the square root of 2 is irrational.” The effort — endorsed by 48 states — is being praised for its attempt to bring an “ambitious and coherent” curriculum nationwide, while others are critical of a “one-size-fits-all” approach.

http://www.corestandards.org/Standards/K12/

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Schools in Canada to lose 500,000 students in next decade.  An education advocacy group says Ontario’s declining birth rate has put more than 300 schools at risk for closure. Canada is expected to see enrollment decline by about 500,000 students over the next decade. “All across Canada, people are in the same uncharted territories. Everybody’s looking at school closings, everybody’s trying to figure out what to do,” said the executive director of People for Education, the group that compiled the data. The Globe and Mail (Toronto) (10 Nov.)

Complete content at:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/low-birth-rates-put-hundreds-of-schools-at-risk-of-closing/article1356174/

TECHNOLOGY GOES WHERE TEACHERS DON’T WANT TO

“There are, and will be in the foreseeable future, places on the planet where, for whatever reason, good schools do not exist and good teachers do not wish to go. In such areas, it is reasonable to expect that educational technology and distance education will have a special role to play. In this sense, educational technology and distance education are meant to ‘level the playing field’ and provide equal opportunity for learners in areas where traditional schooling of adequate quality is not available.”

In “Remote Presence: Technologies for ‘Beaming’ Teachers Where They Cannot Go” (JOURNAL OF EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES IN WEB INTELLIGENCE, vol. 1, no. 1, August 2009), Sugata Mitra, Newcastle University, asks the question “Is it possible for teachers to live in areas that they prefer and still be ‘present’ in schools where they do not, physically, wish to go?” Mitra proposes several technology solutions designed to make it possible that also have the potential to improve the quality of the education delivered in these areas.

The paper is available at http://www.academypublisher.com/jetwi/vol1/no1/jetwi01015559.pdf

Research on School Organizational Restructuring and Collegiality Because a significant number of teachers spend their time either with students or alone planning and grading papers, it is not surprising to hear them say they feel isolated from their colleagues. The latest case study in the International Journal of Education Policy and Leadership tells the story of a Canadian elementary-school staff that decided to address their perceived problem of teacher isolation by transforming the internal organization of their school into a collaborative environment designed to foster collegial practices among themselves.
Fallon, G., & Barnett, J. (2009). Impacts of school organizational restructuring into a collaborative setting on the nature of emerging forms of collegiality.  International Journal of Education Policy and Leadership 4(9).

http://journals.sfu.ca/ijepl/index.php/ijepl/article/view/159

The September 30, 2009 issue of The Dramatic Growth of Open Access is now available, at:
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2009/09/dramatic-growth-of-open-access.html

Abstract:

This issue of The Dramatic Growth of Open Access features a few key quotable numbers to illustrate

the growth and current extent of open  access: more than 4,000 fully open access, peer reviewed

journals in DOAJ, growing by 2 titles per day; close to 1,500 open access repositories listed in OpenDOAR,

adding a new repository every business day; over 30 million free publications through Scientific Commons,

growing by more than 20 thousands items per day; more than 20% of the world’s medical literature is

freely available 2 years after publication, and close to 10% is freely available immediately on publication;

1 more journal decides to submit all or most content to PMC every business day, and growth of open access

journals in PMC is one new journal every other business day. The number of open access mandate policies is

well over a hundred, and growing rapidly – but also likely understated. If you have a policy, please be sure to

register with ROARMAP. This quarter saw some minor setbacks. Most notable (but still small) is a decrease in

free content through Highwire Press.

The 32-page report, “Assessment in schools: Fit for purpose? A commentary by the Teaching and Learning Research Programme,” recently published in England, is accessible on-line at http://www.tlrp.org/pub/documents/assessment.pdf.

The report, authored by members of the Assessment Reform Group, is a strong challenge to the over-use and mis-use of large-scale standardized tests. The report outlines three widely-held ‘misunderstandings’ about assessment:

* That test scores can be completely accurate (with claims that 30% of English students were placed on wrong levels in the Year 2000 national curriculum tests)

* That short tests can validly capture multi-faceted areas such as writing

An interesting report from the Carnegie Corporation.  Time to Act is the capstone report of Carnegie Council for Advancing Adolescent Literacy.

The full report, along with five corresponding reports, is available at:

http://www.carnegie.org/literacy/tta/index.html