School Science News for Kids

Among the Blue Ribbon schools are:

The award honors elementary, middle and high schools whose students achieve at very high levels or have made significant progress and helped close gaps in achievement, especially among disadvantaged and minority students.

“We commend the Chadwick and North Shelby high schools for this prestigious recognition,” said Commissioner of Education Chris L. Nicastro.  “Their students, teachers, school administrators and community members deserve accolades for attaining this high level of student achievement.”

The schools were recognized earlier this year in the state-level Gold Star Schools program, conducted by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Today’s New York Times contained an interesting article that once again confirms that so-called conventional wisdom about how children learn best is often at odds with research.

Every September, millions of parents try a kind of psychological witchcraft, to transform their summer-glazed campers into fall students, their video-bugs into bookworms. Advice is cheap and all too familiar: Clear a quiet work space. Stick to a homework schedule. Set goals. Set boundaries. Do not bribe (except in emergencies).

And check out the classroom. Does Junior’s learning style match the new teacher’s approach? Or the school’s philosophy? Maybe the child isn’t “a good fit” for the school.

Such theories have developed in part because of sketchy education research that doesn’t offer clear guidance. Student traits and teaching styles surely interact; so do personalities and at-home rules. The trouble is, no one can predict how.

Yet there are effective approaches to learning, at least for those who are motivated. In recent years, cognitive scientists have shown that a few simple techniques can reliably improve what matters most: how much a student learns from studying.

The findings can help anyone, from a fourth grader doing long division to a retiree taking on a new language. But they directly contradict much of the common wisdom about good study habits, and they have not caught on.

For instance, instead of sticking to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person studies improves retention. So does studying distinct but related skills or concepts in one sitting, rather than focusing intensely on a single thing.

“We have known these principles for some time, and it’s intriguing that schools don’t pick them up, or that people don’t learn them by trial and error,” said Robert A. Bjork, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Instead, we walk around with all sorts of unexamined beliefs about what works that are mistaken.”

Take the notion that children have specific learning styles, that some are “visual learners” and others are auditory; some are “left-brain” students, others “right-brain.” In a recent review of the relevant research, published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a team of psychologists found almost zero support for such ideas. “The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing,” the researchers concluded.

Ditto for teaching styles, researchers say. Some excellent instructors caper in front of the blackboard like summer-theater Falstaffs; others are reserved to the point of shyness. “We have yet to identify the common threads between teachers who create a constructive learning atmosphere,” said Daniel T. Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia and author of the book “Why Don’t Students Like School?”

But individual learning is another matter, and psychologists have discovered that some of the most hallowed advice on study habits is flat wrong. For instance, many study skills courses insist that students find a specific place, a study room or a quiet corner of the library, to take their work. The research finds just the opposite. In one classic 1978 experiment, psychologists found that college students who studied a list of 40 vocabulary words in two different rooms — one windowless and cluttered, the other modern, with a view on a courtyard — did far better on a test than students who studied the words twice, in the same room. Later studies have confirmed the finding, for a variety of topics.

TALLAHASSEE — A teachers union lawyer told a circuit judge Wednesday that a proposed class-size amendment should be thrown off the Nov. 2 ballot for the same reason that the state Supreme Court recently struck three other amendments — because the ballot language is misleading about its purpose.

In this case, Florida Education Association attorney Ron Meyer argued, the ballot language doesn’t make clear that the purpose is to reduce the state’s cost of paying for public schools.

But the lawyer for the state said Amendment 8 is just what it appears to be — a proposal that would give school districts the flexibility they say they need by limiting class sizes at the school level rather than at the classroom level as the constitution currently requires.

Charles Frances, the chief circuit judge for Leon County, said he hoped to rule on the case by Friday, and both sides have promised to appeal to the Florida Supreme Court for a final decision before the Nov. 2 election. It’s too late to remove the item from the ballot because ballots have already been printed but the court could order supervisors of elections not to tally the votes if it is ultimately tossed.

Meyer referred to Republican lawmakers’ frequent complaints that the current class-size standards are too costly and argued that the measure they placed on the ballot is misleading because it fails to inform voters that, if passed, it would undo the requirement that lawmakers give “adequate funding” to schools to reduce class sizes, which he said was “at the heart” of the 2002 amendment that created the class-size restrictions.

“Amendment 8 changes all that. You don’t know that by looking at the ballot summary. You don’t know that by looking at the ballot title,” Meyer said. “That change inescapably changes the funding. The voter doesn’t know that. The voter doesn’t see that. The voter doesn’t get that.”

But Jon Glogau, a lawyer in Attorney General Bill McCollum’s office defending the state in the lawsuit, argued that it is “pure speculation” that funding for schools will decrease if the amendment passes.

“This case is not about adequacy of school funding,” Glogau said. “I don’t know what he’s talking about … The chief purpose of this amendment is to change the caps. It’s patently obvious.”

Current class size rules cap classes at 18 students in Pre-K through third grade, 22 students in grades 4 through 8, and 25 students in high school. Amendment 8 would loosen the standards by applying those limits to school averages rather than individual classrooms; it also would set higher limits for individual classrooms: caps of 21 (K-3), 27 (4-8) and 30 (high school).

The Palm Beach County School District, like the rest of the districts in the state, has chosen not to meet the standards that were required by the start of school this year. Palm Beach County schools need an additional 800 to 900 teachers to meet the standards, and Schools Superintendent Art Johnson has said the district would pin its hopes on voters relaxing the law in November rather than raising taxes or making the other cuts necessary to find the $59 million needed to hire that many teachers.

Of the six amendments the legislature had placed on the Nov. 2 ballot, three have already been struck by the state Supreme Court on the grounds that their ballot summaries were misleading. Meyer was the attorney for the challenging group in one of those cases; he successfully used the argument in challenging the legislature’s amendment regarding the way legislative and Congressional districts are drawn.

What’s at stake

• For core classes, school districts were supposed to have met strict limits on individual class sizes by the start of school this August: 18 students in kindergarten through third grade, 22 in fourth through eighth grade and 25 in high school.
• If voters approve Amendment 8, those same limits would be applied on a school-wide average rather than to each individual class. In addition, individual classes would have caps of 21 (K-3), 27 (4-8) and 30 (high school).
• For example, under the proposal, the average size of an elementary school’s K-3 classes could not be more than 18 students, and no single class could have more than 21 students.
• The new standards would be made retroactive to the start of the 2010-2011 school year.

Golf Team Information & Signup

All male and female students interested in joining the Shep Golf Team for the 2010-11 season MUST attend an information and signup meeting Wednesday, September 8 @ 11:50 AM in the Small Gym.

*Male golfers should bring their RCGA Handicap Cards to the meeting.

Junior Girls Volleyball Tryouts

Female students interested in playing Volleyball! With our Senior Girls tryouts wrapping up this week, Junior Girls tryouts run next Tuesday, September 7^th @ 4:00 PM and Wednesday, September 8^th @ 3:45 PM. You must attend both tryouts.

The season gets going right away with a preseason tournament September 10-11.

Tom Lynn

The third-floor reading room at Marquette University’s new law school building, Eckstein Hall, provides a spacious and attractive study area. In legal circles, the $85 million Michigan St. building is making waves because it provides the tools for modern law, which is more technologically oriented and media intensive.

Photo Gallery

Marquette’s new law school building Recent Coverage

• Art City: An architectural jumble at Marquette’s Eckstein Hall

Fordham University law school interim dean Mike Martin knows about the new glass-and-brick law school building that’s being dedicated Wednesday at Marquette University – and he’s envious.

You can’t knock Fordham, a top tier law school in the heart of New York, but you can knock Fordham’s law school building. With so many student lockers crammed into hallways and even bathrooms, Martin said, the prestigious institution “sometimes has the appearance of a junior high school.”

Many of America’s law schools have a similar problem: Stately, older facilities meant to symbolize the tradition of teaching are showing their age as universities try to pack more faculty, staff and technology into places that didn’t account for them.

Thanks in part to a gift from alumni Ray and Kay Eckstein, Marquette no longer has that problem. Marquette’s $85 million building is being dedicated Wednesday, filled with a high-tech library, a moot court and broadcast facilities that some television stations would covet. That means a school like Marquette can get a jump in the competition for students and faculty who want the star power a modern building can provide.

“One of the things they look at is the facilities available to them,” said Martin, whose school faces legal hurdles before it can break ground on a planned $200 million building. “As you see all of the changes in legal education, you’re going to see schools adapt to those changes.”

Marquette officials have celebrated the four-story Eckstein Hall as a prominent symbol of the university’s effort to play a role in Milwaukee’s civic life and to use its legal expertise to confront issues challenging the region.

The speech scheduled Wednesday by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and the debate the school hosted last month for Wisconsin’s Republican candidates for governor as well as political debates Marquette plans to host this fall are some of the earliest examples.

In legal education circles, the Michigan St. building is making waves because of its ability to provide the tools of the more specialized field of modern law. Those who practice law have become more collaborative. Career services and information technology departments serve a larger role.

Those changes mean buildings that were designed to emphasize large lecture classes, enormous library stacks and relatively small faculty and staff don’t serve legal education as well.

“The physical environment does play a role,” Marquette President Father Robert A. Wild said.

Wild said Marquette received a boost in the profile of its school of dentistry when it opened in 2002.

“Frankly, the old building wasn’t that attractive, in that regard. I think the new facility will help us in our effort to recruit top quality legal faculty and really capable students.”

Fordham’s law school building was built 39 years ago and updated in the 1980s. Marquette’s old law school building, Sensenbrenner Hall, is more than twice as old, built in 1924, though it was expanded in 1984.

The age of those buildings makes it a challenge for them to serve as places where law schools can do community outreach.

Sensenbrenner is “a wonderful old building, but the key word is old,” said Mike Gousha, a former television news anchor and distinguished fellow in law and public policy.

Gousha, who hosts a series of public policy luncheon discussions for the law school, notes the problems when politicians or other big names came to Sensenbrenner. There was no underground parking, which meant there wasn’t an ideal secure place for public figures to enter. There was no space where a television station could park a satellite truck for live broadcast. And there wasn’t equipment for journalists to use once they got there.

The new building is “media friendly,” Gousha said. During the debate between Republican gubernatorial candidates Scott Walker and Mark Neumann, organizers arranged for people to ask questions from Green Bay, Madison, La Crosse, Eau Claire, Wausau and Milwaukee.

Wild notes that Marquette’s law school has always had public outreach. The law library and the expertise of the professors have always been available to the downtown courthouses and the legal community. The new building’s capabilities just add to that outreach. Gousha said it adds to the outreach the law school started when it hired him in January 2007.

“We view ourselves as a place for serious discussion of important issues,” Gousha said. “We want to be a force for good.”

Solves space crunch

The new building also solves problems that plague the growing faculty and student body at Marquette and other schools. Spaces in the law libraries and areas that used to serve as lounges had to be converted into faculty offices. Schools such as Marquette that didn’t have special studies in intellectual property law or sports law or didn’t have extensive information technology departments a few decades ago had to find room in their old buildings.

During the 25 years before construction on Eckstein Hall started, the size of the school’s faculty doubled and the student enrollment increased 50%.

Older law school buildings were built around their libraries. Students basically lived in the stacks of law journal articles and briefs. The conversations, networking and other experiences students had with each other, professors and guests – because they were all stuck in that building – were a huge part of the education.

The digitization of those papers made them more accessible, but it also made it so that students didn’t have to come to the building. And the enrollment growth of the law school meant that even if those students wanted to spend time at the law school building, there was less space to do so.

Marquette law school dean Joseph Kearney was a convert to the idea of becoming chief booster for a new building. When he took deanship of the school in 2003, he said, he told Wild that if being dean meant Kearney would have to lead a fund-raising campaign, someone else should take the post.

Then he had to hear the complaints from faculty and students. And he started adding programs and staff to the school without additional space to fit them.

“Every area of the law school, without exception, was adversely affected,” Kearney said.

The university started drafting plans for a new building. Then the Ecksteins provided their $51 million gift. “That moved us from ‘wouldn’t this be a nice idea’ to we ‘can get this done,’ ” Wild said.

The gift was the largest by a couple to a Wisconsin university and believed to be the second largest donation to any law school. Marquette announced the donation in 2007. The groundbreaking of the building happened in 2008. The future use of Sensenbrenner Hall hasn’t been determined.

And Kearney said he saw the benefit one day last week as he looked out of his second-floor office onto a lounge where students were talking and peering into a law book. In Sensenbrenner, there was no longer room for lounges like that.