To bring you the help you need, social workers hone the quality of caring into a career and prove their proficiency through licensing. This message brought to you by ASWB, supporting social work standards. Hello, welcome to the New Heights Show on Education. This is your host, Pamela Clark, and this is a show for education in the news.
There's a lot of news stories to cover, so let's get right into it. Harvard Studies shows the dangers of early school enrollment. Friday, November 30th, this was an older one from 2018, but they're repurposing it through your feed.org. Thought it was interesting to share, and it's written by Kerry McDonald from feed.org.
So as every parent knows the difference, a year makes the development and maturity of a young child, a one-year-old is barely walking while, sorry, there's some advertisements on their page that are overlapping. I'm trying to get rid of them. A one-year-old is barely walking while a two-year-old gleefully sprints away from you. A four-year-old is always moving, always imagining, and always asking why.
While a five-year-old may start to set and listen for longer stretches. Growing expectations versus human behavior. Children haven't changed, but our expectations of their behavior have. In just one generation, children are going to school at younger and younger ages and are spending more time in school than ever before.
They are increasingly required to learn academic content at an early age that may be well above their developmental capacity or capability. In 1998, 31% of teachers expected children to learn to read and kindergarten. In 2010, 80% of teachers expected this. Now children are expected to read and kindergarten and to become proficient readers soon after, despite research showing that pushing early literacy can do more harm than good.
In their report, reading and kindergarten little to gain and much to lose, education professor Nancy Carlson-page and her colleagues warn about the hazards of early reading instruction. They write, when children have educational experiences that are not geared to their development or developmental level or in tune with their learning needs and cultures, it can cause them great harm, including feelings of inadequacy, anxiety and confusion. I've seen that personally here at New Heights many, many times over. Back to the article, hate the player love the game.
Instead of recognizing that schooling is the problem, we blame the kids. Can any of you, you know, have any of you seen this in your own life? Do you agree with this statement? Because I certainly do and I've seen it a lot.
So today, children who are not reading by a contrived endpoint are regularly labeled with a reading delay and prescribed various interventions to help them catch up to the pack. In school, all must be the same. If they are not listening to the teacher and are spending too much time daydreaming and squirming in their seats, young, um, squirming their seats, young children often earn an attention to deficit or hyperactivity disorder or ADHD or ADD label. And with striking frequency are administered potent psychotropic medications.
The US Centers of Disease Control Prevention, the CDC, reports that approximately 11% of children ages four to 17 have been diagnosed with ADHD and that number increased to 42% from 2003 to 2004 and from 2011 to 2012 with a majority of those diagnosed placed on medication. Perhaps more troubling, one third of these diagnoses occur in children under six. That should scare each of you. Quote, children who start school as the youngest in their grade have a greater likelihood of getting an ADHD or ADD diagnosis than older children in their grade.
Did you know that? There should be no surprise that as we place young children in artificial learning environments separated from their family for long lengths of time that and expect them to comply with a standardized, test-driven curriculum, it will be too much for many of them. New findings by Harvard Medical School researchers confirm that it's not the children who are failing it to the schools. We place them in too early.
These researchers discovered that children who start school as among the youngest in their grade have a greater likelihood of getting that diagnosis. So in fact for the US, United States studied that with a September 1 enrollment cut-off date, children born in August were 30% more likely to be diagnosed than their older peers. The study leads researcher at Harvard, Timothy Layton, who concludes quote, our findings suggest the possibility that larger numbers of kids are being over diagnosed and over treated for ADHD because they happen to be relatively immature compared to their older classmates in their earlier years of elementary school. So this should come as no surprise.
Parents don't need Harvard researchers to tell them that a child who just turned five is quite differently, different developmentally from a child who was about to turn six. Instead parents need to be empowered to challenge government schooling motives and mandates and to opt out. As universal government preschool programs gain traction, delaying school or opting out entirely can be increasingly difficult for parents. Iowa for example recently lowered its compulsory school age to four years old in a government preschool program.
As New York City expands its universal pre-K program to other cities three-year-olds who compulsory schooling laws for preschoolers follow. On Monday the New York City Department of Education issued a white paper detailing a quote birth to five system of early care and education, granting more power to the government officials to direct early childhood learning and development. As schooling becomes more rigid and consumes more of childhood, it is causing increasing harm to children. Many of them are unable to meet unrealistic academic and behavioral expectations at such a young age and they are being labeled with and medicated for delays and disorders that often only exist within a school context.
People should push back against this alarming trend by holding onto their kids longer and opting out of forest schooling altogether. What did you think of that article? Do you agree with it? We are going to have it in an upcoming magazine, probably the one in January, so you can find it there on fee.org if you'd like to have access to it before then.
Also one of our partners pro-literacy came out with an advocacy alert that I wanted to share with you. This is dated December 7th, 2022. This says Senator Reid and Young introduced an important piece of legislation to strengthen adult education and literacy programs, the Adult Education Workforce Opportunity and Reskilling of Knowledge Success Act or Adult Works Act. This act would amantite a one in reauthorize Title II of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act known as WIOA.
WIOA is the largest federal funding source for adult education, originally signed into law in 2014. There are literacy strongly supports this new proposed legislation that provides a road map for expanding the reach and access to adult education services. The Adult Works Act would double the authorized funding levels for adult education by 2026 by $1.35 billion with a B. They would like you to reach out or to be watching this act, but you can obviously always advocate for these sorts of things if you believe in them and if you want to.
So I'll bring up the next one here. The next one I have for you is from Smart Brief on EdTech. I'm not actually, let's see. I'm sorry, just a moment.
Okay, this is from, well, like I said, but it's also covered by the Washington Post and K-12 Dive. So there's data that shows schools still see shortages of supplies and teachers. Around 83% of schools have been struggling to purchase supplies, including food and technology, and 45% still have teaching vacancies. According to data from the National Center of Educational Statistics, the teacher shortages are more accurate in schools in high poverty areas and schools serving more students of color and the data indicates a disproportionate share of teacher vacancies in areas such as special education.
This was covered by a WCNC TV in Charlotte, North Carolina, says North Carolina School Mildred exceeds $1 million. In just the first few months of the school year, a student milled at across districts in North Carolina has exceeded $1 million. So, quote, so many families really came to rely during the pandemic on free meals for their kids to keep the family well fed. And students ready to learn, end of quotes that Diane Pratt-Heavener, Director of Media Relations for School Nutrition, or Nutrition Association, School Nutrition Association.
It's quote, so it's a real shame to lose this benefit, particularly at a time when so many families are struggling with higher costs. This was covered by Technically. It says storytelling combines with coding at Pennsylvania School. Elementary students at Philadelphia's William Rowan School recently wrote a story and programmed Ozobots to follow a path for the story as part of a Computer Science Education Week.
Students have moved on from basic programming to working on projects such as Ozobots, said digital, literacy teacher, Metzie Brown. We're going to need to take a quick commercial break here in a moment, but I did want to share with you that if you go on our site and you try to listen to individual hosts, we have them linked, even though they have like 30 networks that we're on, we have them linked through verbal, B-U-R-B-L-E, and individual folders. We spend a lot of time doing this and trying to organize our many hundreds and hundreds of shows that we've had. But verbal continues to go down and their communication is very poor.
I'm not sure what is going on on their end. I do know that a lot of their staff is based in the Ukraine, so maybe that has something to do with it, but they don't really answer emails very well either, and I just don't hear back from them. So we are going to probably remove at least of those individual links from each host from verbal, because if they can't get it working and make it stable, we certainly aren't going to make them like a direct link from our host. So I'm trying to figure out which of the 30 other networks would be the best way for you to find different hosts and listen to different content.
But we create these shows through Spreaker, and a lot of them are on there, and that is like the main link on our home page. You'll see it listen to shows on Spreaker. So you can go there, or other networks which are on our home page of our radio page, radio dot new heightseducation dot org, and when you click on each link, it'll take you to those different places, but they don't have like playlists and individual folders from what I've seen like verbal, that's why I really liked verbal. So bear with us as we try to figure out the best way for you to listen to the other shows.
We'll make sure to do that. And also, New Heights Educational Group really needs your help. We need funds. We are very, very low on funds, and it's really not looking good for the organization if we don't gain support very soon.
So, shows may end, our organization may come to an end. I cannot stress this enough. If we don't have funds to operate, we cannot move forward, and we're almost there. So if you can donate, please do so.
Thank you, and here's your commercial. Hello listeners. If you're joining the New Heights Show on Education and Support or Donates or Organization, please visit www.newhightseducation.org. And while you're there, check out our online store.
Welcome back to the New Heights Show on Education. You're listening to Education and the News. The next bit of news I have for you is for the Ohio Department of Education. This was covered by Richland Source.
Schools across Richland are planning safety and security upgrades after receiving grant funding from the state Governor Mike Dwayne's office that has announced award winners for the third round of the Ohio K-12 School Safety Grant Program. Schools in Crestview, Madison, and Mansfield all receive funding. The grant program helps schools pay for items like new security cameras, public address systems, and automatic door locks. Visitor badging systems and exterior lighting.
Ohio State University, the lantern, reports that Penn Pals at Ohio State mentor young students in the Columbus City School District by writing letters. The third to sixth graders in the Columbus City School District write letters widely throughout the year. According to Penn Pals website, West Mountain Elementary School is one of the schools involved with the Ohio State Penn Pals Program. Mary Dye, special education teacher, and primary Penn Pals contact at West Mountain said students are excited to read their latest letters from Ohio State and feel motivated to write back.
Youngstown Business Journal, future farmers more than cows and plows. A white board and agro science classroom of United Local High School carries a simple but weighty message proudly displayed in FFA's official colors of national blue and corn gold. We aren't just cows and plows, we are leaders and achievers. The chapter advisor in the school's agro science teacher Tyler Gentry says he emphasizes that while his lessons are based on agriculture they go beyond the farm.
In Ohio University News, reports that Tansham 3-Elder uses Ohio Arts Council funding to build local junior high drama club. Dayton M.B.C.C.T.V. reports Ohio Middle School students find map error. The Maple Heights, Niccolovich, Middle School sixth grader, honor student found errors on a map they used in class.
Now their corrections will be used in the next edition of the map. Julie Hogan, Social Studies class learned to identify the relative location of places using cardinal directions in September. When the class used a Rand McNally roadmap for the lessons, the students noticed the Maple Heights City School District School buildings were never updated, so they reached out to the Cartiography Company. Cleveland ABC 5 reports of video game based learning platforms are engaging students and improving test scores.
Right now Roblox, a minecrafter two of the most popular in a local school district, is using them similar to reach students and get results. Elmwood Elementary School and Garfield Heights hosted a kickoff celebration for Heroes League game day, statewide skills competition. The educational video game stimulates life, teaching students both hard and soft skills. The creator who is a father of five and a lifetime educator and entrepreneur says that it's about increasing excitement and engagement.
And in Lisbon Morning Journal reports that twice per Tots Ohio donates pallet of books to West Gate Middle School. Last week every single West Gate preschool and middle school potter was gifted with a brand new book thanks to Deborah Oberlin and her chief, Elf, Tara Oberlin and the pallet of brand new books. The West Gate Potters had a reading blast where students were encouraged to read for pleasure. Beginning Monday East Liverpool City Schools started the next service learning project and collected toys for Tots.
There are donation boxes in each district building and the logistics are still being determined, but East Liverpool schools will be hosting a toy distribution for mid-December. The Lyma News reports that Lyma areas students are heading to Japan. The Lyma City, I'm sorry, the Lyma Sister Cities Association was formed in 1995. The youth home stays began every other year in 2001.
Now, after the pandemic, the youth trips are scheduled to begin again in the summer of 2023. Several students have been selected for the cultural experience in the coming summer. Prior to the trip, the school delegates and their parents will be required to participate in several group orientations to acclimate them to the Japanese cultures and customs. The students will experience all phases of the Japanese life during their two-week visit.
They will participate in Japanese traditions. Attend Japanese schools, stay in Japanese homes and share American culture with their Japanese friends. What do you think of that? In the times that we're living in and the threats that are made towards Japan, do you think that students should be going there at this time?
Do you think it's safe? Do you think it's a good idea or a bad idea? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this because to me, that's a bad idea, but I just don't think it's safe to travel over there right now. Next news story I have for you is from Middle Web on Smart Brief.
It says that programs teach girls about social media safety, a social media safety program from the Girl Scouts of Central and Western Massachusetts is educating middle schools girls on media literacy, privacy, cybersecurity and related topics. Program organizer Brandi Maloney says the program, which also has a parent portion to keep students and families in the loop is open to all middle school girls in Worcester County. WFYI-TV and WFYIFM reports that Indiana Foundation to support new civics course. The Indiana Bar Foundation is developing lesson plans and other resources to help teachers implement a newly required middle school civics course curriculum that was approved by the Indiana State Board of Education of June.
Jim Calgreen, Director of Civic Education for the Foundation said the goals for teachers to feel comfortable and have the knowledge needed to introduce one semester course in 2023-2024. C&G newspapers in Michigan reports that 2000 students part of Auto Steam Days event. Nearly 2000 middle and high school students in several communities participated in the annual Auto Stream Days recently. The event, which included participants from area auto industry, featured activities focused on auto design, robotics and technology.
They haven't lost me. There were some repeats trying to get through here. I think I mentioned this once before in the previous show, but it was about the announcement from Christian home educators of Ohio about Senate Bill 178. There was a legislative update on December the 8th and it says in the afternoon session on December 7th, 2022, Ohio Senate approved Senate Bill 178 with a vote of 22-7.
This measure now moves to Ohio House of Representatives. We will send out an update as soon as it is assigned to a House Committee and when the Committee hearings are scheduled. The process will be quick because time in this session is running out. In the meantime, it is incredibly important to continue contacting your state representative to ask for a no vote when this bill comes to the House floor.
As the only way to fix our educational system, it is not. Oh boy, that should terrify each and every one of you. Sub SB 178 removes elected representation for all students and parents in Ohio. This is especially problematic for home educated students and religious O8 non-tarter schools.
There are House Republicans who will vote no. Be encouraged that your calls and emails will make a difference. Four years ago, the same legislation from the same proponents cannot get enough support in the House. This is a busy time of year, but this issue is critically important.
Please consider making contact with your member and take an extra step to share this message with family and friends. I can't stress this enough. This is super, super important. They also have a message from homeschool legal defense about this issue.
Let me read that to you just a moment. Update, let's see. It says SB 178 would consolidate virtually all education policy decision making into one new massive agency under the authority of a single person appointed by the governor, homeschool legal defense joins Chio, Christian home educators of Ohio, and opposing this legislation as harmful to homeschool freedom and not keeping with Ohio's representative democratic principles. Please contact your state senator and representative to let them know that you oppose this bill, an elimination of elected representation through the state board of education.
If you click the link, I'm going to share this on social media. But if you click the link, it'll take you to homeschool legal defense. There's a way right there to say that you do not want this bill passed. It's that simple.
So please either call or fill this out. I know this is over 2,000 pages. Most of them aren't reading this, but this is extremely dangerous to the freedoms that homeschoolers and others have. And I really don't think it should be going to someone that is not elected to office.
This is really, really not a good thing, people. So please follow up, share this with family and friends, coworkers and so forth. As you never know, when it's going to come back and bite you if you don't follow through. I mean, if it does pass and you decide the homeschool, if you're not already, or to try to look at alternative education options in Ohio, this really might interfere with that right.
So please, please, please, please follow up, follow through. Okay, I'll bring up another one here for you. The Hekinger Report, an Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting reports that of an analysis that says that attendance violations result in suspensions. Schools in Arizona frequently hand down student suspensions for attendance violations according to analysis by the Hekinger Report and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting.
The review of data from 150 districts from charter school networks found that they collectively issued 47,000. You heard that right. Suspensions for attendance related violations in five school years with such suspensions accounting for more than half of in school suspensions in some school districts. Wow.
Okay. And Chalkbeat in Philadelphia reports the Pennsylvania District sees positives and results of Read by Fourth. The Read by Fourth campaign has produced mixed results in school districts of Philadelphia where 28.2% of the city's third graders posted posted proficient or advanced scores in the state's reading tests. According to Chalkbeat analysis, the campaign has included teacher training and increased use of literacy coaches, resulting in a sense that the district is quote in a much better place than we were seven years ago, says Jenny Bagoni, Executive Director of the campaign.
The Associated Press, the Albuquerque Journal, all reported on the story, says New Mexico Governor advocates for universal school meals to address childhood hunger. New Mexico Governor Michelle Luz and Grisham announced this week that all her administration will seek to propose legislation to allow for free school meals to be served to all K to 12 students in the state, regardless of family's income. Luz and Grisham said the focus would be on serving fresh foods, including fruits and vegetables growing in the state. You check our time here.
Okay. I'm going to end the show a little early. Like I had told you before, we are making these shows shorter because they have the Civil Rights Show to do also, and just a busy time. I want to remind the audience now that these shows are Wednesday by 6 PM Eastern Standard Time.
You can check out all of our shows on Radio.NewHitesEducation.org or one of our 30 networks that we're on. And then our Civil Rights Show airs Sundays by 5 PM Eastern Standard Time. Because of the holidays, I can't guarantee that all of the shows will be weekly towards the end of this month. So I'll try to make that announcement, but it's a busy time for me just like it is for everyone else.
But there's plenty of shows to listen to, plenty of other shows and other hosts on our network that you may be interested in, so check them out. And we wish everyone Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays and Happy Kwanza and so forth. Thank you for listening. Until next time.
We hope you enjoyed today's show. Don't forget to rate us and follow us on your podcast player. Check out our show page, Radio.NewHitesEducation.org. For monthly announcements and other happenings.