K-12 Education Research and Reference Links
(a sampling of over 250 suggested starting places; updated
July 10, 2001)
|
Nicholas Johnson
K-12 Education Research and Reference Links (a sampling of over 250 suggested starting places; updated
July 10, 2001)
|
Introductory Note:As
is true of almost any Web search, there is no substitute for just diving
in and doing it
for
an hour or so to see what's out there. On the other hand, "the choice
you'll never know is the choice you'll never make." The links below
offer a selection of some choices you might not otherwise have known about.
But there are, literally, thousands of education-related potential sites and documents available on the Internet. ERIC alone contains abstracts of some 1,000,000 articles. It would be impossible for me, and not very helpful for you, to list everything here. So what follows are guides and suggestions only.
But, as such, these 250 links are more than just an illustrative beginning. It is worth your taking the time to visit all of them, even if briefly, to spark your imagination and curiosity about the vast range of what is, often as not, out there somewhere. You will find that many sites contain links to pages, somewhere, that also provide links to numerous additional sites and documents.
Moreover, the best site for your specific research need is not always initially the most obvious. For example, a government report that is not available from the agency's Web page may be available as a link from the site of a publication, organization, or college of education. That's another reason why it's a good idea to browse around and get some notion of the range of resources offered by the major sites.
And, as always, don't forget the major search engines (and the instructions they provide on how to make them as efficient and precise as possible for your purposes). Some are listed here.
Finally, although it obviously pales by comparison to almost any of the sites listed below, the full texts of "Nicholas Johnson's Writing on Education Issues" are also available.
Do you have favorite sites you'd like me to add? Comments? Criticisms? Click here to e-mail me at njohnson@inav net
Happy surfing!
-- Nicholas Johnson
December 18, 1998; last updated August 29, 2000
Iowa School Finance Terminology (also as "Definitions of Iowa School Finance Terms" on the ICCSD Web site).
The Iowa law relative to school funding formulas -- as well as education law generally -- can be found through the "School Law Index" maintained by the Iowa Department of Education.
The largest general collection of educational finance materials found so far is the "Education Finance Statistics Center Homepage" maintained by the National Center for Education Statistics.
We have found three examples of what we believe to be good efforts at explaining school district finance and budget to the broader community: close to home is the Davenport [Iowa] Community School District's "Dollars and Sense," created by its Chief Financial Officer Marsha Tangen; others are the Charlotte-Mecklenburg [North Carolina] Education Foundation's Community Guide to the School Budget, and the presentation by the South Kitsap [Port Orchard, Washington] School District of its "1997-98 Budget." These may be useful models for what the ICCSD can evolve for its community.
The Salt Lake City [Utah] School District 1998-99 Annual Budget is not as easy to grasp as those just cited, but does provide an example of a presentation with a lot of detail.
There are professional associations related to educational finance,
such as the American
Education Finance Association and the Association
of School Business Officials International.
Interested in who finishes college and why? Take a look at "Answers in the Tool Box" (U.S. DOE research/report regarding college completion).
"Publications for Parents" presents the offerings from the U.S. Department of Education.
"Parents" is the site provided by the National Education Association. "Children First" is the Web site of the National PTA.
The American Association of School Administrators has a "Parental Involvement" site and also a more general site for "Public Engagement."
There is a Family Education Network which has, among many other things, a math self-test for your kids (and you!). Parent Time magazine maintains a Web page.
The Schwab Foundation for Learning has a Resource Collection for Parents, and emphasizes what it calls "learning differences and difficulties" (Charles Schwab is dyslexic).
The American Academy of Pediatrics has a "You and Your Family" set of resources. And GeneralPediatrics.com has a very substantial collection of links to pediatric resources. Involved with child care? Check out the National Child Care Information Center. The Australian Early Childhood Association has an awesome collection of sites of relevance to parents anywhere. For a truly global overview take a look at Harvard's Early Childhood Care and Development "International Resources in Support of Young Children (ages 0-8) and their Families."
Kidsource has links to resources. And you might want to check out Connect For Kids.
Offspring magazine, which included the ICCSD in its list of the "100 Best School Districts" (see below), covers a range of subjects of interest to parents.
Talking With Kids About Tough Issues is a national initiative by Children Now and the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Want to provide your child some Internet guidance? Check out
Berit's
Best Sites for Children and SmartParent.com.
By contrast, MCI Worldcom's "Marco
Polo" provides positive guidance on using the Internet. Would you rather
be reading to them -- or having them read? You might want to look
at The
Children's Literature Web Guide.
Parents interested in home schooling may want to check the page of the American Homeschool Association and its homeschooling resources links.Getting in. The ACT site contains information not only about the famous test that bears the Iowa City-based company's name, but also links to a great amount of research and information about the company's other programs. See also Educational Testing Service. There are many helpful sites for potential college students, among them ScholarStuff, the Career Resource Center, College Edge, US News EDU and College Catalogs Online. And, of course, you will want to look at the University of Iowa's online information. And see eCollegebid (negotiate tuition), The Princeton Review, and College and University Home Pages (Christina DeMello). And don't forget the community colleges: American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) . Paying for it. Want some help getting scholarships? Check out ScholarshipHelp.org, and the Princeton Review's "Scholarshiips & Aid."
ERIC (The National Library of Education's Educational Resources Information Center), as mentioned above, contains abstracts of approximately 1,000,000 articles and, as with most major sites, has it's own search engine capability. There is also a U.S. Department of Education "Cross-Site Indexing Project" for ERIC you may find useful. Another approach is the "Search ERIC Home Page."
There is a National Library of Education and a U.S. Network for Education Information. In 1999 the National Center for Education Statistics launched its "K-12 Practitioners Home Page" for parents, teachers and administrators.
The "Scout Report" provides a regular distribution of references to new and substantive Web sites, as well as an archive. Its Scout Report Signpost: L-LT - Education site is where the education-related sites are found. Education World is another collection of sites, as are the links from the South Australian Centre for Leaders in Education and Education Links (Phone-Soft Internet Directory International).
Public Agenda Online ("the journalist's inside source for public opinion and policy analysis") has a site for "education."
The Iowa City Community School District site has a "Teacher Resources" page with links primarily to curriculum materials.
The American Association of School Administrators maintains a site
they call AASA "Hot Links"
with references to many sources.
ACT provides access from its site to much of its research -- as does the Ford Foundation to its "Public Education" publications. And, of course, education has long been one of the four "main program themes" of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Colleges of education are a major resource. There is a Policy Center Network Directory of those colleges of education with educational policy programs (once to this site, click on "resources" and then "policy center network"). The University of Iowa College of Education has a site. So does the Columbia Education Center, and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Both offer resources for teachers: Columbia offers its CEC Lesson Plans, and Harvard its ALPS ("Active Learning Practices for Schools") collection of resources. Another good resource for teachers (with emphasis on technology) is the 21st Century Teachers Network. Especially useful is the Wisconsin Center for Education Research. Just as I have created this site, college of education professors often create sites related to their teaching. One example, with an excellent and full reading list, is that of Brown University Professor Carl Kaestel for his Education 176 course, "Education and Public Policy." Another example is UI College of Education Professor Stewart Ehly's page with links to resources for his course on "Home/School/Community Partnerships" -- many of particular potential interest to parents. And take a look at Ed Web at the University of North Carolina.
The Mining Company Guide to Secondary School Educators provides useful links to resources, as does Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators (a service of the Discovery Channel's online educational site).
Someone else who's tried to create a resource as full as this one
is Keith Stanger; see his "Finding
Education Resources on the World Wide Web."
Obviously, the U.S. Department of Education is a major resource and starting point.
The National Center for Education Statistics is self-explanatory.
Other states' sites are useful not only for their informational resources, links, and comparative data, where Iowa data exists, but also as examples of data, analyses (and Web site presentations) that might be useful for Iowa to adopt. Smart Organizations has compiled a list of "State Departments of Education" with URL links where available. (It also has a "Smart Schools by Design" site of interest.) A sampling of state sites includes: Arizona Department of Education, California Department of Education, Illinois State Board of Education, Maryland State Department of Education, Massachusetts Department of Education, Minnesota Department of Children, Families and Learning (an interesting, and appropriate in my judgment, agency title/conceptualization of the relevant focus), New Jersey Department of Education, New York State Education Department, Public Schools of North Carolina InfoWeb, and the State of Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
There is an Iowa Association of School Boards and a National School Boards Association.
The American Association of School Administrators has a useful site. As does the School Administrators of Iowa.
There is a National Association of Elementary School Principals. There is also a National Association for Primary Education in the U.K.
Phi Delta Kappa ("the professional fraternity in education") publishes the Phi Delta Kappan and offers many of its articles online.
The Yahoo Education/Organizations page has links to hundreds of education-related organizations.
The Iowa City Education Association has its own Web site. The ICEA is a member of the Iowa State Education Association.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is the bargaining unit for many of the ICCSD's staff.
National
Association for Primary Education (UK)
Others include RAND's Council for Aid to Education, Council for Basic Education, Education Commission of the States, National Center on Education and the Economy, including its "America's Choice Design" (of innovative performance standards), the related New Standards Project, and the Learning Research and Development Center and its Institute for Learning. The Schwab Foundation for Learning is another.
The National Education Association has a separate site devoted to "Innovative Approaches."The World-Wide Web Virtual Library Secondary School Links go to "all the sites about secondary education we know." And they know a lot!
The Magnet Schools Association is a starting place for information about this alternative.
The National School Boards Foundation is "dedicated to preparing school board members to be catalysts for systemic reform in the public schools."
Although scarcely an "organization" as such, the "Star Schools" utilization of telecommunications to provide distance learning for K-12 schools is certainly an innovative consortium of projects.
The Annenberg Institute of School Reform is a $500 million gift of Ambassador Walter Annenberg run out of Brown University that maintains a site worth visiting.
The American Forum for Global Education is self-explanatory.
The site EdWeb focuses on information about technology and school reform.
And see the School Reform News, which purports to follow all educational reform efforts in North America.
The National Institute on the Education of At-Risk Students provides school reform models it calls "Tools for Schools."
The ICCSD board has been following the John Carver governance model. The result of its efforts are now found in the board policies adopted November 23, 1999. See generally the "Governance" Web site.
Setting, and then monitoring, measurable goals and objectives is not an easy task in this age of increased emphasis on standards and assessment. Although not an organization as such, the University of Iowa's report of its success in "Implementing the Strategic Plan" is a useful example of how one educational institution (albeit one involved in higher education) goes about the task.
The "Shared Governance" efforts of the Salt Lake City District are worth a look. Although primarily for teachers, so is KANCRN -- the Kansas Collaborative Research Network.
Of course, the full range of child safety and welfare issues goes
well beyond those associated with "safe schools." See, for example,
the Pacific Center
for Violence Prevention, the National
Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect Information, the Childrens
Defense Fund "Links
for Child Advocates," the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
publication, CDC,
Youth
Risk Behavior Surveillance -- United States (1997), and Jim Hopper's
piece, "Child Abuse: Statistics,
Research, and Resources."
Alcohol abuse is an issue for many teens. Here is a site that addresses binge drinking on a college campus, the University of Iowa's "Stepping Up" project.
Standards of academic performance, and accountability, are another example -- and currently one of special significance in Iowa, with the recent adoption of state requirements for "core indicators" by the Iowa State Board of Education in accordance with House File 2272. Helpful sites might include "Rethinking Accountability" at the Annenberg Institute site, and "Performance Measures" reporting from the Salt Lake City schools. To keep "test scores" in perspective, see Kevin Bushweller, "Beyond Test Scores," Education Vital Signs (supplement to the American School Board Journal), December 1997. Also worth checking are the National Center on Education and the Economy, including its "America's Choice Design" (of innovative performance standards), and the related New Standards Project. And see, ACT's Selections from the 1998 High School Profile Report -- National Data (August 1998) and ETS' Starting Points for Policy Makers.
"Awesome," is over-used; but it's applicable to the collection of links to sites about standards maintained by the Putnam Valley School District. The Mid-Continent Regional Education Laboratory also has a great collection of sites, as does the Council for Basic Education. And you might want to see Ann Borthwick and Kate Nolan, "Performance Standards: How Good is Good Enough?" from the University of Pittsburgh's New Standards Learning Research and Development Center.
It has been said that it took educators 50 years to get the overhead projector out of the bowling alley and into the classroom. Today's "technology" in education (for which read, much of the time, "computers and the Internet") is coming much faster and gets mixed reviews. One site where you might start is "Ed Web" (technology and school reform). EdCite, one of the best collections of references regarding technology in education, is available through the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning.
Concerned about the increasing commercialism in schools? You might want to visit the site of The Center for Commercial-Free Public Education. And, if that site interests you, take a look at Adbusters.
At some point, I'm hoping that the ICCSD can explore the possible advantages of using an "ombudsperson." (See the ombudsperson proposal in my "Board Functions" paper.) One introduction to the idea in an educational setting can be found at the University of Iowa's ombudsperson site.
There is also the more general AASA site the association calls "Front Burner Issues", and the Missouri School Board Association, which has published The Educator's Guide to Handling Hot Issues, provides the links from that publication -- also of relevance to a range of issues -- as well as "Current Policy Topics and General Guidance."
The Lycos Zone's Educators' Resources/Learning and Instruction links to a number of issues sites.
ACT publishes Selections from the 1998 High School Profile Report -- National Data (August 1998).
Snow, Burns and Griffin, eds., Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (1998), is a joint project of the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Department of Education.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services makes available its Trends in the Well-Being of America's Children and Youth (1998) and A National Strategy to Prevent Teen Pregnancy: Annual Report 1997-98.
There are at least two basic, and relatively current, reports regarding education in Iowa. "Education is Iowa's Future: The Strategic Plan for Educational Excellence in the 21st Century (Dec. 1997) (available in Adobe Acrobat format only) and State of Iowa Commission on Educational Excellence for the 21st Century, Final Report (Sept. 12, 1997).
"Japanese
Government Policies in Education, Science, Sports and Culture (1996),"
is an example of the global resources available from the "Non-U.S.
Education Systems" page of the U.S. Network for Education Information.
Encyclopedia Britanica's eBlast search
engine also has a link to sites dealing with K-12
systems worldwide. And see the UNICEF report, State
of the World's Children 1999: Education. For a truly global
overview take a look at Harvard's Early Childhood Care and Development
"International
Resources in Support of Young Children (ages 0-8) and their Families."
The Iowa City Community School District "Strategic Plan" is available online, as is the work of the current "Strategy II" group.
The School District of Philadelphia has a bold
and ambitious plan called "Children Achieving" available on the Web.
Start with the Executive
Summary. It is roughly ten pages, and provides links to the full
text, contained in Components I through X.
Education Week and Educational Leadership are certainly among the most prominent and useful of the publications dealing with education news and policy discussions, and well worth the subscription price. But they both kindly provide, for free, these online sites with links to much of their present (and past) material.
The Cedar Rapids Gazette provides an online search capability which, thereby, includes the capacity to track stories involving "education," "Iowa City School Board," or "John Kenyon" -- the Gazette's Iowa City Bureau reporter who most often covers the Board. Not all of the articles in print are available online. Here are links to some Gazette articles about education, including those by Becky Stover.
Edupage is an online publication of Educom, which focuses on technology news generally, with a special interest in education. This link is to its index of back issues.
Phi Delta Kappa ("the professional fraternity in education") publishes the Phi Delta Kappan and offers many of its articles online.
And see the School Reform News, which purports to follow all educational reform efforts in North America.
"Pointcast," an online, personalized (and free!) news service, also offers "connections" to "Education and Reference" with useful links.
The Merrow Report is, strictly
speaking, a National Public Radio program rather than a conventional publication.
However, the Web site it maintains, and especially its "Links
to Educational Sites" are useful resources.
This site's "ICCSD" page provides links to a number of other Web sites, including Grant Wood AEA, District schools, ICCSD Board Member Dale Shultz' site, the Iowa City Gazette, Iowa City Press-Citizen, and Regina Catholic Education Center pages.
For outsiders' evaluations of the District's strengths, and needed improvements, see the [Iowa] State Accreditation Report (June 2, 1998), and The Bickert Group, "Leadership Needs Profile" (May 11, 1999). The latter (prepared in connection with the 1999 superintendent search) includes a "community audit" that reports the results of the firm's interviews with a broad cross section of the community regarding the District's strengths and weaknesses. Both are available from the District's Web site.
As for expectations of our students (and teachers), there are Student Learning Goals, and Assessments, and Language Arts and Mathematics Learning Standards.
Limited budget information is provided in Iowa City Community School District Budget Facts, and the work of "Strategy II" includes a draft "Process for Evaluating Budget Choices" (Sept. 23, 1998).
Needless to say, there are numerous documents that exist in hard copy only. These are available to the public; copies of many of them are kept at the Iowa City Public Library and in the media centers at District schools. These will gradually be uploaded, either to this site or that of the District, as time permits. Meanwhile, here is a list of some useful District documents in hard copy (which now includes a link to a table of hard copy reports from 1996-1999 prepared by the Central Administration staff).
A local television station, KGAN-TV9 (Cedar Rapids), maintains a
Web
site with a range of information about Iowa; it includes an "Iowa
Guide: Education" with links to, primarily, eastern Iowa educational
sites. The local paper, the Iowa
City Press-Citizen also maintains a Web site with information about
the ICCSD and other local school districts.
There are 15,892 school districts in the United States. It is natural that, to the extent anyone is looking for experience and examples from other districts, they would tend to look at districts in their own region. In the case of the ICCSD that usually means members of the "Urban Education Network" in Iowa -- those within the largest Iowa cities. But it is possible that an additional useful comparison, and source of ideas, might be similar school districts located in other states as well: districts in relatively small towns that are also home to major universities.
The DOE National Center for Educational Statistics offers a page that enables the user to look for "peer districts" for any given school district. Here are what it produces as "peers" of the ICCSD. The Cedar Rapids Gazette offers links to the sites of school districts in its readership area of eastern Iowa.
Offspring magazine
presented its view of the "100 Best School Districts" in its September-October,
2000, issue. The Iowa City Community School District was one of the top
100. In the chart that follows "Living Costs," "Academic Performance,"
and "Expenditures per Student" are national percentile rankings. Academic
performance is a factor of SAT and ACT average scores plus number of National
Merit Scholars. The schools selected from those 100 and listed in the table
below have been chosen, although somewhat arbitrarily, because they are
believed to have some chacteristics in common with the ICCSD (e.g.,
a college community, similar enrollment, or similar academic performance).
Therefore, each would be a worthwhile study for anyone interested in searching
for innovations for the ICCSD. Their Web sites will be provided as links
from this table as they are found.
| School District | Location | Enrollment | Living
Costs |
Academic
Performance |
Expenditures
per Student |
| Lexington and Massachusetts
DOE's
School District Profile for Lexington |
Lexington MA | 5,570 | 98 | 99 | 94 |
| Wellesley and Massachusetts
DOE's
School District Profile for Wellesley |
Wellesley MA | 3,523 | 98 | 99 | 96 |
| Princeton | Princeton NJ | 3,100 | 98 | 99 | 96 |
| Monroe County | Bloomington IN | 10,555 | 61 | 99 | 12 |
| Lawrence | Lawrence KS | 10,292 | 62 | 98 | 58 |
| Ithaca | Ithaca NY | 6,214 | 76 | 99 | 89 |
| Chapel Hill-Carborro | Chapel Hill NC | 8,225 | 85 | 99 | 61 |
| Ann Arbor | Ann Arbor MI | 15,801 | 88 | 99 | 92 |
| Edina | Edina MN | 6,657 | 94 | 99 | 70 |
| West Des Moines | West Des Moines IA | 8,511 | 86 | 98 | 56 |
| Iowa City | Iowa City IA | 10,424 | 74 | 98 | 70 |
| Palo Alto | Palo Alto CA | 9,437 | 99 | 99 | 90 |
| Palos Verdes Peninsula | Palos Verdes CA | 9,285 | 99 | 99 | 73 |
Here are some additional examples of school districts in other college towns or otherwise similar to the ICCSD:
Central Valley School District 356, Spokane, Washington, K-12 SchoolsColumbia, Missouri, K-12 Schools
Some of the other Iowa school districts that are among
the larger in the state (and members, with the ICCSD, of the Iowa "Urban
Education Network") include:
Cedar RapidsInterested in following what the ICCSD former Superintendent, Dr. Barb Grohe, is doing? She's now the superintendent of the Kent, Washington school district.The Cedar Rapids District is notable for a number of reasons -- innovations and otherwise. One obvious example is its award-winning alternative school, a focus of visiting educators from around the world, Metro High School.Council Bluffsand
The next tier (by size of enrollment) might include:
Other notable school districts might include:
Clayton, Missouri (one of the nation's preeminent "writing districts")Board members' Web sites:Some larger districts are:
One of the most impressive Web sites maintained by a school board member that I have come across is that of David E. Szychlinski of the Franklin School District in Wisconsin.
General
Encyclopedia Britannica
Learner.org (Annenberg/CPB)ESLStudyWeb (lots of "links for learning")
TeachWeb (K-12 educators' resources)
ESL (Dave Sperling's "Dave's ESL Cafe")
Math
Math ("An Open Letter to Richard Riley")
Writing
Inkspot ("the writer's resource" -- for all ages)