Diversity » Foundation Update (Spring 2006)

Foundation Update (Spring 2006 issue)

Cover Story

No NIE Department Left Behind
Newspaper In Education professionals are finding ways to meet curriculum needs imposed by the No Child Left Behind Act.

By Dinah Eng

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, designed to promote educational excellence in schools through focused learning and accountability, has produced changes in classroom curricula that have forced Newspaper In Education (NIE) professionals to come up with different ways to promote the value of their programs to teachers.

State testing standards now play a big role in curriculum design, and activities using the newspaper are following suit. People in NIE say not only are they spending more time tailoring their programs to state standards, they also are marketing the need to know about testing requirements to parents as well.

For example, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education issued grade-level expectations that tie into NCLB standards, using a grid to outline targeted concepts and skill levels in reading and math for students in kindergarten through 12th grade.

“We took each grid for communication arts, looking at each concept they wanted to teach, and created a newspaper activity to teach it, and an assessment that the teacher could use to see if the student was learning the skill,” says Dawn Kitchell, state NIE director for the Missouri Press Association.

“We produced a 14-part series, and published it as a feature that newspapers could use as a teachers’ guide, and as a tool for parents to use at home. About 15 to 20 papers bought the series, which covered the expenses, and we’ve had tremendous feedback. We plan to do the same with our math grade-level expectations as well.”

Kitchell notes that because reading and math are the only subjects being tested in Missouri, she sees a trend of less emphasis on social studies and science in schools. As a result, she says that NIE programs have a major role to play beyond helping educators with reading and math standards.

“Civic education is being omitted from the elementary classroom because of NCLB and standardized testing, and newspapers have to step up to educate young people about civics and democracy,” Kitchell says. “There’s no better place than newspapers to teach about the First Amendment and Bill of Rights.”

NCLB Tips for NIE Professionals Nancy Govoni, NIE Manager at The News-Journal in Daytona Beach, offers this advice for addressing the challenges of the No Child Left Behind legislation: Meet and stay in regular contact with the person in your local school system who is responsible for compliance with the terms of NCLB. This will help you understand what the school system is doing and find ways to support its goals and initiatives.     Make community connections. I am on the legislative subcommittee of the education committee of one of our local chambers of commerce. It is actively trying to provide information to federal legislators on the inequities of the law as it now stands. Two more suggestions come from Dawn Kitchell, state NIE director for the Missouri Press Association:   Correlate to validate. Correlate all newspaper activities you distribute to state standards and grade-level expectations to validate how the newspaper and its use helps teachers meet the requirements of NCLB.     Repeatedly remind administrators of research that supports classroom use of the newspaper to raise standardized test scores. Many are busy with other responsibilities, so you have to make sure your newspaper is in their sights.

Many NIE programs did just that in producing materials pegged to Constitution Day last September. That move also met the requirement of a provision passed by Congress in 2004 that requires every school that receives federal funding to teach about the Constitution on Sept. 17, the day the document was adopted in 1787.

 

“We did a Constitution Day series that was very timely because it was the first Constitution Day after the bill was passed,” says Dina M. Gruber, former NIE and events coordinator for The Journal Times in Racine, Wis. “We bought some curriculum, got some sponsors and printed most of the Constitution on a full page that week.”

Gruber says the paper did a NCLB project two years ago, working with area school districts and sponsors to produce an in-paper series that was promoted to educators and parents.

“Initially, we wanted an advisory board with representatives from four school districts to write the curriculum for the project, which would prepare students for the fourth-, eighth- and 10 th-grade-level tests,” Gruber says. “But once we dug deeper, we realized there was no way we could write it in time. So I bought two curriculum guides that we adapted and used for a couple months prior to the state’s standardized tests.”

Each feature in the series included an online component that students could access to find homework help on the Internet as well as study tips and a newspaper activity. The Journal Times also purchased a database from the Racine school district and sent a direct-mail piece to parents of students.

The series more than doubled NIE subscriptions during the two-month period, and the direct-mail piece netted the paper about 250 home-delivered starts.

Now, NIE professionals say, they must sell their programs in specific ways that show teachers, who have little time to spare, how the newspaper can be used to teach to the NCLB standards.

Karen Alexander, director of educational services for the Lake Charles ( La.) American Press, indexes activities, matching standards and benchmarks to all curriculum guides.

“By giving them the newspapers with my guide, it’s as easy to use as a textbook,” says Alexander, who also makes it a point to come in to work at 3 a.m. on Tuesdays to design a test based on information in that day’s newspaper that she then faxes to schools.

“I give them a lesson plan in advance, telling them what standards will be met by using the quiz each week. I have 15,000 to 20,000 kids taking that quiz on any given Tuesday, which is our highest distribution day. I had to quit posting the answers on our Web site until noon because the kids were getting it off the Internet before going to school.”

A series of lessons on the NIE Web site (www.nieworld.com) of The News-Journal in Daytona Beach coordinates with different topics in the news, and activities are crafted with Florida standards in mind.

“We purchased materials that directly address the state tests, and we work with our local curriculum producers to help them include newspapers in what they’re developing,” NIE Manager Nancy Govoni says. “We keep growing, and have to work hard on matching what the teachers’ needs are.”

In Washington state, teachers are expected to teach about the state even though that subject is not part of mandatory testing. So Eileen Woods, educational services coordinator for the Skagit Valley Herald in Mount Vernon, Wash., created a “Washington State Notebook” to address the problem.

The notebook, a 16-page tabloid, offers lessons designed to teach about Washington state using the newspaper in the same format as the Washington Assessment of Student Learning test for fourth-graders. Circulation in fourth-grade classrooms has more than doubled as a result since Woods introduced the notebook last year.

Darla Shaw, an education professor at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, has been teaching workshops for educators on how to use newspapers as a classroom resource for more than 40 years.

“I give workshops on NCLB preparation, and the major tool I use is the newspaper,” Shaw says. “NCLB tests are very newspaper-like in format. We’re trying to get teachers away from textbooks, and make people lifelong learners. There are so many things you can do with a newspaper – write journals, simulate press conferences, do mock trials based on the news. All of these skills are embedded in NCLB.”

Barbara Shapley, a former curriculum specialist for the Florida Department of Education and author of “Reading First NIE,” agrees.

“The market is always changing in education,” says Shapley, who writes serial stories and other NIE materials for newspapers nationwide. “Reading and literacy and parent education [are] big now, but the same issues for centuries will keep asserting themselves.

“Students still need basic skills, and newspapers are a good way to teach about things like grocery shopping, rental costs and problems in your neighborhood. The newspaper is a microcosm of a whole world, and kids who read newspapers do better on the standardized tests.”

Dinah Eng is a freelance writer and columnist for Gannett News Service based in Los Angeles. She can be reached at dinaheng@earthlink.net.