What I'd like to share this week was put together by Leslie Cohen, student intern here at the Fund. Leslie is an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania's Arts and Sciences majoring in Urban Studies and submatriculating in the Graduate School of Education. I asked her to start researching World Wide Web sites that would support one of our initiatives here at the Education Fund -- the Carnegie Middle Years Project. (Information about this Middle Years initiative will be on-line via the Fund webpage within the coming month).

Leslie was looking for sites that would support reform in middle years schools and support networking between and within these school communities. She found a variety of reform-oriented resources which you will see below. Although she was looking for middle years sites in particular, these sites could certainly be useful for a variety of grade levels.

Thanks for putting this together Leslie!

MIDDLE SCHOOL NETWORK

This web page is designed to serve as a source of information and communication among middle school reformers, administrators, teachers, and students. Links to research organizations, foundations, publications, and listservers provide resources for receiving up-to-date news, communicating with teachers and reformers, learning about professional and curricular development programs, as well as accessing information regarding reforms, development models, standards, assessments, evaluations, and grants.

MiddleWeb:

Links to news, resources, and professional development for middle school reform!

Highlights:

  • Middle Grades Newswatch: Recent news stories about the middle grades, standards-based reform, and student achievement.
  • More News: Links to recent articles and news stories about middle schools all over the US. Issues include accountability, assessment, achievement, stereotypes, improvement, professional development, grants, success stories and much more!
  • Curriculum Resources: Resources and teaching strategies for different subject areas including: geography, social studies, language arts, math, and science. In addition there are links to curriculum resources including lesson plans and teacher interactive chat lines.
  • Assessment and Evaluation: Designing effective tasks, new ways of testing and grading, accountability studies and reform analysis and more!
  • Teacher Professional Development: Some of the issues addressed in this site are: the significance of content knowledge, overcoming training barriers--making progress, components of a comprehensive staff development plan, resources, and teacher standards.
  • Principal Professional Development: Links examining the roles of principals in reform initiatives, creating effective principal development plans, as well as links containing briefs from the Center on the Organization and Restructuring of Schools (University of Wisconsin). Among the other sites is the diary of a middle school principal.
  • Sites of Reform: Direct links to reforming middle schools.
  • Standards-Based Reform: Links to articles and information related to standards-based reforms, implementation, problems, and academic discussion.

Middle Grades Page:

Model web-site for middle school networking effort in Santa Clara County, California.

  • Middle School Profiles: direct links to middle school homepages.
  • Restructuring Qualities: a definition of terms for teachers related to restructuring in schools.
  • Middle Grades Resources: links to organizations and instructional and reform information. Of interest may be links related to the incorporation of service-learning in middle schools as well as using the Internet.

National Middle School Association: "National Middle School Association [is] . . . [an] umbrella organization which provides professional opportunities, varied services, and publications for all professional and persons interested in the developmental and educational needs of young adolescents."

Improving America's Schools: A Newsletter on Issues in School Reform

The National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools, and Teaching (NCREST): information, networking teachers

Center for Social Organization of Schools (CSOS) at Johns Hopkins University: CSOS was established as an educational research and development center. The Center maintains a staff of "full-time sociologists, psychologists, social psychologists,and other scientists who conduct programmatic research to improve the education system, as well as full-time support staff engaged in developing curricula and providing technical assistance to help schools use the Center's research."

The Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk (CRESPAR): CRESPAR's stated mission is "to conduct the research, development, evaluation, and dissemination needed to transform schooling for students placed at risk of educational failure. The work of the Center is guided by three central themes--ensuring the success of all students at key development points, building on students' personal and cultural assets, and scaling up effective programs..."

Coalition of Essential Schools: reform philosophies, publications, discussions, and forums related.

Department of Education

Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators: links to subject area resource websites, links to organization websites, links to search engines

  • Grant Sources for Educators: links to grant sources and funding sources for educators.
  • Teaching Tools: links to educational tools on the Web.
  • List of Curriculum Resources Sites: includes general resources, special needs and psychology links, as well as early childhood links. Also includes direct links to teacher materials, lesson plans, and classroom support for Internet use.
  • Educational Reform, Research, Development, and Teacher Communication: links for designing alternative assessments and for assessment strategy and theory, links for teachers and counselors, educational literature and statistics, links to educational associations and journals, as well as listservers for teachers (some of the direct links are sorted below).
    • Listserv for teachers: listing of k-12 listservers and other related listservers for teachers.
    • Newsgroups for teachers: listing of newsgroups for teachers.
    • TeacherTalk: online newsletter targeted towards preservice, secondary education teachers;useful for the practicing teacher, too.
  • Fun Stuff for Teachers and Students: links for crafts, calenders, games, tutorials, nutrition information, and WebCards (electronic greeting cards).
  • Fun Holiday Links: from EarthDay to Christmas, this site has links to sites on many American holidays and the history and traditions related to them.
  • Sites for Kids: lists of kid links, sites related to educational programming and institutions, and software for kids.
  • News Sources, Newspapers, and Magazines: links to news sources, news papers, and magazines which may be particularly helpful to social studies teachers.
  • Organizations: Government: list of links to government offices, services, and institutions.
  • History and Social Studies Sites: links to museums, archives, lessons, and much more!
  • Literature: contains author guides, electronic texts and online books, network libraries, classroom lessons, research paper topics and more!
  • Math Links: online calculators, instructional materials, questions, equations, and derivations, software, and interactive problem-solving links.
  • Science and Technology Sites: links to sites in the following categories: general science, biological and animal study, earth science, geography, and oceanography, environmental science, physics and optics, space and astronomy, as well as links to NASA sites.