SchoolGrants Misc Links

Links - Miscellaneous

The links on this page are valuable but do not fit well within any of the link categories currently set up on SchoolGrants.

School Facilities

The 1998 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, produced by the American Society of Civil Engineers, has given America’s public school facilities an “F.” The poor score results from:

Inadequate number of facilities. School enrollment is expected to increase by 11% between 1998 and 2008 and the US Department of Education projects a need for at least 6,000 new schools by 2006.
Age of facilities. The average age of a public school building is 42 years old. They are not wired for designed or equipped for technology needs in the 21st century.
Unsafe/unhealthy buildings. According to the General Account Office, almost 14 million students attend schools in buildings that need at least one major repair or replacement.
Research has shown that student achievement is higher for those students taught in better buildings.

Take a look at the NEA’s “State by State Modernization Facts” to see the status of your state’s schools.

NCLB and Middle Schools: Confronting the Challenges

The Alliance for Excellent Education has published this PolicyBrief that is designed to help those in middle schools understand the requirements set forth for them in No Child Left Behind. Middle schools have a challenge that elementary and high schools do not. Sometimes the law treats them as elementary schools and sometimes as high schools. Requirements differ depending on which requirements are applicable. The PolicyBrief highlights testing, adequate yearly progress, and teacher quality.

New Relationships With Schools: Organizations that Build Community By Connecting With Schools

With support from the Kettering Foundation, the Collaborative Communications Group has produced a report that looks at organizations that work to improve schools as part of broader community improvement efforts. School quality is tied to many other community issues including those related to housing, community development and/or civil justice. The study was designed to answer the following questions:

● What new relationships with schools are created by organizations and their constituents as they go about the work of improving their communities?
● In what ways do these organizations advance larger civic, democratic goals with their work on public education issues?
● What factors most influence the community organization to extend its mission to include public schools?

More and more grants are requiring, or at least giving preference to, collaborations that include schools and community partners. This free 58-page publication may give you some ideas of organizations to contact and ways in which you can work together to strengthen your goals of increasing student achievement.

Using Data to Improve Student Achievement

The Consortium for School Networking has made available a publication called Vision to Know and Do: The Power of Data as a Tool in Educational Decision Making. With all of the new accountability requirements faced by schools, districts and states, collection and use of student data becomes increasingly important. The chapter in this publication called “Making it Happen: Integrating Data into the Decision Making Equation” gives a brief overview of the following topics:

Implementation Scale and Scope
What to Gather
Cleaning Up the Data
Reporting Out and User Queries
Cost of Adoption: TCO Factors
Professional Development
Don’t Go It Alone

The report also takes a look at some schools that have already made strides in using data in their decision-making processes.

High School Students Speak: Bored and Disengaged

Pi Lambda Theta published an anecdotal article, Disengagement and Loathing in High School, in its Educational Horizons publication. A group of high school students were asked to maintain journals detailing their high school experiences. All of those who returned their journals – good students and those who are falling behind – complained that most of their classes were not sparking their interests. The most common complaint was disinterested teachers who do nothing to enliven the class by using discussion, example and/or use of outside materials.

Women’s Sports & Fitness Facts & Statistics

The Women’s Sports Foundation has compiled a representative sample of facts existing in women’s sports that may be useful in preparing grant proposals for girls’ programs. Included in the 23-page document are benefits and barriers faced by female athletes and facts related to fitness issues, disabled students, and participation by pre-adolescent and high school girls. All information is supported by references.

Title IX participation, athletics and physical activity are both hot topics that are covered by the Women’s Sports Foundation.

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Links on this page were verified and updated on June 19, 2003. The dynamic nature of the Internet means that links may be gone tomorrow. Sometimes unscrupulous individuals and companies purchase popular links and put pornographic materials on those sites. Please let me know ASAP if you come across such a link. Please include the SchoolGrants Web page where you found the bad link.

Your comments, suggestions and questions are always welcome! Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback!