Public Education Network Weekly NewsBlast: "Public Involvement. Public Education. Public Benefit."

KIDS NEED POETRY IN SCHOOL
Why do children and teens like writing poetry? It's an excellent andnecessary means of self-expression. Poetry necessitates scratching belowthe surface, plumbing emotions students are often afraid to share withtheir peers. Students will often reveal long-hidden troubles they'd beotherwise reluctant to divulge. Through the medium of poetry, students canmore easily understand and identify with their classmates' sadness, fear,loneliness, rage, excitement, awe and pleasure. Poetry is a freer formthan prose and poetry can also help students define who they are. Teachersfrequently tell Susan Terence that they have a much deeper and fullerunderstanding of their students after reading their students' poems. She’snoticed a closer sense of community forming in a classroom where studentsregularly share their own poetry. April is National Poetry Month. If thereis not already a poetry program at your child's school, remind yourschool's teachers and administrators how poetry promotes literacy andemotional well-being. Ask them to support a poets-in-the schools program.Check out or purchase poetry books from your library or bookstore. Readpoetry aloud to your children. Encourage them to keep a journal of theirpoetry at home. In some small way, poetry opens up and saves our lives.http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/04/06/EDGANC36QD1.DTL

F FOR ASSESSMENT
For the last four decades, students' scores on standardized tests haveincreasingly been regarded as the most meaningful evidence for evaluatingU.S. schools. Most Americans, indeed, believe students' standardized-testperformances are the only legitimate indicator of a school's instructionaleffectiveness. Yet, although test-based evaluations of schools seem tooccur almost as often as fire drills, in most instances these evaluationsare inaccurate. That's because the standardized tests employed areflat-out wrong, writes W. James Popham. Standardized tests have been usedto evaluate America's schools since 1965, when the U.S. Elementary andSecondary Education Act (ESEA) became law. That statute provided for thefirst major infusion of federal funds into local schools and requirededucators to produce test-based evidence that ESEA dollars were wellspent. But how, you might ask, could a practice that's been so prevalentfor so long be mistaken? If enough educators -- and noneducators --realize that there are serious flaws in the way we evaluate our schools,and that those flaws erode educational quality, there's a chance we canstop this absurdity. Throughout the country, students and teachers arepreparing for another round of standardized testing. As this annual ritualtakes on increasingly high stakes for our children, our educators, and ourschools, it behooves us to know everything we can about assessments. So,before you sharpen those No. 2 pencils, click and read the full story inthe April/May issue of Edutopia:http://www.edutopia.org/magazine/ed1article.php?id=art_1267&issue=apr_05