Education

Pearson, the British publishing company, has developed a test for English as a second language, seeking to compete with two nonprofit groups that currently dominate that fast-growing market.
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The company plans to announce Tuesday that it will start selling the Pearson Test of English Academic in October.

It will compete with the Test of English as a Foreign Language, or Toefl, which is managed by an American organization, the Educational Testing Service, and with the International English Language Testing System, or Ielts, run by a British-Australian group.

Pearson estimates that about two million such tests are taken annually, mostly by business-school applicants and job seekers. With demand surging in places like India and China, the number of tests taken has doubled over the last four years, Pearson says.

Pearson said prices of its test would range from $150 to $210, depending on the country, roughly in line with its competitors. That means such tests, over all, generate several hundred million dollars in annual revenue.

“You can see why it’s a significant operation for the existing nonprofit operators and why it’s so attractive to us,” said Mark Anderson, president of Pearson Language Tests. “It’s a fairly commercial, competitive market already. We’re going to make it more so.”

Pearson says it has commitments to recognize its test results, or is in the process of getting them, from 770 educational programs. Ielts says its test is recognized by nearly 6,000 organizations.

Pearson said it would use computers rather than humans to grade its test, reducing the waiting time for results. ERIC PFANNER

COMMACK, N.Y. — The back-to-school packets sent to all 7,800 students here in this hamlet on Long Island’s North Shore grew thicker each year with dozens of pages of notices, fliers and forms — adding up to more than $12,000 in postage alone last year.
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But this year, amid a lingering recession and increasing online activity, school officials decided to stop the madness. Teachers and principals were given strict instructions: Limit mailings to a single, first-class envelope per student — and post the overflow on the district’s Web site, in a newly created back-to-school section. The savings: $9,000 in stamps plus $12,000 in salaries for clerks who used to spend up to two weeks assembling the packets.

And, for parents like Debra Miller, a shrinking pile of paperwork to keep up with.

“Since the kids have been in school, there’s never been a pile less than 12 inches high on my kitchen counter,” said Mrs. Miller, a mother of two, who shoves the unsightly pile into a cabinet when she has company. “I can never get out from under the pile, and I’m not alone. We all talk about it.”

School districts across the country are aggressively cutting back on the avalanche of paper sent home, trying to exploit the much-cheaper communication channel of the Internet. While saving money is often the main motivation, some districts are finding that going paperless has other advantages, like eliminating classroom distractions, informing parents more quickly about test results or swine flu outbreaks, and promoting environmentalism.

Schools in the Chicago suburb of Naperville have adopted paperless policies and begun a “take back the backpack” campaign to cut down on fliers handed out to students. School boards from Georgia to Arizona have switched to paperless meetings, where online agendas and minutes have replaced inch-thick information packets.

Scarsdale Middle School will no longer print report cards this year — grades will be available through a secure section of its Web site called the parent portal, which officials said would save $1,000 annually and, they hope, reduce peer pressure over comparing grades. The principal, Michael McDermott, also e-mails his welcome-back-to-school letters, personalizing each one with a student’s name and homeroom assignment, rather than the generic “Dear sixth grader” printed notes of the past.

In Ridgewood, N.J., the district’s electronic newsletter includes happenings from school board meetings that would have missed the print deadlines. And a listserv for emergency information like school closings is a modern version of the classic school phone tree. “We’re not on there all the time,” said Debra Anderson, a spokeswoman. “We take a more conservative approach to using it so that when people do hear from us, they are more likely to open up.”

But the demise of the time-honored tradition of letters stuffed in backpacks has worried educators and parents who say that some families still do not have regular access to the Internet and may miss important information — and not even know it.

So districts like William Floyd, also on Long Island, have moved cautiously online, posting class assignments and schedules on its Web site but continuing to mail printed copies home.

“We’re doing both, with the idea we’ll eventually do less paper,” said Paul Casciano, superintendent of the district, where nearly 40 percent of the 9,700 students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.

Dr. Casciano said that many students go online because information is posted several weeks earlier there, but that a few parents expressed concerns about the district’s move this fall to an electronic version of the school newsletter, Floyd Features, (estimated savings: $27,000) and electronic notifications about registered sex offenders who live in the area ($25,000). In response, the district will continue to make printed copies available at school offices, but will not send them home.

Here in Commack, district officials said that less than 5 percent of students qualify for free and reduced lunches and nearly everyone had access to a computer. The drive to reduce paperwork began in April with Backpack News, a section of the district’s Web site for posting information about scholarships, activities, PTA fund-raisers and Little League sign-ups. Previously, such fliers were collected at each school’s main office, then handed out by classroom teachers once a week to students.

“Many parents didn’t see that paper anyway because it stayed in their lockers, and at the end of the year, we were wading through paper,” said James A. Feltman, the superintendent, who added that handing them out took time away from instruction — by his count, as much as 20 minutes a week, or 800 minutes a year. “That’s at least two full days of instructional time,” he said.

While Commack officials say they have received few complaints, some PTA leaders worry that parents can more easily ignore electronic pleas for membership or fund-raising now that they have to find them on the Web site.

Still, Maryann Montella, vice president of the PTA at Commack Middle School, said she and other parents had been asking to go paperless because “we saw the waste of paper.” The PTA would typically send out 2,000 fliers for a fund-raiser, and get back no more than 100 responses, she noted.

The electronic mailings have proved popular with computer-savvy students. Erin Storck, 12, who will be a seventh grader at Commack Middle School, said that she used to misplace the sports permission form after opening the back-to-school packet. Now she can just print it out whenever she needs one.

“With fliers, you have to go through tons of paper just to find one thing,” she said, “and this way you just click on a link and it says exactly what you need.”

Stephanie Miller, who will be in fourth grade at Burr Intermediate School, said she was happy that the pile of paperwork on the kitchen counter was now about half its usual size.

“It saves trees,” she said. “You used to get a piece of paper every day, and it kept getting bigger.” WINNIE HU

Imagine a classroom tailored in accordance with the likes and dislikes of your child. In your son’s class competition, physical activity and choice activities dominate the learning environment—even for math and language arts!! In your daughter’s class, she and her friends sit in groups; they collaborate and have the opportunity to be creative and inquisitive without the distraction of rambunctious little boys. These are the characteristics of the single-gender learning environment.

The classroom is alive with movement, noise and learning. There are 22 six and seven year old boys that appear to be not only engaged in active learning, but totally absorbed in the learning process. It’s as if the classroom and the activity are teaching and the teacher is just facilitating. This teacher is the conductor in a great symphony of learning. What makes this orchestra unique is that it is an all-boys class in a single gender experiment.

The lesson for the time is math. All the boys are seated on a mat, on their colored squares eagerly awaiting their turn to catch the ball and answer the question. The teacher tosses the ball. A student catches the koosh ball and strains to see the card that the teacher is holding. The tension is mounting as the student calculates on his fingers. The excitement in the other boys is also building to a breaking point just as he blurts out the answer. The boys and the teacher erupt in congratulations at having answered correctly. The student stands and hurls a MLB pitch at this dediated single-gender teacher. All hands are up pleading for a chance to answer and pitch.

The room is busy with random activity. The subject is science. Some boys are huddled in groups or as individuals reading science related books. The teacher and a few other boys are in the center of the class room assembling a science project on planets consisting of inflatable planets previously prepared. He periodically sends a boy away and calls for another boy to help from elsewhere in the room. This single-gender teacher manages to lead the boys through the assembly, questioning them about the size, color, unique characteristics and placement of each planet. Once complete, all of the other boys leave their satellite activities and gather around to marvel at the class project.

There are boys engaged in computer math and chess games, boys working with blocks, boys reading and others doing other miscellaneous activities. The room hums with busy activity. Periodically there are requests for the teacher to check out something made or just to hear about something the boy did or wants to do. The conversation is causal and comfortable. Both the teacher and students engage in exchanges of experiences and ideas.

This teacher, having been trained in single-gender strategies, has a special connection and understanding that allows him to orchestrate such a masterful learning environment. It is as if he fools all of those rambunctious little boys into thinking they are supposed to be having fun instead of learning. The classroom runs like a well-oiled engine. There are occasional instances of redirection, but no raised voices, no attitude standoffs and no discipline referrals—just learning.

Engaging elementary students and helping them to develop more positive attitudes and perspectives on school is essential in helping them to become successful in school and in life. No, there is no one-size-fits-all prescription in education. Single-gender education is not for everyone, which is the reason that the new legal guidelines on single-gender education mandate that parents have a choice. However, research and anecdotal reports certainly paint single-gender education as an effective instructional strategy for many children. You know your child and the learning environment that will best suit their individual personality--read, experience, question and investigate. Katherine Bradley, M.ED, ED.S.