University of Washington
  • C&I LECTURE | Faculty

    "Beyond Beliefs" - Lani Horn discusses her research into the role of teacher communities in overcoming inequality ...

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  • US NEWS | #7 2008

    The College of Education rose to seventh place in this year's U.S. News & World Report rankings of graduate schools ...

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News & Events
In the News

For a complete list of COE events, visit our online calendar.

Scientifically Valid Prevention Programs Cut Rates Of Juvenile Delinquency

Science Daily
June 24, 2008

College of Education professor Bob Abbott's joint research with Social Development Research Group scientists on juvenile delinquency is published in Journal of Adolescent Health. The study finds that seventh-grade students in U.S. communities that have programs to decrease juvenile delinquency have a lower rate of delinquency than towns without such programs. More»

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Henry Eugene Thomson, College of Education alum, 1928-2008

Seattle P-I
June 17, 2008

Henry Eugene Thomson, alumnus of the College of Education, has passed away. A teacher, coach and member of the Washington Community College Hall of Fame, Thomson will be remembered for his inspired teaching, both in the classroom and on the playing field . More»

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Facing sophomore slump: Adviser has been there

University Week
June 5, 2008

Kurt Xyst, a graduate student in the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Program, blends his professional work as a UW academic advisor with his academic inquiry at the College of Education. More»

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UW football players reach out to community

Seattle Times
May 22, 2008

Come this fall, Washington Huskies backup left tackle Mark Armelin will be counted on to push around opposing defensive linemen who mirror his listed Locker and Williams at EEUmeasurements of 6 feet 5, 295 pounds.

But Wednesday morning, the redshirt freshman was merely a pushover for a 6-year-old girl who maybe weighs 40 pounds tops.

Armelin was one of six players who visited the Experimental Education Unit at the UW on Wednesday as part of the football team's two-day "Blitz the Sound" community outreach event. More»

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College of Education begins sweeping changes in its teacher training program

University Week
May 8, 2008

tep students at centro de la razaThe UW College of Education is unveiling sweeping changes in teacher training, aimed at giving future teachers more extensive real-world experience — especially in low-income and disadvantaged areas — and encouraging a more holistic view of helping children learn.

The changes come from a five-year, collegewide effort to better prepare UW-trained educators to teach in diverse and high-need schools, and to focus more directly on issues of equity and academic excellence for all students. More»

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UW educators evaluate standardized tests

UW Daily
May 1, 2008

For Catherine Taylor, an associate professor of educational psychology who is currently working on education proposals for the state legislature, the WASL is “perfectly acceptable.”

“It’s not perfect, but it’s better than most,” she said. “I think we have a really good test. To me, of the options we have, I wouldn’t go back.” More»

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Washington Weekend reception and lecture: Ellen Brantlinger

Friday, April 25
6:30 p.m. Reception, 7p.m. Lecture
University Book Store

A special event at the UW Book Store where Ellen Brantlinger will discuss her book, Dividing Classes: How the Middle Class Negotiates & Rationalizes School Advantage. Open to the general public, the event will begin with a wine and cheese reception at 6:30 p.m.

A “take-no-prisoners ethnography” according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Ellen Brantlinger’s Dividing Classes: How the Middle Class Negotiates and Rationalizes School Advantage combines observation and interviews in an analysis of the way that social class structure affects educational success. More»

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Early Childhood and Family Studies program: Reaching students early with quality education

University Week
April 10, 2008

Anny Broom with studentsThe new College of Education undergraduate degree path in Early Childhood and Family Studies answers a longtime need in a creative and interdisciplinary way, its creators say.

The program, various versions of which have been under consideration at the UW for several years, was approved by the Washington state Higher Education Coordinating Board last December. It began with a "soft launch" in fall, took its first few students in winter quarter and has about 30 students already participating for spring quarter. More»

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Get your Gaelic on with Oran nan Car

University Week
April 10, 2008

KentAround a university campus, it's not unusual to have an esoteric interest, but not all such interests are entertaining to other people. Two UW staffers will be bringing their esoteric interest to the Ethnic Cultural Theater stage on April 19. The interest is Scottish Gaelic, and the two are members of a musical group that performs mostly in that language.

Kent Jewell sings tenor in the group, called Oran nan Car, and Corby Ingold sings bass and plays the bodhran (drum) and concertina. By day, Jewell is the area secretary supervisor in Educational Psychology, while Ingold is a program assistant in Anatomic Pathology, but every Friday night they join their fellow group members to sing songs from Scotland. More»

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The 2008 Samuel E. Kelly Lecture

University Week
April 3, 2008

Wednesday, April 23, 2008
6 p.m. Reception, 7 p.m. Lecture
Henry Art Gallery
University of Washington Campus

Black Students, Campus Activism, and the Reform of Higher Education: History and Legacy uwom&d logois the title of this year's Samuel E. Kelly Lecture, set for 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 23, in the Henry Art Gallery. Sponsored by the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity, the speech is by Joy Ann Williamson , associate professor in the College of Education.

In the 1960s and 1970s, American higher educational institutions became contested terrain in a way they never had before. Williamson will examine both the history and legacy of the battle between higher educational institutions and state governments, between administrators and students, and between students and other students over first and fourteenth amendment rights, and academic freedom. More»

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Multicultural Education expert James Banks to give major Address on educating diverse populations in global world

April 3, 2008 – James Banks, the Kerry and Linda Killinger Professor of Diversity Studies and director of the Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington,was the third featured speaker in the annual Walter Ridley Distinguished Lecture Series at the University of Virginia.

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California district makes instructional leadership a priority

Education Week
March 12, 2008

Education Week featured an article about the Center for Educational Leadership’s leadership coaching with principals and central office staff in Norwalk-La Mirada School District. The article, “California District Makes Instructional Leadership a Priority,” focuses on CEL’s district partnership theory that teachers’ classroom instruction improves with the support of principals who are effective instructional leaders.

Full article available on CEL’s website, www.k-12leadership.org.

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Colleges combine for new minor in Education, Learning and Society

UW News and Information
February 21, 2008

The creation of an education minor is no minor event.

For the first time, UW undergraduates will be able to choose a set of
courses that will lead to a concentration in education -- specifically,
in education, learning and society -- in a program developed by the
College of Education and the College of Arts and Sciences. Among the
ideas that students can explore in classes are the scientific view of
learning, using moral and ethical standards to understand equity,
issues surrounding diversity, and the concept of citizenship. More»

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John Bransford leads Young Audience's National Literacy Research Project

KLTV Jacksonville
February 11, 2008

We blended arts and literacy, sparkle and learning science, action and academics to capture the best of both worlds," observed Dr. John Bransford, leader of the design team at the University of Washington. "Students learn in concert with one another, practice literacy skills with both texts and arts activities through cycles of creation, reflection and revision, and they put it all together in a presentation of the art and literacy they have learned." More »

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Picking the perfect kindergarten drives many parents up the wall

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
February 10, 2008

The February gloom has descended on Seattle, and that means parents have another part-time job and full-time headache, complete with spreadsheets and overtime. They must choose a kindergarten by the end of the month...

"I would tell parents to relax, and the other thing is to think about their kids," said Ilene Schwartz, an education professor at the University of Washington. "Do the teachers look happy?" More »

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Teachers remember life lessons

Northwest Asian Weekly
January 12, 2008

Last Nov. 16, six retired women and a few of their husbands met for lunch at the University of Washington Club on the UW campus in Seattle. All of the women were Japanese American teachers who had spent much of their careers in the Seattle Public School system. For them, the lunch was, in a way, a reunion.

They had been brought together by Dr. Nathalie Gehrke, a professor of education at UW, and Julie Kang, her graduate assistant. In 2005, Gehrke had received a small grant from the University of Washington’s Institute for Ethnic Studies. She and Kang wanted to take oral histories of K-12 teachers of Asian descent. These women had been their subjects. More »

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CIRGE Study: Ph.Ds need more skills

KPLU Public Radio
January 2, 2008

Graduate programs take years to teach students everything they need to know about their discipline. But a new study from the University of Washington says graduate programs need to teach students even more. Not just how to be scholars but how to live in the real world. More »

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UW College of Education selected for Leonore Annenberg/Woodrow Wilson Fellowship

New York Times
December 20, 2007

Taking the prestigious Rhodes Scholarships as a model, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in Princeton is creating a fellowship program that it hopes will lure top students into teaching and transform teacher education in the United States... The Woodrow Wilson program will offer about 33 national Leonore Annenberg Teaching Fellowships a year, with $30,000 stipends, for students to attend graduate education programs at Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia and the University of Washington. Applications will be available next year for enrollment in fall 2009. More»

Washington Post»

Inside Higher Ed»

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Dean Wasley at Ellbogen Teaching and Learning Symposium

Laramie Boomerang

Dean Patricia Wasley was a guest speaker at the first Ellbogen Teaching and Learning Symposium at the University of Wyoming.

Laramie Boomerang»

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Philip Bell gives Keynote for School’s Out Washington’s SOAR with Science Conference

October 4, 2007

Philip Bell gave the keynote address for the SOAR with Science Back to School Mini Conference, sponsored by School’s Out Washington, on October 4, 2007. SOAR with Science sees after-school science programs as a way to equalize access to science among underrepresented groups of students. Bell discussed the consensus report “Learning in and out of School in Diverse Environments: Life-Long, Life-Wide, Life-Deep” that was a product of the diversity panel convened by LIFE and the Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington. He also discussed findings from his group’s ethnographic study documenting children’s in and out of school learning about science and technology. More »

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LIFE Center Announcemnet: study on software usage and needs for homeschoolers

Researchers at the University of Washington have begun a study of how software, including websites, are currently being used to help teach homeschoolers and how software is perhaps not addressing the needs of homeschool students. This is currently being done with a web-based survey for USA home educators. More »

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Ilene Schwartz discusses her recent research on autism

As part of an ongoing series, the College of Education is profiling its faculty members, asking each of them the same set of questions. This interview features Ilene Schwartz. Her research interests are in the area of early childhood special education. Specifically, she is interested in understanding what instructional strategies and environmental arrangements are most effective in facilitating the learning of young children with autism and related disabilities. More »

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James Banks: "Diversity and Citizenship Education in Global Times"

October 2, 2007

Dr. James Banks recently delivered the annual Tisch Lecture at Columbia University's Teachers College.

Press Room: TC Community»

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College Alumni to tour Jordan

August 1, 2007

Sixth-grade social studies teacher Tina Anima has always urged her students to embrace new experiences.

This summer, she's practicing what she preaches.

The McClure Middle School teacher and four other Washington educators will set off Friday for a nearly monthlong, all-expenses-paid trip to Jordan.

There, they'll meet up with five top Jordanian teachers for a whirlwind of sightseeing, classroom tours and visits with officials -- perhaps even a meeting with Queen Rania.

More»

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Cerebral palsy student to graduate with UW doctorate

King 5.com
February 9, 2007

This year the University of Washington will confer degrees on more than 10,000 students. One of those students receiving an advanced degree from the psychology department is Kristin Rytter, a remarkable woman with a remarkable achievement. Rytter’s professors call her brilliant and funny. The world calls her disabled - severely disabled - by cerebral palsy. And after nearly two decades of work at the UW, she’s happy if you called her "doctor." More»

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Education Professor Frances Contreras among NW Asian Weekly’s rising stars

University Week
January 18, 2007

Frances Contreras, UW assistant professor of Education Leadership and Policy Studies, will be among those honored by the newspaper Northwest Asian Weekly in its Women of Color Empowered luncheon series. Contreras was chosen because of the effect she has had in increasing the visibility of the Latino community on the UW campus and for helping to recruit Latinas and female Hispanic students. More»

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A Cultural Approach to Education: Dana Arviso

Campaign UW Newsletter
Fall 2006

Dana Arviso faced a daunting task. Just out of college, she was asked to design a new curriculum for the young children she was teaching on the Bishop Paiute reservation in California. Having grown up on reservations in California and Arizona, Arviso was familiar with the challenges facing Native American students when it came to literacy. She knew that the culture's rich tradition of oral history did not always translate to strong literacy skills in a traditional school environment. More»

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55-mile swim around Lake Washington takes 37 hours

Seattle Times
August 28, 2006

For most people, a weekend swim means spending an hour or two splashing about in the lake. For Tyler Patterson, it meant swimming for 37 hours, at times chasing a glow stick through milfoil in the dead of night. The swim was a fundraiser for the Experimental Educational Unit, a school at the University of Washington for young children with disabilities. More»

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Educational treatments for autism

KUOW Broadcast
August 8, 2006

Professor Ilene Schwartz was a featured guest on KUOW’s Weekday program. Schwartz joined host Steve Scher in a conversation about autism. More»

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Banks book wins stellar reviews

University Week
July 20, 2006

Education Professor James Banks spent the past school year as a Spencer Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, where he also finished a new book that was published to excellent reviews.

Read the complete article»

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To what are we pledging our allegiance?

Seattle PI
Op-ed by Walter Parker
July 4, 2006

On each Fourth of July at the Seattle Center Flag Pavilion, hundreds of immigrants become United States citizens. It happens with an oath and a pledge. The Oath of Allegiance is recited first. This is when the citizens-to-be declare that they renounce allegiance to the country from which they came. Then comes the Pledge of Allegiance, in which they promise loyalty to ... . To what?

Read the complete article»

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Public schools are hotbeds of democracy

Seattle PI
Op-ed by Walter Parker
March 9, 2006

Democracies don’t materialize out of thin air. They are created — and maintained and deepened — by citizens. If citizens are to safeguard civil liberties, elect wise officials, become wise officials themselves, make sense of the news and negotiate public policy with other citizens in an ever more diverse society, "their minds," as Thomas Jefferson said, "need to be improved to a certain degree."

Read the complete article»

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Class gives credit for solving real-world problems

UWeek
March 2, 2006

Who is responsible for addressing the epic problems of our age? What is society to do about homelessness, poverty, disease, discrimination, addiction, suicide, injustice and other widespread afflictions? . . . Lots of questions, to be sure, but these are the substantial matters being taken up by Eugene Edgar, a professor of special education, and his Winter Quarter honors seminar, "Public Problems: Who is Responsible and How Should They Be Solved?"

Read the complete article»

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Video Traces: A flexible new medium for instruction

UWeek
January 12, 2006

For educators — and coaches, directors and others without network feeds and instant replays at their fingertips — wouldn’t it be great if there was a program to enable people to capture still or moving images, annotate them by pointing with text or a spoken-word audio commentary and share them?

Reed Stevens, an associate professor of Educational Psychology and part of the leadership of the College of Education’s LIFE Center on the Science of Learning, has created just such a tool. It’s called Video Traces, and it’s a bit like a sports-style Telestrator on steroids, created to ramp up communication and information sharing without increasing technological difficulty or complexity.

Read the complete article»

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Teaching alone in a flat world

Seattle PI
Richard W. Riley and Patricia A. Wasley, Guest Columnists
December 15, 2005

As parents all over Washington visit their children’s schools to attend holiday concerts and parties, we should consider what else is going on in our schools. Our biggest concern is that too many good teachers who are making such an important difference in the lives of children won’t be back next year.

Read the complete article»

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A legacy uncovered: Education prof finds ‘treasure trove’ of teachers’ memories

University Week
December 1, 2005

Sometimes a research project evolves to become more than the sum of its parts. Even a small, fairly dry inquiry can bloom with context and meaning and begin unlocking larger truths -- about who we are, or have been, or are becoming. Occasionally.

That’s what appears to be happening with Education Professor Nathalie Gehrke’s research studying cultural factors that can affect k-12 teachers of Japanese heritage. It might mean more work for Gehrke and others in time, but the 27-year teaching and research veteran couldn’t be happier, or more fascinated.

Read the complete article»

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Doctoral programs to get global look

UWeek
November 10, 2005

The UW has convened a group of international innovators in doctoral education to explore the forces that are driving change around the globe and the forms that innovation is taking.

Experts from 14 countries participated in the first conference, held this September. They plan to create a worldwide network which will explore how local and global forces are causing changes in how doctoral students are educated, and to develop policy recommendations with broad application.

The conference was hosted by the UW’s Center for Innovation and Research in Graduate Education (CIRGE), which is directed by Maresi Nerad, associate graduate dean, whose interest in this subject goes back to her own postsecondary educational experience, which began in Germany and was completed at UC Berkeley.

Read the complete article»

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Dangerous Behavior

Weekday segment, KUOW
November 7, 2005

Listen to an archived interview on KUOW featuring College of Education Professor James Mazza as part of a guest panel on dangerous behavior.

Dangerous behavior among pre-teens caught the attention of the media when a few middle school students died playing the "choking game." Students were using anything from a jump rope to a karate belt to choke themselves with the intent of getting high. Young adolescences are also experimenting with other highs by using inhalants, drugs, and alcohol. Other dangerous behaviors include sex at a young age and reenactments of treacherous stunts seen on television. What causes this behavior to happen; stress, depression, lack of responsibility, or lack of parent involvement? What can we do as parents and mentors to help these children?

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COE Featured in UW Campaign

October, 2005

A television spot featuring the College of Education is airing on KING 5, KONG 6/16 and the Northwest Cable News network this fall. Radio ads about the program will begin airing on KOMO 1000, a web ad will appear on the UW website later in October, and print ads are scheduled to appear in the Seattle Times on 11/2 and 11/9, as well as the Husky Football program. The College was one of only three schools on campus selected to be featured in this phase of the UW’s Creating Futures promotional campaign.

Read article on UW Creating Futures website, Technology Infusion: UW College of Education Increases Outreach and Updates Teacher Preparation

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WASL: Community’s help crucial, scholars say

Seattle PI
September 1, 2005

There is no silver bullet, it’s not rocket science, but it does take a village to get a classroom of students all the way through their years of study to graduation. "We talk about the achievement gap," said Bill McDiarmid, Boeing professor of teacher-education at the University of Washington. "We ought to be talking about the resource gap."

Read the complete article»

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No good way to interpret laying off translators

Seattle PI
August 31, 2005

A friendly teacher and maybe a principal or community volunteer have been showing up at families’ front doors actually caring that students connect on that first day of classes. And parents will feel comfortable as well.

Such home visits can be lifelines to immigrant families. To them ominous notices arriving in the mail, rumors about threatened school closures, and the arcane language of enrollment forms can loom like a mystifying muddle.

That’s why Margery Ginsberg, a faculty member in the University of Washington College of Education, was so keen on the visits made this summer by her "advocacy teams" of 24 doctoral students aspiring to be school superintendents.

Read the complete article»

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Versatile, fun laptop is the Apple of my eye

Seattle PI
August 20, 2005

. . . An iBook is also the right tool for creating photo slide shows on the fly — sort of like this project I heard about: The University of Washington College of Education held a two-day workshop for educators to share teaching and leadership strategies. Someone took photographs during the sessions that captured strategies in action, and then used iPhoto and iMovie to put together a slide show that was presented at the farewell banquet.

Read the complete article»

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Autistic teens get help honing their social skills

Seattle Times
August 15, 2005

Crouched on the floor of a chaotic classroom, James Farmer encourages a 5-year-old boy with autism to fit pegs onto a puzzle board. The boy cannot speak and has difficulty focusing on the task at hand. "Keep going, that’s good," Farmer says as the boy begins to piece the puzzle together by himself.

Working with autistic kids is difficult. The neurological disorder disrupts connections in the brain that allow people to interact and communicate.

But Farmer, 15, has an unusual qualification for his summer job as an assistant teacher for developmentally disabled children at the University of Washington. He has autism, too, and knows how frustrating it can be, especially in school.

Read the complete article»

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Microsoft grant to UW, others, will help K12 teachers

University Week
July 21, 2005

Expanding connections and resources for new K12 teachers is at the heart of a two-year, $500,000 grant from Microsoft that the UW will share with three other universities, partnering with public school districts.

The UW will receive about $100,000 over the two-year period through Microsoft’s award to the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, the commission announced recently. The money will go to scale up its Teachers Learning in Networked Communities project, which provides online communities that support and offer professional development for teachers from their preparation programs through the certification process.

The project will provide means for facilitated online discussions, individual and group mentoring and a searchable database of education resources. The project has the goals of improving teacher retention and growing greater partnerships within and across schools and communities. The grant adds the UW and three other institutions partnering with school districts to four such pre-existing partnerships. The grants are part of Microsoft’s US Partners in Learning initiative. For more information about the initiative, visit online at www.microsoft.com/education. For more information about the nonprofit National Commission on Teaching and America’s Learning, visit www.nctaf.org.

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Teacher turnover an issue

Seattle Times
March 30, 2005

Schools with high poverty levels and low standardized-test scores lost more teachers, on average, than other schools in the Edmonds School District, according to a statewide study on teacher retention. Edmonds was among 20 school districts in Washington whose personnel records were examined for the study, sponsored by the nonprofit Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession and conducted by University of Washington researchers.

The findings suggest that what was once a big-city-school problem — high teacher turnover — is also an issue in districts such as Edmonds, which has seen an increase in the number of poor and non-English-speaking students over the past decade.

Read the complete article»

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Teacher training paid off, UW research says

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
March 8, 2005

For Claudia Allan, the special training she received in her first year as a teacher was an "incredible experience." For the more experienced Victoria Romero, the training was "one of those really defining moments" of her teaching career.

But the program that Allan and Romero participated in nearly 20 years ago wasn’t really about them: It was designed to measure the worth of certain elementary-school teaching strategies in steering students away from the pitfalls of adolescence and toward success in school and on the job. According to a report published this year by University of Washington researchers, it worked.

Read the complete article»

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Banks bridges education, equality

Seattle Times
March 3, 2005

Schools cannot close the achievement gap between white and minority students without addressing prejudice and cultural differences as part of reform efforts, the head of the University of Washington’s Center for Multicultural Education says. "Putting people in small schools is not sufficient. You have to get in there and transform relationships," said James Banks, who, over the past 40 years, has written or edited 20 books and more than 100 articles on race and education.

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Inside the autism treatment maze

MSNBC
February 23, 2005

As part of a week at NBC focusing on autism, there was an article featuring the Experimental Education Unit, with COE Professor Ilene Schwartz doing a voiceover for an audio slide show segment.

Read the complete article» (To see the audio slide show segment featuring the EEU, click on "audio slide show", then click on "ABA therapy.")

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Why Do Teachers Quit?

Weekday segment, KUOW
December 20, 2004

Listen to an archived interview on KUOW, entitled "Why do Teachers Quit?" Guests included Bill McDiarmid from Teachers for a New Era; Sandra Coan, a former teacher who taught Kindergarten for two years and team-taught 5th grade for a year at Van Asselt Elementary; and Elizabeth Sinclair, a 4th and 5th grade teacher at AE2 for 14 years.

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Prep School

Columns
December, 2004

Sure, the dropout rate among high school students is troubling. But an equally frightening statistic is the number of young teachers who leave the profession every year. The national dropout rate among teachers is nearly 50 percent over five years. If that pattern continues, half of the teachers who entered the profession this September will leave before they finish their fifth year in the classroom.

But at the University of Washington, a new partnership between the College of Education and the College of Arts and Sciences is working to reverse this trend. Armed with a $5 million grant from the Carnegie Foundation, the two colleges have opened the Washington Center for Teaching and Learning.

Read the complete article»

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10 voices from afar singing a new song

Seattle Times
Sunday, September 12, 2004

Molo Care, a program started by Ed Taylor from the University of Washington College of Education, brought South Africa to Seattle in the form of this award-winning high-school choir, to let people see — and hear — firsthand what their support can do. School costs dollars their families seldom have. Their communities are shantytowns. Their options are few. It seems all they can do is sing and dream — and two days in the studio last week with Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder allowed them both.

Read the complete article»

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Taught to be principals: new principals join students returning to school

Seattle Times
Wednesday, September 08, 2004

Today, as 47,000 Seattle Public Schools students begin the 2004-05 school year, Veronica Gallardo and 28 other newly appointed principals will be starting afresh as well. Many have been groomed from within, either as assistant principals or like Gallardo as principal interns through the University of Washington’s Danforth Educational Leadership Program.

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