Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/507087
April/May 2015 isea.org • ISEA Communiqué 2 BRIEFS NEWS Executive Board election for multi-cultural member The Iowa State Education Association will be conducting an election for the Multicultural member representative May 1 through June 1, 2015, on the ISEA voting website, www.iseavotesite.org. Multicultural members may vote for the nominated candidate of their choice by going to the website www.iseavotesite.org beginning May 1, 2015. By entering your Member ID (found on your Association Membership card or Communiqué mailing label) and the first four letters of your surname, the website will direct you to your ballot. The website will remain open for voting through June 1, 2015, with the successful candidate assuming office in July. Task force gives new science standards recommendation The Iowa Science Standards Review Team recommended the adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards, with modifications, as Iowa's next science standards. The Next Generation Science Standards is the name of science standards developed by 26 states, including Iowa, that all states can consider adopting and adapting to meet their needs. Academic standards represent consistent expectations for what students should know and be able to do from kindergarten through 12th grade. All of Iowa's academic standards are being reviewed, starting with science, as part of Gov. Terry Branstad's Executive Order 83. The review team's recommendation proposes modifying the Next Generation Science Standards for Iowa so that only the performance expectations section is used, rather than the entire standards document. Members said the performance expectations are easier to understand, especially for teachers in subject areas other than science, and allow for more local control because they are broader than other parts of the standards document. The team's recommendation also proposes modifying the Next Generation Science Standards for Iowa by separating them by grade level for kindergarten through 8th grade and organizing the high school standards into a span of grades. In addition to committee work, the team took into consideration roughly 2,600 comments that came to the Iowa Department of Education in February. Officials at the Department of Education reported that the majority of respondents were in favor of the Next Generation Science Standards. The recommendation now goes to the Iowa State Board of Education. Partnership offers free media literacy tools The Partnership for a Drug Free Iowa has produced a media literacy curriculum targeted at children in grades 5, 6, 7 and 8. The program informs young people how marketing and advertising can influence them and the decisions they make about drug and alcohol use. Partnership officials have also produced a letter to every school superintendent in Iowa notifying them of the new program, which consists of a 28-minute DVD. If you are interested in learning more about the program for your school, you can contact the Partnership for a Drug Free Iowa at info@drugfreeiowa.org Working Families Summit Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich will keynote the Working Families Summit on Saturday, May 16, at Iowa State University in Ames. The summit is designed to put higher wages and other working family issues – such as child care, paid medical leave and education - in the forefront of public debate in advance of the 2016 Iowa precinct caucuses. "We can help to shape the presidential debate for 2016 to focus more on issues related to working families," Ken Sagar, president of the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, said. "I want to see broader understanding of the number of issues from raising wages, to supporting families, to protecting civil rights, so that we all understand each other's issues and can support each other." The summit is free and open to the public, but space is limited. Additional information and registration can be found at www.progressiowa.org Campaign to Fulfill Promises to Special Needs A coalition of education groups launched a campaign to urge Congress to fulfill the promise it made to special needs students 40 years ago. Back then, federal lawmakers transformed how we educate our special needs students with the passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). They also committed to pay 40 percent of the per pupil cost of educating students with special needs. But the federal government has never met even half of that obligation to the states and the students and families who rely on the critical services and programs that public schools provide. The chronic underfunding of IDEA has forced states and districts to cut elsewhere to fulfill the law's mandates. The federal government's unfulfilled promise cost the states a collective $17 billion for the current school year. Go to educationvotes.nea.org/fundidea/ to urge your members of Congress to keep the promise. Access to Books Major and independent book publishers are making 10,000 of their most popular titles available for free to low-income students through e-books, under a new program announced by President Barack Obama. The books will be available through e-readers and other electronic devices. Teacher Attrition Study Roughly 17 percent of the teachers who began their careers in 2007 or 2008 are no longer in the profession according to a nationally representative study of 2,000 teachers. But the study by the National Center for Education Statistics – which can be found online here: https://depts.washington. edu/ctpmail/PDFs/Shortage-RI-09-2003.pdf - also shows the teacher drop off rate varies whe n factors of salary, class sizes and the reduction of student discipline problems are factored in. Indeed, one of the conclusions from the study is teachers who were making $40,000 a year or more were less likely to leave the profession than those who weren't.