L to J Newsletter July 2006

July, 2006

1. The LtoJ process spreads from educator to educator. The following story illustrates this point. I have been invited several times to address educators in Peru, Indiana. The superintendent, Tom McKaig, invited educators from the neighboring school district -- Maconaquah. In the sessions was a teacher, Dan McCalley who taught the LtoJ process to his friend Judy. Judy teaches the CISCO course at the high school. Judy wrote to Dan the following e-mail, used here with Judy's permission.

Dan

Just wanted to share my success story with you.

I just gave my final exam to my class where I was doing the L to J this semester. It is an on-line final, and they are required to score 80% to graduate from the class. (These were guidelines dictated to me by Cisco.)

I am happy to report that all my students scored 80% or higher! -- even my slackers in the class.

After the exam, I asked them what they thought attributed to the class success -- they all said the weekly quizzes. I had to laugh -- some of them said they never scored very well on the weekly quizzes, but it all came together on the final exam.

Needless to say, I am really proud of them. Thank you so much for your insight and your help. I certainly appreciate what you did for me!!

Judy

(note: The CISCO final is an on-line, internationally normed, exam. The standards are similar to those set by the College Board for AP courses.)

For more information on the Cisco story , e-mail Dan McCaulley, mccaulleyd@mail.maconaquah.k12.in.us.

2. Marty Shudak, K-8 Curriculum Coordinator for the Council Bluffs, Iowa School District has given permission for readers of this newsletter to access the elementary math quizzes Council Bluffs has prepared for teachers in their district. These weekly quizzes can be downloaded in either Microsoft Word to print, or in Microsoft Power Point to project. Much thanks to Marty and the Council Bluffs teachers for putting this together. Here are the directions Marty sent:

For the quizzes, just go to www.cbcsd.org, click on the "staff" button, then scroll down to the DDI Section and click. Once there find the quizzes...some are in power point and some in hard copy. The password is "mathquizzes" no space or quotation marks. (The password for answers are "teachertools" ...again no spaces or quotation marks.) If you want the facts quizzes, the password for those are "mathfacts".

3. It is very difficult for Americans to not view education as a contest. For example, in October of 2005, the results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed that the United States 4th and 8th graders improved in mathematics. However, the press coverage did not communicate this to the public. This is demonstrated by the two attached documents. The first is the article from the Arizona Republic and the second is a scatter overlay for NAEP results in Arizona.

The dots are all of the 50 states. The line that joins the dots is to highlight Arizona's progress. The public did not learn that the US improved as a nation and that Arizona was improving along with the rest of the US.

I have made the scatter overlay for every state. If you would like a state scatter overlay, please send me an e-mail at Lee@LtoJConsulting.com and request your particular state.

4. All prior newsletters and attachments are now posted on the LtoJ Consulting website, www.ltojconsulting.com.

Lee Jenkins, Lee@LtoJConsulting.com