ACET, Inc. Blog

In conjunction with the Toyota Family Learning initiative, the National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL)is accepting applications for five three-year grants of $175,000, along with NCFL communications support and training, to develop services that engage or mentor families in learning together, as well as family service learning projects. Applicants may be schools (public or charter), libraries, community-based organizations, or any other organization that provides services to educational services to families, including children from 4 to 18 years of age, grandparents, parents, and legal guardians, as well as a high percentage of minority and/or low-income families in two or three unique sites. Preferred projects will adapt existing family engagement in education efforts to include family mentoring, interactive literacy activities between children and parents, service learning components, and parental training. Activities and experiences from these projects will be shared on the Toyota Family Learning Web site.

For complete information, please see the full RFP. Applications are due June 24, and successful grantees will be notified in July.

Energy company Westinghouse Electric is offering $1,000 grants to three schools for projects with a STEM-centered focus through its N-Visioning a Brighter Future initiative. Successful grantees will also receive an additional $2,000 for their respective science departments for general needs. Successful projects will directly involve students, incorporate community resources, and/or employ team-teaching or interdisciplinary strategies. Eligible applicants must be located in the United States and may be elementary, middle, or high schools. For complete information, please see the full RFP [opens PDF]. The deadline for applications is November 15.

Good Luck!

ACET Staff

Currently in use by 45 states, 4 territories, and the District of Columbia (and partially adopted by the State of Minnesota), Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are being adopted in addition to and in the place of other K-12 standards. What are they, where do they come from, and what does this mean for K-12 students going forward?

Common Core State Standards are a series of mathematic and English language arts benchmarks, organized by grade. They are state, rather than federally led or implemented initiatives, led by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association. For instance, if you click on a subsection of the standards on the CCSS in English Language Arts and you will see statements outlining what students in each grade ought to be able to perform. For example, kindergartners are expected to follow agreed-upon rules for a discussion and must be able to follow a conversation across multiple exchanges in the Speaking & Listening category. In the same category, 7^th graders are expected to be able to evaluate the sufficiency and the relevance of evidence given by a speaker. These standard ideas were researched and compared against existing state and international benchmarks before being released in 2010.

The intention of the CCSS is to unify K-12 assessment standards across the states, but also to require more of students than merely answering test questions by rote (they must also be able to explain why their answer is correct and how they arrived at it). The CCSS is intended to lead to better reasoning and problem solving skills by teaching several skills at a time within a larger question, rather than taking on a single skill at a time.

The effects of a massive, unified assessment system are very broad and wide-reaching. For example, the CCSS could define what makes a student “college ready”. Officials currently using the standards report an “unprecedented” level of collaboration and cooperation between post-secondary and K-12 educators as they work to examine the effect of the CCSS on the need for remedial coursework on students entering colleges and universities. In addition, current textbooks and other teaching materials may need to be adapted or reinvented in order to adhere to the standards. There is also currently no equivalency exam or modified version of the exam for students with special needs, and all students in a school must take the same CCSS assessment to have their results reported for accountability. The CCSS may be more rigorous than a given state’s previous standards, but they may be less rigorous than another state’s. There are also, as yet, no comprehensive standards with regard to social studies and sciences, so it is still up to individual states to determine what those standards ought to be.

Even as nationwide adoption of the CCSS seems near, attitudes seem to be changing about them. A belief persists that the CCSS is a federal effort to force socialized education on states without discussion through the No Child Left Behind Act, even though this is denounced as a myth on the CCSS website. The Republican National Committee has passed an anti-Common Core resolution, claiming that the CCSS is a violation of states’ rights. On the other side of the aisle, Democrats have pointed to evidence that CCSS testing is no better than previous state testing at determining student achievement, despite assurances to the contrary. Some states have begun to change their minds regarding standards adoption, and others have criticized poor or incomplete transitions to the new standards. The education package just passed by the State of Minnesota seems to be a step away from, rather than towards, full CCSS adoption. Add to this the current anxiety about testing and its validity, and unified national assessment standards start to seem much further off.

Whatever direction the CCSS progresses in, it appears the conversation is far from over.

ACET Staff

ACET recognizes the importance of professional development in maintaining and sharpening one’s skills, and last week I had a great professional development opportunity by attending the ADARA (formerly known as the American Deafness and Rehabilitation Association) 2013 national conference. This conference, held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, included more than 50 sessions and welcomed 300 attendees. This conference proved to be a great and eye-opening experience. I had the opportunity to attend sessions focused upon the best utilization of American Sign Language and Certified Deaf Interpreters, the domains and competencies for those interpreting in medical or mental health settings, and the opportunities and challenges for those who are deaf or hard-of-hearing.

Not only was I able to attend those intriguing sessions, I also presented my own work. In coordination with Trudy Schafer (project coordinator) from the National Interpreter Education Center, we presented the session entitled “What do we know and how do we know it…Improving service delivery for individuals who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing.” Ms. Schafer provided background information and context for surveys used by the national center, while I presented best survey design practices and related the practices back to one of the national center surveys. Specifically, this presentation explored designing quality survey questions or items, response options, formatting strategies, and the importance of field testing. The overall intent of this session was that attendees would gain a better understanding of how to design quality surveys that are accurate, valid, reliable, and better inform future decisions. This session was important for ADARA attendees because, when assessing program effectiveness, it is important that surveys are properly designed to measure intended outcomes.

To learn more about best survey design practices, please visit the Resource section of ACET’s website for the Evaluation Take Away titled Survey Item Design Best Practices.

Dan and Trudy Schafer at the 2013 ADARA Conference

Dan

St. Paul nonprofit Bush Foundation invites nonprofit organizations and government entities of all sizes to apply for its Community Innovation Grants. Ranging from $10,000 to $200,000 (expect to be used within 2 years), these grants are intended to support innovation through inclusive, collaborative, community powered problem solving, allowing communities to build and test new solutions to community issues. Communities may be racial, geographic, or ethnic in nature. No particular issue or issues will be given priority, and projects at all stages, from idea generation to capacity building to solution testing, are eligible for funding. The first round of applications is due July 11. The second round will open in December. For more information and to view example projects, please see the Community Innovation Grants Web page.

Good Luck!

ACET Staff

The Minnesota Department of Public Safety (DPS) Office of Justice Programs currently has two grants available.

Grants of $50,000 to $200,000 are available through Minnesota Statute to fund community-based programming designed to improve community safety and crime prevention efforts based on most promising or best practices. Applicants may be public or private nonprofit organizations. Applicant organizations may submit more than one proposal, but only one award will be provided to any given agency. Priority will be given to projects that work with underserved populations, that serve areas with the highest crime rate or concentration of economically disadvantaged youth, or that can demonstrate significant involvement by served community members in planning, service implementation, and evaluation. Applications for this funding stream are due by June 17.

The DPS is also offering awards of $100,000 to $300,000 through a federal Justice Assistance Grant to public and private nonprofits. Eligible applicants need to be currently implementing juvenile or adult justice offenders’ re-entry services, addressing the needs of juvenile or adult offenders through problem-solving courts, or looking to improve or expand on existing services to offenders with mental illnesses. Successful projects will have tangible evidence of community support, simultaneously address both individual mental health management and criminogenic risk factors, and employ best practices. Funding cannot be used for program start-ups. Applications are due June 28.

For the full RFPs and other information, please see the Office of Justice Programs’ Grants Web page. All applications must be submitted through the DPS E-grants site.

Good Luck!

ACET Staff

Up to $25,000 in grants are now available through the United Methodist Women’s Living Stewardship: Creating Financial Literacy program. Grants will be awarded to 501(c)(3) tax exempt organizations working to educate and empower people through the development of financial literacy skills. Preference will be given to initiatives that prioritize individual self-sufficiency and the involvement of women in the initiative’s initiation, implementation, and evaluation. Grants may be used for new or ongoing programming. For complete information, please see the United Methodist Women’s Grants Web page. The deadline for submissions is June 3.

A single grant of $100,000 is available through Ribbons of Hope – Invest in Women, an Atlanta, Georgia-based foundation dedicate to improving the lives of women and girls. Eligible applicants must be 501(c)(3) tax exempt organizations promoting economic independence, health, education, human rights, and/or social well-being of girls and women. Applicants must also have an annual operating budget of at least $500,000 (which can include in-kind donations) and have been in operation for at least 3 years. For applications, please see the Ribbons of Hope Grants page. The deadline for applications is August 1.

Good Luck!

ACET Staff

As a part of budgetary negotiations that wrapped up with the State of Minnesota’s 2013 legislative session Monday evening, a $15.7 billion education bill has been approved and is expected to be signed by Governor Mark Dayton. This education bill includes $134 million for school districts to use for free, full-day kindergarten starting in the fall of 2014. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, districts have the option to provide or not provide full-day kindergarten, but where it is offered, it will be free to parents. It is expected to affect nearly 60,000 students across the state.

Other features of the education bill include $46 million for early childhood scholarships to parents in need, $250 million in state higher education spending to freeze University of Minnesota and Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MNSCU) tuition prices for two years, and an elimination of the GRAD test as a requirement for graduation from Minnesota high schools, to be replaced by other assessments. The State of Minnesota will also increase spending on assessment by $6.7 million in the coming 2-year period.

ACET Staff

ACET’s blog has discussed the importance of networking and professional development in the past, but today we’d like to look at what comes next, once a person has established networking relationships. How do you determine if your network is working for you? Are you getting as much value as you can from your networking efforts?

Beckstrom’s Law: Assessing costs and benefits

In 2009, Bill Gates reported to a New Delhi business forum that he’d quit Facebook. Why? Because the number of friend requests that he had been receiving was overwhelming. For him, having as many networking contacts as possible was actually a detracting factor, which may seem to contradict common sense: if it’s all about who you know, then you should know as many people as possible, right? This contradiction can be seen through Beckstrom’s Law. Originally applied to economics, it states that a network’s value is equal to the benefits minus the costs of using or interacting with it. For Bill Gates, the potential benefits of interacting with Facebook users were outweighed by the hassles.

Consider how this plays out with your own networking efforts. Is your network is so large, spread out, or unwieldy as to make maintaining it more time consuming than rewarding? Take the time to reassess these relationships and how you engage them.

Metcalfe’s Law: Maximizing connection potential

If you were to describe your relationships with your professional network, would it look more like a wheel or a spider’s web? That is, are you alone interacting with each of your contacts, or are your contacts also interacting with each other? Creating a spider’s web of contacts strengthens the network as a whole because it gives each of your contacts access to the same minds and talents that you have, and it encourages more people to join in and add their knowledge and expertise. Metcalfe’s Law, originally formulated for the telecommunications industry, states that the value of a network is based on how many people can potentially be connected to all of the others in the network.

Without even acknowledging a need for it, two people in your professional network right now may benefit from meeting each other. Some have addressed the need for these connections by starting professional groups to read and discuss papers or collaborate on projects, or by joining advisory boards to share their expertise with others. Consider making introductions through casual, small group meetings like coffee or lunches.

The Band of Brothers: Fostering a culture of support

Value isn’t just about human assets and what they have to offer. A network is also about concern and care for each of its members. Networks, like groups of friends, form because there is some shared similarity of experience or purpose among its members, and there is value in being able to discuss your fears and disappointments with people who uniquely understand what you are going through. Being able to talk about the emotions engendered by your work with your professional contacts can help you brainstorm solutions, build trust, and stave off burnout. A supportive network can help its members to overcome their respective difficulties.

These are just some factors that inspired us. How do you assess your professional network?

ACET Staff

Partnering with education materials companies Pitsco/Hearlihy & Company, the International Technology and Engineering Educators Association’s Foundation for Technology (ITEEA) and Engineering Educators is offering grants of $2,000 to K-12 engineering and technology teachers to encourage quality technology/engineering programming within their schools’ curriculums. Eligible applicants are elementary or secondary teachers who are already successfully working engineering and technology education into their schools’ curriculums, and who are also ITEEA members registered for the annual conference, to be held this year in Orlando, Florida. Membership materials may be enclosed along with scholarship applications. For more information, please see the ITEEA’s grant Web page. The deadline for submissions is December 1.

Together with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) is accepting applications for its Program Challenge Fund grants. This funding will allow a station, person, or entity to produce a limited, high-visibility, and high-impact series as a part of PBS’ national television schedule. A successful program is expected to be the highlight of a season’s schedule and to drive new audiences to the broadcast and to online content. Award amounts will be approved by the CPB based on the program’s budget. Finishing expenses, children’s programming, how-to programs, and programs regarding fitness or travel are not supported by this grant. For complete information, please see the Program Challenge Fund Web page linked above. The deadline for submissions is August 1.

In partnership with the New York Life Foundation, the National Alliance for Grieving Children will award five grants of $10,000, $15,000, $25,000, and $100,000 ($50,000 a year for 2 years) to organizations that offer grief support services directly to youth from ethnically diverse or low-income/underserved communities as part of its Grief Reach program. Eligible organizations must have 501(c)(3) tax exempt status, and 50% of youth served must be from minority communities or low-income families. An informational webinar will be held on May 15, 2013 at 2:00 EST regarding this opportunity. Please see the Grief Reach Web page for complete information. Applications are due July 8.

Good Luck!

ACET Staff

How does an evaluator decide what software packages to try and to take on for regular use? From database maintenance to note-taking to report production, evaluators use a wide variety of software packages in their daily work. Software makes handling large amounts of data and presenting them in interesting ways efficient and easy, and allows evaluators to share the information with clients in dynamic ways. There are many, many different packages to choose from, and it seems like there’s a new one appearing all the time. ACET evaluators were asked this week to talk about the factors that help them select new software solutions.

Cost. It’s an obvious factor, but the price of software does not necessarily prevent ACET evaluators from pursuing it as an option, internally or for a client. The functionality of the software was generally given greater weight by ACET staff rather than cost. In addition, when cost may be a concern there are many licensed and free, open source packages alike that ACET utilizes on a regular basis.

Learning, Training, and Sharing. New software packages take time to learn how to use, as well as teach to a client who may need the features. As a result, time needed to become proficient with software is a consideration for ACET when selecting new software. Everyone who needs access to the software to view, edit, add, or retrieve data (both inside and outside of the office) should be able to do so with a minimum amount of difficulty.

Usability. For more than one ACET evaluator, choosing between software packages came down to a simple question: “Does it do what I need it to do?” If a software package is similar to a program currently used in the office, or if there wasn’t a specific, preexisting need for another type of software package, assessing a new package wasn’t even a consideration.

What do you consider when looking at a new software package? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.

ACET Staff