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Subject: News from The Chinuch Office
An Internal Periodical of Chabad-Lubavitch Educational News
Adar, 5771 - Vol 5, Issue4
In This Issue
Merkos Chinuch Office News
News from our Mosdos
In the Chinuch World
Dear Chinuch,
The objective of this newsletter is to give exposure to the kind of things of which חז"ל say: קנאת סופרים תרבה חכמה with the hope that we will indeed see the fulfillment of those words. This will only be possible if Mechanchim and Mechanchos will forward their news items to the Chinuch Office. You are cordially urged to submit your own items for publication in the next issue.
Rabbi Nochem Kaplan
Director
Torah Educational Software.
For more info please call 800-925-6853 or email
stoneb@jewishsoftware.com
Quick Links
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www.chinuchoffice.org
The Chinuch Office's actives are all privately funded. You donation will go a long way in helping us to continue our many ongoing programs.
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Merkos Chinuch Office News
*Rabbi Tzvi Greenberg to direct
Cyber- Chumash Curriculum project.
*Chabad Consortium planning
for 5772
To view the complete articles please scroll down.
News for our Mosdos
New Tax Law Extends Coverdell Savings Accounts
In The Chabad Chinuch World
Chabad Mechanchos Embark upon
A Chinuch Office-Yad Vashem
Holocaust Education Seminar
in Yerushalayim
To view the complete articles please scroll down.
Chinuch Commentary
Needed: The Best and the Brightest of Teachers
A US NEWS EDITORIAL By Mortimer B. Zuckerman
To view the complete article please scroll down.
CHINUCH OFFICE NEWS
SUMMER 5771 - 2011 CHINUCH KINUSIM:
KINUS HAMECHANCHIM:
Sun. Rosh Chodesh Tammuz- July 3rd and Mon. Tammuz, July 4th
KINUS HAMECHCHOS
Monday 23 Tammuz, July 25th and Tuesday 24 Tammuz, July 26th
A number of organizational conference calls and meeting were held in February and the following themes and issues have emerged:
* How to foster positive interpersonal relationships in our Talmidim and Talmidos
*How can we raise our expectations and standards?
*Attitude issues: how to foster a positive attitude toward what we stand for
*Curriculum Issues:
Tefilla: How to raise expectations and achieve what we expect
Chumash: The new Cyber teacher center, what we build together
Divrei Yemei Yisroel: What and how to impart
general ideas: matching Scholarships for attendees, fostering dibuk cheveirim among our professional staff, ....and much more
Kinusim committees are still in formation and all ideas and suggestions are welcome Mechamchim and Mechanchos are requested to contact the Chinuch Office to share their thoughts or to volunteer involvement.
***************************************************************************************************
Rabbi Tzvi Greenberg to direct a new Merkos Chinuch Office Cyber-Chumash Project
Rabbi Tzvi Greenberg, a young dynamic mechanech at the Lubavitcher Yeshiva on Crown Street, who has been blessed with both vision and tenacity, will direct a new exciting Chinuch project, the Cyber Chumash Teachers Center.
The Cyber Chumash Teacher Center will be an interactive website which will feature a data base and personal curriculum development center for Mechanchim and Mechanchos.
Some of the basics in short:
· A skills hierarchy has been developed by a number of cooperating Mosdos, primarily the Beis Rebbe in Los Angeles, directed by Mrs. Devorah Kreiman, through the Merkos Chinuch Office. The skills hierarchy, arranged by both age and grade, will form the core of a central forum/data-base which will be accessible at a limited access public web site.
· A huge reservoir of exercises and student centered activities are in the process of being gathered and catalogued, and arranged in tandem with the skills set so that a teacher, having identified a skill, will be able to access them to focus on the cultivation and monitoring of specific skills for classroom instruction as well as independent student learning.
· This site will allow teachers in all schools access to a wealth of teaching material, for example, class work, exercises, homework, tests, teaching tips, etc. and thus assist them in their class preparation by generating plans activities and assessment tools.
Some of the features which will make the site invaluable to teachers:
Toolbox: A place where teachers can go to view/download all class related material which will be divided by grade and Parsha. This includes class work, homework, learning exercises, teaching tips, suggestions, recommended schedules, and teacher comments/feedback.
All of this information will be integrated and labeled with a student program comprising over a hundred learning skills that are to be refined and reinforced with careful monitoring.
My Classroom: this is a private account for teachers. It is a layout of a class calendar where teachers can monitor their class schedule, plan teaching objectives, and track class progress by submitting their class information.
My Students: this is a page within the "my classroom" feature. It will depict a classroom layout in which each desk represents a student account; teachers can then assign student names to desk icons. The purpose of which is to keep track of individual students' tests, homework, and behavioral notes by submitting the information. This feature will also generate the average markings of student progress and automatically generate student report cards.
Staff Room: this is a confidential forum in which teachers discuss ideas, ask questions, and give general feedback.
Library: This feature contains suggested reading for teachers and exclusive material for their personal edification.
Confidential Teacher Consultant: This is a private chat room which teachers can access to consult experienced teaching/psychological professionals regarding sensitive issues or personal advice and mentoring. It will also have a call sheet with phone numbers to the aforementioned people.
Bulletin: this is the only part of the site that is open to the public. It will contain articles, audio lectures, videos, and other information pertaining to Jewish education. Its aim is to stimulate conversation regarding Chinuch throughout the Lubavitch community. This will create a receptive environment toward new efforts in education and restore Chinuch in the eyes of the community to the vital and prominent focus of Jewish life that it is. This plan contains the features necessary to advance and energize our most valuable resource, our children. The successful education of each successive group of students is vitally important to the future of Lubavitch.
An advisory committee is in formation
**********************************************************
CHABAD CONSORTIUM PLANNING FOR 2012
"The Consortium of Chabad Schools which was formed to fully access the Title federal funding which is due to all private and parochial schools, is now functioning in five states and will soon include all Chabad schools in the US", said Rabbi Nochem Kaplan, director of the Merkos Chinuch Office.
Millions of dollars in goods and services which should have accrued to Chabad schools did not reach their intended beneficiaries because individually the schools felt helpless in dealing with the bureaucracy and they lost out. The Consortium has been instrumental in its first year, in securing hundreds of thousands in goods and services to Chabad schools and is now laying the groundwork for the next schools year. Schools have been notified of the total sum at their disposal and six schools have already received word about delivery of Smart Boards.
Ten of the twelve NYC consortium members attended a meeting on Thursday February 17th with Mr. Bryan Kaplan, who directs the consortium activities, and plans for securing nearly $3,000,000 of educational goods and services are now being put into place.
News for Our Mosdos
New Tax Law Extends Coverdell Savings Accounts
The tax-cut measure negotiated by President Obama and congressional Republicans last month preserves-at least for the next two years-the historic Coverdell Education Savings Accounts (ESA), which allow families to earn tax-exempt interest on up to $2,000 in annual savings for specified expenses, including tuition, associated with elementary, secondary, or post-secondary education in public or private schools.
Unique K-12 Tax Relief
Initially enacted in 2001, the hard-fought Coverdell accounts mark the first and only measure of federal tax relief that specifically helps parents with the costs of a child's education in a private, including religious, elementary or secondary school. Tax benefits, such as credits or deductions, to help offset a family's college costs and pre-school costs are a staple of the tax code and have been for some time, but not for K-12 education. So although the relief provided by Coverdell accounts is modest-amounting to tax-free earnings on savings marked for education-its historical significance is unmistakable.
Named After Paul Coverdell
Prior to the tax measure signed by President George W. Bush in 2001, education savings accounts had been available only for college costs. The amended accounts, named after Paul Coverdell, a Republican senator from Georgia, increased the allowable annual contribution from $500 to $2,000 and extended the benefits to K-12 education. From 1997 until his untimely death of a stroke in 2000, Coverdell fought valiantly and tirelessly to secure K-12 accounts. "There is hope in the dreams of parents who stretch the family budget to its capacity so that their children may have a better future than they had," he once told a group of ESA supporters.
Named After Paul Coverdell
Prior to the tax measure signed by President George W. Bush in 2001, education savings accounts had been available only for college costs. The amended accounts, named after Paul Coverdell, a Republican senator from Georgia, increased the allowable annual contribution from $500 to $2,000 and extended the benefits to K-12 education. From 1997 until his untimely death of a stroke in 2000, Coverdell fought valiantly and tirelessly to secure K-12 accounts. "There is hope in the dreams of parents who stretch the family budget to its capacity so that their children may have a better future than they had," he once told a group of ESA supporters.
Five-Year Struggle
A clear marker of the importance of Coverdell accounts in the national strugglefor school choice was the intense opposition the measure faced during its march toward enactment from 1997 to 2001. In 1997, President Clinton forced congressional leaders to remove a K-12 ESA provision from a tax-relief bill, threatening in a forceful letter to veto "any tax package that would undermine public education by providing tax benefits for private and parochial school expenses." Months later, after the House had passed a stand-alone ESA initiative, Senate Democrats, under
considerable pressure from public school teacher unions, filibustered the bill. In 1998, Congress approved another ESA proposal, but President Clinton vetoed what he called "bad education policy and bad tax policy."
Abandon Hope
The fierce Senate floor fight in 1998 over K-12 education savings accounts provided perhaps the clearest indicator of the level of opposition to the measure. Overstatement seemed to rule the day. Then Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (DSD) said the bill would "privatize" public schools and result in "the death of public education." Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) said if the bill were enacted, a sign should be hung outside every public school saying, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here." In 1999 Congress again approved ESAs as part of a tax relief bill, but again the bill was ultimately vetoed.
Vouchers by Another Name?
Even in 2001, when ESAs were being debated as part of an overall tax package eventually signed by President Bush, bickering over the measure continued with an amendment to strip private school tuition from the list of allowable expenses for the accounts. During a Senate floor exchange, Senator Blanche Lincoln (DAR), a sponsor of the amendment, said, "Using ESA accounts for private school tuition is simply vouchers by another name."
She also reiterated what had become a standard refrain among opponents: "I am concerned that providing a tax incentive to pay private school tuition will divert the critical resources needed to improve our public schools." The amendment was defeated 58-41, with eleven Democrats, including then Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, joining 47 Republicans in support of keeping private school tuition as an allowable expense.
How ESAs Work
Like most tax-related benefits, education savings accounts are subject to numerous provisions. The buildup of interest within the accounts is tax free, and neither the principal nor interest is taxable upon withdrawal if used for a qualified educational expense. Such expenses include tuition, fees, academic tutoring, after-school programs, special- needs services, books, supplies, computers, uniforms, and transportation. A noteworthy component of the program allows third parties, including corporations, unions, and tax-exempt organizations, to establish and contribute to ESAs. Individual taxpayers with "modified adjusted gross income" under $95,000 and married taxpayers with MAGI under $190,000 can make the maximum allowable annual contribution to an ESA. At higher income brackets, the allowable contribution level starts to phase out.
Other Education Benefits
The massive bill signed by President Obama December 17, 2010, was the most sweeping piece of tax legislation enacted in nearly a decade. Besides extending the extensive across the- board tax cuts established back in 2001, the
legislation also retains important tax provisions relating to education beyond ESAs. The new law extends for two years the above the- line deduction for certain expenses incurred by elementary and secondary school teachers. Classroom teachers and other educators in public and private schools may continue to deduct up to $250 for their out-of-pocket expenditures for books, computer equipment and software, and other materials and supplies used in the classroom. The law also extends through 2012 the provision allowing an employee to exclude from taxable income up to $5,250 in assistance provided by the employer for graduate and undergraduate education. In another provision, persons satisfying income eligibility limits may continue to deduct "above the line" up to $2,500 in student loan interest. Also, the new law allows certain scholarships for qualified tuition and education expenses to continue to be excluded from taxable income for the next two years. (A tax authority should be consulted for further details on these provisions.)
In the Chabad Chinuch World
Chabad Mechanchos Embark upon
A Chinuch Office-Yad Vashem
Holocaust Education Seminar
in Yerushalayim
It is no coincidence that Mrs. Rivkah Denberg, from Coral Springs Fl, Mrs. Devorah Kornfeld of Seattle WA, Mrs. Chanie Nemes from Metrairie LA, and Mrs. Sora Strauss, from Brooklyn NY, all mechanchos in Chabad schools, find themselves in an ELAL flight to Israel, along with 20 other Chabad teachers. They are all participants in the Holocaust seminar sponsored cooperatively by the Merkos Chinuch Office and Yad Vashem.
For 9 days they will be the guests of Yad Vashem which has tailored a seminar to meet the educational background and erudition of an elite group of mechanchos. They will hear lectures, tour and visit and will hopefully, come back to their respective schools with the educational tools necessary to teach their students about the darkest period of our history.
The seminar was organized by the Merkos Chinuch Office and Rabbi Nochem Kaplan and his wife will be accompanying the mechanchos on their adventure.
The fact is that there is coordinated approach for teachers to follow when attempting to teach about the Holocaust and leaving as sensitive an issue as the Holocaust to child to learn through discovery is fraught with danger. The Rebbe taught that the ultimate purpose of all education is that what we learn should both enlighten and serve to positively influence our lives as people and especially as Jews. The objective of the seminar and the curriculum development which will follow is to actualize this fundamental approach, even when dealing with a subject as sensitive as the foremost horror in our history.
CHINUCH COMMENTARY
Needed: The Best and the Brightest of Teachers
A US NEWS EDITORIAL By Mortimer B. Zuckerman
Why is it that the education of our children has become such a national challenge?
How could America rank in the bottom third among developed nations in terms of student performance, yet we spend more per capita than virtually any other nation? How is it that U.S. fourth graders rank in the 80th percentile globally in science (that is, the top 20 percent), yet by the time they reach the 12th grade, they have dropped to the 5th percentile, while only half of our high school students are at an even basic level in math and science? Why are there so few qualified teachers to meet the demands in math, science, computer science, and special education? How is it that most teachers in America are given lifetime tenure, with about 99 percent of them rated satisfactory by their school systems year after year, and yet the gap between our student achievements and those of better-performing nations grows all the time? What has happened to an America that once led the world in public education?
The critical element is the quality of teaching. The evidence has been compelling for years. Take two average 8-yearolds. Give one a good teacher and the other a poor teacher. Over three years, according to research cited by McKinsey & Co., the children's performance diverges by more than 50 percentile points. It is better to have a good teacher in a bad school than a bad teacher in a good school. By contrast, according to other research, reducing class size from 23 to 15 students improves performance by an average of 8 percentile points at best. Children with poor teachers progress three times slower. They suffer a virtually irreversible education loss, even if they are in good school systems.
America has to rethink how to attract, employ, retain, and reward outstanding teaching talent. A century ago, schools could be casual about hiring talent-for a simple reason. Educated women had virtually nowhere else to turn for work. In those days, most educated women did not work and those who did disproportionately entered teaching. In the 1950s, when our nation employed a million public school teachers, more than half of college-educated women became teachers. Today, when we have about 3.5 million teaching jobs, roughly only 15 percent of educated women become teachers.
It is useful to see how some of the world's best-performing education systems have come out on top. It is not a matter of money. Officials have simply learned that results come from getting the right people to become teachers and developing them into effective instructors.
How do they do that? They make entry into teacher training highly selective. Singapore and Hong Kong, for example, select from the top 30 percent of the graduating classes from their school systems, Finland from the top 10 percent, and South Korea from the top 5 percent.
They recognize that selecting the wrong candidate for training can result in perhaps 40 years of poor teaching. From this crop of bright graduates, they look for high literacy and numeracy levels, strong communication and interpersonal skills, the motivation to teach, and a willingness to learn. So they screen and test applicants and are confident enough to provide those selected
a guaranteed teaching position after training.
Needed: Our own research supports this, forwe have found that great teachers tendto set high standards for their students,but also constantly re-evaluate what theythemselves are doing; they prepare lessonsand courses intensively, whetherfor the next day or the year ahead.
Many score high in life satisfaction, and theirzest and enthusiasm permeate theirteaching.
The Asian front-runners in education, offer good starting salaries, but in line with starting salaries for graduates in other professions. They work constantly to drive up the standards and the prestige of the profession, which attracts even better candidates.
Even with this screening, it is inevitable that some of those selected will disappoint in their skill and enthusiasm. They are not allowed to stay and teach poorly; they are removed. Tenure is not so lightly awarded as it is in most of America. Here the bad teacher survives, affecting the lives of thousands of children.
The notion that teachers can be hired on a state-level certification and enter a system that rewards seniority over performance, which is typical in America's school systems, is simply obsolete. So too is the old model in which one teacher, chalk in hand, stands in front of a room of 20 to 30 kids. Back in the 1900s, less than 10 percent of American homes had electricity. Today we live in a world of smartphones, video-conferencing, the Internet, and DVDs, which
open up opportunities for educators to leverage the modern tools of technology. American education must simply recognize that technology is a multiplier of great teaching. We can have the best teachers appearing in hundreds of thousands of different classrooms across America and thus transcend the limits of geography.
In addition to bringing the best teaching to the most students, the technology can enable children to learn at their own pace through online and blended learning regardless of language, ZIP code, income levels, or special needs. Learning would no longer have to start, as it does today, when the student enters the classroom and end when the school bell rings. Digital learning enables students to spend as little or as much time as they need to master material, so that high-achieving students are not bored while struggling students can get the additional time and tutoring they need.
Instructional teaching no longer has to be aimed and paced for the middle of the class. Classrooms could be equipped with large, flat-screen monitors and supplied with digital content that uses animation, video dramatization, and other presentation options to convey material in unique ways now unavailable in conventional classrooms, all presented by the best teachers in the country. Classroom teachers in effect would play the role of managing the teaching material and answering questions as well as helping students to better understand the material conveyed electronically. They could pause presentations at key points to ask questions or prompt critical thinking.
Teachers unions have become a critical barrierr to much of the above. Like all unions, they fight for provisions that are favorable for the mass of their members. They protect jobs, limit demands placed on their members, and limit teacher accountability for student performance.
They obstruct the removal of weak teachers- principals can usually tell within a few years, certainly no more than five- and they limit principals' ability in the assignment of teachers to schools or within schools. They hamper the ability of principals to make sure their teachers
are doing the best job of teaching. Sometimes these rules protect teachers' jobs at the expense of the rights of children to an outstanding education. We cannot allow our educational system to handicap children through low-performing teachers.
There is certainly a role for the national teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, whose total membership now approximates 4.5 million. But they should emphasize the positive. It is critical for our children and for our national economy that the local and state schools are not inhibited in striving for good teaching. We simply cannot afford not to have students who learn more, earn more, spend more, invest
more, save more, and pay more in taxes. That, in the modern era, comes increasingly from education. For example, a college degree virtually doubles the earnings potential of a high school diploma. Most critically, the future of our economy will be increasingly dependent on people with a superior education.
It is essential that our public authorities don't go about business as usual. They should devote the resources to develop enough outstanding teachers; they should support the installation of
the technology that can disseminate the quality education our children will
need to compete and flourish in this new world. The state, the private sector, and
our great foundations should foster the development of more software for online education, for DVDs, and for electronic books, so that great teaching can reach millions of youngsters.
Distance and digital learning is the best and most efficient way to rebuild the standards of mass education. In fact, the new methods could reduce the longer term need for mass teaching manpower (and womanpower) so that we could pay more for a smaller body of top teachers.
We are struggling to compete and prosper in an increasingly competitive world and education is the key. America's economic pre-eminence, our ability to outcompete other countries, will be shaped not just in boardrooms, not just on our factory floors, but more and more in our classrooms and our schools
Your comments, ideas, and especially news from you school are most welcome.
Sincerely,
Rabbi Nochem Kaplan
Director
The Merkos Chinuch Office
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