The first page notes positive aspects of the 2011 “Blueprint for Reform” (the outline for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act), and lightly brushes past the need for more comprehensive reforms, before laying their findings clearly on the table.

Page two begins the criticism of the current administration’s policies.  Policies, which would “distribute resources by competition in the midst of a severe recession; advance experimental proposals dwarfed by the scope of the challenges in low-income communities; and promote ineffective approaches for turning around low-performing schools and education systems.”

The group’s sixteen-page report contains clear, concise, and carefully considered recommendations for ESEA’s reauthorization.  A brief outline is below, with the hope that you will not only read the full document, but share it with others.

Excerpts and outline from

Framework for Providing All Students an Opportunity to Learn through

Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act

Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law
National Action Network
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.
National Council for Educating Black Children
National Urban League
Rainbow PUSH Coalition
Schott Foundation for Public Education

1. Equitable Opportunities for All

“We believe that the age of establishing outcome standards without making input investments to achieve these outcomes must end.”

1A: Adopt Common Resource Opportunity Standards to Complement the Emerging Common Student Outcome Standards.

“In our view, resource equity must go beyond just dollars to ensure, at a minimum, that all students have access to early childhood education, highly effective teachers, college-preparatory curricula, and equitable instructional resources.”

1B: Shift the Focus from Competitive Grants for a Few States to Incentives for All States to Embrace Systemic Reform.

“If education is a civil right, children in “winning” states should not be the only ones who have the opportunity to learn in high-quality environments.”

2. UTILIZATION OF SYSTEMATICALLY PROVEN AND EFFECTIVE EDUCATIONAL METHODS

2A: Promote and Support Universal, High-Quality Early Childhood Education.

2B: Promote and Support Universal Access to Highly Effective Teachers.

“…the federal government must build upon its recently announced intention to ensure that states and school districts do not use test data as the sole or primary measure of teacher effectiveness.”

“Any measure of teacher effectiveness must account for the degree of difficulty of the teaching environment so that high-quality teachers will not be deterred from working in high-need schools.”

2C: Institutionalize High-Quality Standards, Curricula, Assessments, and Accountability Strategies to Prepare Students to Meaningfully Participate in Our Democracy.

“…any student or school accountability measures mandated by the ESEA should include the use of multiple measures of learning to accurately measure student growth and progress.”

2D: Promote and Support the Transformation of Low-Performing Schools into Community Opportunity Education Networks.

“In transforming public schools into the hubs of their communities, teachers and principals should play lead roles, supported by mentors, counselors, and health providers.”

2E: Employ School Closure Only as a Last Resort and with Appropriate Safeguards.

“If solving the educational challenges in these communities was as simple as “fire and rehire” or “close and restart,” the problem would have been solved many years ago…”

“…no turnaround model should be implemented without ensuring a process for input from, and collaboration with, parents, the community, and teachers.”

2F: Employ Charter Schools as Accountable Laboratories of Innovation rather than Systemic Reform Prescriptions.

“We have reservations about the extensive reliance on charter schools in the Blueprint’s turnaround strategies. While charters can serve as laboratories for innovation, we are concerned about the overrepresentation of charter schools in low-income and predominantly minority communities.”

“The largest national study found that charters are more likely to underperform than outperform other public schools serving similar students.”

3. PUBLIC AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT IN EDUCATION REFORMS

3A: Institutionalize Clear Benchmarks and Processes for Public Engagement in All Federal, State, and Local Education Policies.

“…the federal government should provide clear benchmarks for parent and public engagement and should promote community-driven reforms.

3B: Institutionalize Parent and Family Engagement in All Decisions Affecting Their Children.

“…effective parent engagement strategies must be part of a comprehensive education plan and not simply voluntary or encouraged. Furthermore, parents should be fully informed…of their responsibilities for creating an enriched learning environment outside the classroom.”

4. SAFE AND EDUCATIONALLY SOUND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

4A: Replace the “Persistently Dangerous Schools” Label with a New “Safe Schools” Metric.

4B: Promote and Support Alternatives to Exclusionary Discipline Policies.

5. DIVERSE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

5A: Promote Inclusive Education Environments and Combat Concentrated Poverty, Racial Isolation, and Culturally Submersive Policies.

5B: Strengthen “Right to Transfer” Provisions.

6. COMPREHENSIVE SYSTEMS TO MAINTAIN EQUITABLE OPPORTUNITIES AND HIGH OUTCOMES

“But when American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds are allocated without requiring equitable disbursement or protection of poor districts…it sends a clouded message that privileges procedural accountability over substantive accountability.”

That post was originally meant to contain ten languages.  However, finding no ready-made lists, it seemed easier to list all available translations, rather than to decide on only ten languages to list.   There are several ways to determine the top ten languages.  We might list them based on numbers of native speakers, or total numbers of speakers, or languages spoken in the most countries.  Some even rank the importance of a language based on the potential economic impact of that language.

More detailed information follows this summary chart:

Top 10 World Languages:

(c)Tardyslip.net 2009

Wikipedia has a list that ranks languages by the number of native-language speakers, while including some data for second languages. The top languages, in this kind of ranking, are:

Ethnologue Part I, “Languages of the World,” tabulates and compares world languages and number of speakers, leaving us with this top ten:

1. Chinese
2. Spanish
3. English
4. Arabic
5. Hindi
6. Bengali
7. Portuguese
8. Russian
9. Japanese  (11th on wikipedia’s list)
10. German   (12th on wikipedia’s list)

“It turns out that 389 (or nearly 6%) of the world’s languages have at least one million speakers and account for 94% of the world’s population. By contrast, the remaining 94% of languages are spoken by only 6% of the world’s people.”

Part of the Ethnologue, 16th Edition, M. Paul Lewis, Editor. Copyright © 2009, SIL International. All rights reserved. http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/distribution.asp?by=size

http://www.ethnologue.com

The Missouri State Department of World Languages explains their ranking of the top twenty languages:

A simple first question we might ask is: How many native speakers are there for each language? Estimates of the number of native speakers for the worlds “top twenty” languages are provided in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (2nd Edition, Edited by David Crystal, Cambridge University Press, 1997) and The Atlas of Languages (Edited by B. Comrie, S. Matthews & M. Polanyi, New York: Facts on File, 1996).

http://vlc.missouristate.edu/dol/worldlanguages.asp

Steinke Language Index from the Steinke Institute in Bonn, Germany, ranks languages according to their economic strength.

“These rankings of course, say nothing about the value of a language, but only reflects the potential professional and economic benefits, which we can draw from their learning can be.”

Note: All links to information on this page was accessed/accessible on July 16, 2009.

“In 5th grade we learned how to say “my friends are nice” in 10 different languages. If I remembered how, I’d say it now.”

What a great thought!  Guessing that there must be some magic teacher worksheet for that, I Googled every possible combination of those terms.

Nothing was found for “my friends are nice” as a list of languages.  I did find zillions of blogs, comments, tweets, etc. with people of all ages using the words, “my friends are nice.” – Unexpected, but nice.

Lists that were easy to find were:

“How to Say Thanks in Different Languages“
“How to Say Hello in 10 Different Languages“
“How To Say Goodbye In Different Languages“
“How to Say (and Pronounce) I Love You in 10 Different Languages”

So, “Boo” to “Google Search” and “Hello, Google Translate!”

Now, you can say “My friends are nice” in 42 languages. Pick your favorite and say it often.  (If it doesn’t apply to your friends, look for new ones. )

Albanian:      Miqtë e mi janë të këndshme.

Arabic:           أصدقائي لطيفة.

Bulgarian:     Моите приятели са добре.

Catalan:         Els meus amics són agradables.

Chinese:        我的朋友都很好。

Croatian:       Moji prijatelji su dobri.

Czech:            Moji přátelé jsou hezké.

Danish:          Mine venner er rare.

Dutch:            Mijn vrienden zijn leuk.

English:         My friends are nice.

Estonian:      Minu sõbrad on kena.

Filipino:        Aking mga kaibigan ay nice.

Finnish:         Ystäväni ovat mukavia.

French:          Mes amis sont sympas.

Galician:        Meus amigos son agradáveis.

German:        Meine Freunde sind nett.

Greek:            Οι φίλοι μου είναι ωραίο.

Hebrew:         החברים שלי הם נחמדים.

Hindi:             मेरे दोस्त अच्छे हैं.

Hungarian:    Barátaim szép.

Indonesian:    Teman saya yang baik.

Italian:            I miei amici sono bello.

Japanese:       私のお友達と良いです。

Korean:          내 친구가 좋은가없습니다.

Latvian:         Mani draugi ir jauki.

Lithuania:     Mano draugai yra gražus.

Maltese:         Ħbieb tiegħi huma sbieħ.

Norwegian:   Mine venner er fin.

Persian:         دوستان خوب من هستند.

Polish:            Moi znajomi są miłe.

Portuguese    Meus amigos são agradáveis.

Romanian:    Prietenii mei sunt draguti.

Russian:         Мои друзья приятно.

Serbian:         Моји пријатељи су добри.

Slovak:           Moji priatelia sú pekné.

Slovenian:      Moji prijatelji se lepo.

Spanish:         Mis amigos son agradables.

Swedish:        Mina vänner är trevliga.

Thai:                เพื่อนที่ดีของฉัน.

Turkish:           Arkadaşlarım hoş.

Ukrainian:      Мої друзі приємно.

Vietnamese:   Bạn bè của tôi là tốt đẹp.

If your favorite language isn’t here, please add it to the comments section!