Teachers of Year fight test-based assessment
Here is a letter that eight New York State Teachers of the Year wrote to the state Board of Regents about their decision to evaluate teachers based on student standardized test scores.
Starting in the fall, 40 percent of the evaluations of teachers and principals in New York public schools will based on student test scores. State officials had reached an agreement on assessment with union officials but then unilaterally changed it.
I previously ran a letter sent to the Regents by a group of assessment experts who said that such test-based evaluation methods are not reliable and should not be used.
Read full article >>The 84-year-old first grader — for real
The new movie “The First Grader” seems so far-fetched that you could be forgiven for thinking that it is fiction. It isn’t.
The film tells the story of Kimani Ng’ang’a Maruge, a man in his 80s who is desperate to learn to read after spending his youth fighting for Kenya’s liberation from British colonial rule, including long periods in detention camps where he was tortured .
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