IQ: Willingham on the newest thinking
This *was written by cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia and author of “Why Don’t Students Like School?” His next book, “When Can You Trust The Experts? How to tell good science from bad in education,” will be published in July. This appeared on his Science and Education blog.* Read full article >> [image: Add to Facebook] [image: Add to Twitter] [image: Add to Reddit] [image: Add to StumbleUpon]
Teachers: Tell us what you’re doing this summer
Calling all teachers (especially in the Washington area): Are you planning to work at a summer job when school gets out for the year, because your salary doesn’t pay the bills? Are you going to teach summer school, or work on a graduate degree, professional development or some other special sort of training? Read full article >> [image: Add to Facebook] [image: Add to Twitter] [image: Add to Reddit] [image: Add to StumbleUpon]
Teachers: Tell us what you’re doing this summer
Calling all teachers: Are you planning to work at a summer job when school gets out for the year, because your salary doesn’t pay the bills? Are you going to teach summer school, or work on a graduate degree, professional development or some other special sort of training? Read full article >> [image: Add to Facebook] [image: Add to Twitter] [image: Add to Reddit] [image: Add to StumbleUpon]
Chinese students use IV amino acids to study for high-stakes tests
How’s this for extreme? Students at a Chinese high school hooked themselves up intravenously — with the help of teachers — to amino acid supplement drips to study for high-stakes exams in an effort to boost their performance. Read full article >> [image: Add to Facebook] [image: Add to Twitter] [image: Add to Reddit] [image: Add to StumbleUpon]
What Romney should have said to schoolchildren about his ‘prank’ and bullying
My colleague Jason Horowitz wrote in this Washington Post story about how Mitt Romney, when he was a senior at an elite private high school in Michigan, led a group of boys who “tackled” a boy who was presumed to be gay and had bleached-blond hair, held him down and chopped his hair off with a scissors even as the boy pleaded for help. Read full article >> [image: Add to Facebook] [image: Add to Twitter] [image: Add to Reddit] [image: Add to StumbleUpon]
Student video: How high-stakes tests affect kids
There is one voice rarely heard in the screaming debate about the role ofhigh-stakes tests in education: that of students. Though the big focus today in education is on evaluating teachers and whether student standardized test results should be a part of educator assessment (they shouldn’t), there is no group more affected by high stakes on these exams than the people who have to take them. Results from a single test can determine whether a student moves up a grade or graduates from high school. Read full article >> [image: Add to Facebook] [image: Add to Twitter] [image: Add to R... more »
The ironies of Teacher Appreciation Week
Last Friday, the Friday before the start of Teacher Appreciation Week and two business days before National Teacher Day, D.C. Public Schools officialssent out noticesto 333 teachers saying that their jobs had effectively been eliminated. This should be considered better form than last year, when they sent out “excessing” notices on the last day of Teacher Appreciation Week. Read full article >> [image: Add to Facebook] [image: Add to Twitter] [image: Add to Reddit] [image: Add to StumbleUpon]
How high-stakes assessments affect doctors (and the lesson for teachers)
This *was written by Larry Cuban, a former high school social studies teacher (14 years, including seven at Cardozo and Roosevelt high schools in the District), district superintendent (seven years in Arlington, VA) and professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, where he has taught for more than 20 years. His latest book is “As Good As It Gets: What School Reform Brought to Austin.” This appeared on his blog.* Read full article >> [image: Add to Facebook] [image: Add to Twitter] [image: Add to Reddit] [image: Add to StumbleUpon]
Teacher evaluation: What it should look like
A new report from Stanford University researcher Linda Darling-Hammond details what the components of a comprehensive teacher evaluation system should look like at a time when such assessments have become one of the most contentious debates in education today. Read full article >> [image: Add to Facebook] [image: Add to Twitter] [image: Add to Reddit] [image: Add to StumbleUpon]
Ben Carson's creationist views spark controvery over commencement speech
An unusual controversy has erupted at Emory University over the choice offamed neurosurgeon Ben Carson to deliver this year’s commencement address because he does not believe in evolution. Nearly 500 professors, student and alumni signed a letter (see full text below) expressing concern that Carson, as a 7th Day Adventist, believes in creationist theory that holds that all life on Earth was created by God about 6,000 years ago. It rejects Darwin’s theory of evolution, which is the central principle that animates modern biology, uniting all biological fields under one theoretical t... more »
Thoughts on teachers — from Socrates to Lady Gaga
Today is National Teacher Day, part of Teacher Appreciation Week, an annual moment to heap praise on teachers in a country that has spent the rest of the past year doing pretty much the opposite. Morale has been plummeted in recent years among most of the approximate 3,232,800 teachers in K-12 public schools, according to recent polls. This is a result in large part of the actions of state legislatures that have passed laws end teacher tenure, to make teacher evaluation partly dependent on student standardized test scores, and to take other actions that many teachers see as an ass... more »
Teacher on flawed tests: ‘We can ill-afford to be silent while our very jobs are at stake’
I received the following email from a New York State math teacher. The message reveals a previously unreported problem with the New York State 7th Grade Math exam recently given to students, this on top of the now famous English Language Arts test questions about a talking pineapple and other problems with these tests that have been cited by principals and others. Read full article >> [image: Add to Facebook] [image: Add to Twitter] [image: Add to Reddit] [image: Add to StumbleUpon]
Ravitch: Pearson’s expanding role in education
This *was written by education historian Diane Ravitch, a research professor at New York University and author of the bestselling “The Death and Life of the Great American School System.” This first appeared on her blog. * Read full article >> [image: Add to Facebook] [image: Add to Twitter] [image: Add to Reddit] [image: Add to StumbleUpon]
Report: Some charters spend more than traditional schools
A new report concludes that charter schools operated by major charter management organizations in three states often spend more to educate children than the surrounding public schools. The study, published by the National Education Policy Center, compares per-pupil spending in charter schools run by major management organizations with local district schools in New York, Ohio, and Texas. It says that in some places charter spending by major charter management organizations, known as CMOs, is less per student than in traditional public schools, but in other places, it is significan... more »
Guess when this warning about testing was written
The following, published in an American newspaper, warns about the dangers of attaching high stakes to standardized test results and about the growingdependenceon these assessments in public education. Read full article >> [image: Add to Facebook] [image: Add to Twitter] [image: Add to Reddit] [image: Add to StumbleUpon]
Major groups beg Congress to rewrite NCLB
A coalition of 10 major organizations of state and local government officials just sent a letter asking — or, rather, effectively begging — Congress to *finally* do its job and reauthorize No Child Left Behind. Read full article >> [image: Add to Facebook] [image: Add to Twitter] [image: Add to Reddit] [image: Add to StumbleUpon]
Using comic books (like ‘The Avengers’) to get kids to read
Parents and teachers struggling to get kids to read often overlook a major weapon in the literacy arsenal: comic books. Yes, “Archie,” “Superman,” “The Avengers” and “The Adventures of Tintin” are all great vehicles for getting a reluctant reader to learn to love the power of the written word. Read full article >> [image: Add to Facebook] [image: Add to Twitter] [image: Add to Reddit] [image: Add to StumbleUpon]