Science Education: We can do even better
Sent to USA Today, June 4, 2012
Rising scores on the national (NAEP) science test are indeed reasons to “Quit fretting. U.S. is fine in science education” (June 3).
But we can make more progress: The average score for students not eligible for free and reduced price lunch was 164, just below the demanding proficient level (170), Those eligible for free/reduced lunch averaged 137, just below the basic level (141).
This is no surprise: Our middle class students who attend well-funded schools score at the top of the world on international tests. Our overall scores are less than spectacular because of our high rate of poverty, now 23%, highest in the industrialized world. Poverty means food deprivation, lack of health care, and lack of reading
Failing Data in Education Reform
Few phrases have been written or uttered more often than "data-driven instruction" or "evidence-based decision making" since No Child Left Behind (NCLB) codified "scientifically-based" practices in 2001.
The accountability era begun in the early 1980s intensified the near mania for data in the U.S. that can be traced back to the first few decades of the twentieth century and the promises associated with quantifying student learning and teacher quality through standardized testing. Although the past century and the more recent thirty-year cycle of accountability based on standards and standardized testing have not delivered on the promises (see Hout & Elliot, 2011), "No Excuses" Reformers, including the current Department of Education headed by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, remain steadfast in pursuing better tests based on better standards.
The "No Excuses" Reform movement is driven by bully politics that ironically includes an unbending faith in data
The accountability era begun in the early 1980s intensified the near mania for data in the U.S. that can be traced back to the first few decades of the twentieth century and the promises associated with quantifying student learning and teacher quality through standardized testing. Although the past century and the more recent thirty-year cycle of accountability based on standards and standardized testing have not delivered on the promises (see Hout & Elliot, 2011), "No Excuses" Reformers, including the current Department of Education headed by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, remain steadfast in pursuing better tests based on better standards.
The "No Excuses" Reform movement is driven by bully politics that ironically includes an unbending faith in data
UOON Supports Barbara Madeloni and UMass Students
Link from United Opt Out:
This week United Opt Out National stands in solidarity with the UMass teacher educators and the sixty-seven student teachers at UMass Amherst School of Education who together chose to boycott the Teacher Performance Assessment field test via Pearson. Barbara Madeloni, lecturer at UMass and one of the teacher educators who joined the boycott, has recently been told that her contract will not be renewed. Today we share an interview with Barbara Madeloni as she shares her views on the TPA, Common Core and education activism.After reading the interview please take action. Our action for the week of June 3, 2012, is to ask
The Chinese Secret to Test Prep: IV Drips
Attention: Manhattan moms who are looking for the edge that Taylor and Thomasina need to get into that AP Kindergarten on the Upper East Side. "A" is for Amino Acids!
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