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Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Teacher: Yes, the testing culture does contribute to cheating

Teacher: Yes, the testing culture does contribute to cheating:



Teacher: Yes, the testing culture does contribute to cheating


test2I recently published a post by Bill Ayersabout the recent Atlanta test cheating indictments that said the road to the scandal “runs right through the White House.” Ayers is a retired professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago (who may be better known for his radical activism during the 1960s and ’70s). Then, Michael J. Feuer, dean of the Graduate school of Education and Human Development at George Washington University and president-elect of the National Academy of Education, took issue with Ayers in this piece in Education Week, which I wrote about here. Below, teacher Steven Lin, named Elementary School Teacher of the Year in Chesapeake, Va., takes on Feuer.
Lin is a fifth-grade teacher at E.W. Chittum Elementary School, and he is a doctoral student in the GWU graduate school of education, which Feuer heads. He said he believes he was named his city’s Elementary Teacher of the Year in part because of his position that “out-of-touch policies and the education-industrial complex risk de-professionalizing teachers and stripping them of an effective voice in regulating their occupation.” Further, he said, “That I was selected on this platform strikes me as a mandate to further voice my opinions.”
By Steven Lin
In a commentary on Education Week’s website, Michael Feuer, dean of The George Washington University Graduate School of Education and Human Development, addressed the cheating controversy in Atlanta Public Schools, a scandal that led to the recent 

Common Core testing begins in NY — but are exams ready for prime time?

Students in various grades in New York schools will start taking high-stakes standardized tests on Tuesday that, for the first time, are supposedly aligned to the Common Core State Standards. School reformers say the tests will better assess how much … Continue reading →
    

How to talk to children about deadly Boston Marathon bombings

This is the third time in seven months that I am running this post. The first time was during the saturation media coverage of the Tucson shooting rampage that left six people dead, including a 9-year-old girl born on Sept. …Continue reading →