Latest News and Comment from Education

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

4-23-14 The Answer Sheet What teachers really want

The Answer Sheet:








How anxious are kids about taking standardized tests? This anxious.
If you have any doubt that kids feel pressure to do well on high-stakes standardized tests, consider this. A counselor at an El Paso elementary school, in an effort to allay student fears about having to take the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness tests this week, held conversations with students in grades 3 […]

Parent to Obama: Let me tell you about the Common Core test Malia and Sasha don’t have to take but Eva does
I get a lot of e-mail from parents and teachers who wonder if President Obama, whose children go to the private Sidwell Friends School, knows what is actually going on with all of the standardized testing in public schools. Here’s an open letter to Obama explaining what he is missing, written by Rebecca Steinitz, a […]

Live online chat at 1 p.m. today
I’ll be doing a live chat on washingtonpost.com at 1 p.m. today, so if you have any questions or comments about anything in education (or even marginally related), send them in here: http://live.washingtonpost.com/the-answer-sheet-20230416.html Here are transcripts of my first chat,  the second, and last week’s.    


4-22-14 The Answer Sheet What teachers really want
The Answer Sheet: 11 problems created by the standardized testing obsessionRon Maggiano is a veteran teacher who won the Disney Teacher Award for innovation and creativity in 2005 and the American Historical Association’s Beveridge Family Teaching Prize for outstanding K-12 teaching in 2006. After a 33-year teaching career, he resigned last year from West Springfield High School in Fairfax County,