One-third of Virginia’s schools could lack full accreditation as standards toughen
Nearly one-third of Virginia’s public schools will not earn full accreditation this fall after reading and science scores dropped precipitously on state-mandated standardized tests, according to state education officials. Read full article >>
Strauss: Blame the Common Core for Miley Cyrus, phones in toilets, and … everything else?
Who knew?! #ThanksCommonCore #CommonCore pic.twitter.com/E6CfRYOR8X If you thought that “bullies, playground predators, or school violence” were the most dangerous things school children face, you are, according to the Family Research Council, missing the “spreading, hidden nightmare facing” millions of students as they start a new school year. Read full article >>
Scoring error on one SOL test question meant hundreds of Virginia students who failed really passed
More than 500 students in Virginia just learned that their score on the Standards of Learning Civics & Economics test they took last spring rose when it was discovered that the answer to one question was incorrectly scored. For 224 students, getting credit for one more question meant the difference between failing the exam and […]
No, third grade is not the year when kids go from ‘learning to read’ to ‘reading to learn’
No doubt you’ve heard this: ‘Third grade is the year when students go from ‘learning to read’ to ‘reading to learn.’ The truth is not so clear-cut, as explained here by Joanne Yatvin, a past president of the National Council of Teachers of English who now supervises student teachers for Portland State University. She also […]
Seven things teachers are sick of hearing from school reformers
Teachers have long been accustomed to “going along to get along” but increasingly are raising their voices to protest standardized test-based education reforms of the last decade that they see as harmful to students. In this post, Georgia teacher Ian Altman explains what he and his colleagues are really sick of hearing from reformers. Altman […]
8-13-14 Answer Sheet
Answer Sheet: Campbell Brown responds to critics (including me)I have recently published several posts about a new effort led by former CNN journalist Campbell Brown to eliminate or restrict teacher and other job protections for teachers. (You can see them here, here, here and here.) Brown has appeared on numerous television shows recently arguing that legal job protections for teachers have a neg