Code Acts in Education: Psychodata | National Education Policy Center

Code Acts in Education: Psychodata | National Education Policy Center

Code Acts in Education: Psychodata

‘Social and emotional learning’ (SEL) has become one of the most active topics in education policy and practice over the last few years. At an international scale, the OECD is about to run its new Study on Social and Emotional Skills for the first time this month, in its bid to produce policy-relevant comparative data on different nations’ ‘non-cognitive’ capacity. Nationally and regionally, government education departments have begun to endorse SEL as a key priority. At classroom level, teachers are using SEL-based edtech devices like ClassDojo, Panorama and HeroK12 to observe students’ social-emotional learning, twinned with tasks such as ‘emotion diaries’, ‘managing your emotions’ posters, and self-assessment scales for children to rate their emotions.

How should we understand this SEL explosion? In a new research article entitled ‘Psychodata‘, just published in Journal of Education Policy, I argue that SEL is a good case of a ‘policy infrastructure’ that is currently in-the-making, and that its main objective is the construction of ‘data infrastructure’ for the measurement of students’ social-emotional skills. The article presents my attempt to ‘disassemble’ the statistical, psychological and economic infrastructure of social-emotional learning into some of its main constituent parts.

Policy & data infrastructures
By policy infrastructure I mean all the various organizations, forms of expert knowledge, concepts, techniques and technologies that all have to be brought together to make any policy area operational. Psychology, economics and statistics–which include people, knowledge, devices, practices and techniques–are key aspects of SEL policy infrastructure. And by data infrastructure I mean the technologies, modes of quantification, actors and desires that have to be assembled together for large-scale measurement–the system of data collection, analysis and presentation. In fact, I argue that the construction of data infrastructure is making social-emotional learning possible to conceive and enact as a key policy area. A policy infrastructure, in this sense, to a large extent is its data system.

Social-emotional learning sounds like a progressive, child-centred agenda, but behind the scenes it’s CONTINUE READING: Code Acts in Education: Psychodata | National Education Policy Center

Mapping America’s Teacher Evaluation Plans Under ESSA | VAMboozled!

Mapping America’s Teacher Evaluation Plans Under ESSA | VAMboozled!

Mapping America’s Teacher Evaluation Plans Under ESSA

One of my doctoral students — Kevin Close, one of my former doctoral students — Clarin Collins, and I just had a study published in the practitioner journal Phi Delta Kappan that I wanted to share out with all of you, especially before the study is no longer open-access or free (see the full article as currently available here). As the title of this post (which is the same as the title of the article) indicates, the study is about research the three of us conducted, by surveying every state (or interviewing leaders at every state’s department of education), about how each state’s changed their teacher evaluation systems post the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

In short, we found states have reduced their use of growth or value-added models (VAMs) within their teacher evaluation systems. In addition, states that are still using such models are using them in much less consequential ways, while many states are CONTINUE READING: Mapping America’s Teacher Evaluation Plans Under ESSA | VAMboozled!

For better student outcomes, hire more black teachers - The Hechinger Report

For better student outcomes, hire more black teachers - The Hechinger Report

For better student outcomes, hire more black teachers

Supporting teachers and communities will boost children’s academic achievement

There are 60,000 fewer public education jobs than there were before the recession began in 2007, according to an analysis of the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report by the think tank Economic Policy Institute. States and districts haven’t moved on from the austerity measures imposed by most states more than a decade ago when the recession hit. “If we include the number of jobs that should have been created just to keep up with growing student enrollment,” the EPI report states, “we are currently experiencing a 307,000 job shortfall in public education.”

A shortfall of more than 300,000 jobs in public education. Think about that the next time news of a teacher strike hits the headlines. Maybe severe budget cuts made sense to folks in 2007, but the underlying rationale behind firing teachers has never made sense to me.

In the Obama years, Republicans and Democrats alike were delighted to find common cause against teachers. Students weren’t doing so well, they argued, because their teachers simply weren’t good enough. Education reform was the name of the game, and everyone who wasn’t a quality teacher just had to go.

Problem was, that was a myopic view of the world. Neither students nor teachers exist in a vacuum. As I like to say, students don’t live in schools — they live in communities. And when their communities are negatively affected, that has a negative impact on them. So if you fire a whole bunch of black teachers, as education reformers did, with devastating effect, in New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and CONTINUE READING: For better student outcomes, hire more black teachers - The Hechinger Report

California Foolishly Trusts Charters to Hire Their Own Auditors | Diane Ravitch's blog

California Foolishly Trusts Charters to Hire Their Own Auditors | Diane Ravitch's blog

California Foolishly Trusts Charters to Hire Their Own Auditors

Will Huntsberry of the San Diego Union-Tribune has covered the scandals blighting California’s Charter Industry, especially the A3 online scandal, the largest in American history.

In this article, he goes straight to the heart of the scandals: the flawed audit process.

California lawmakers created a system that places just one process at the forefront of detecting fraud and mismanagement in the state’s schools: a yearly audit, conducted by a “state-approved,” “independent” auditor, according to the Department of Education.

But these auditors are not independent, in so much as they are hired and fired at will by the schools they are auditing. The term state-approved is also something of a misnomer. To qualify as an approved firm, the State Controller’s Office must only verify that the potential auditors are accountants in good standing with the California Board of Accountancy.

No special training or vetting required.

The audits themselves are also not designed to dig deeply into a school’s finances, according to transcripts from a grand jury proceeding into an alleged $80 million CONTINUE READING: California Foolishly Trusts Charters to Hire Their Own Auditors | Diane Ravitch's blog

What parents can do to stop bullying - Vox

What parents can do to stop bullying - Vox

So your kid is a bully. Here’s how to stop it.
First step: Try not to freak out.

t’s easy to think of bullying as something that other people’s children do, but not something yours might ever do. And, look, I don’t know you or your kid, but I can say with confidence that some children bully, and your kid certainly could be one. Even if they aren’t, we’ll be better off if all adults know how to intervene if a child is bullying. If you never have to use this information, great! I genuinely hope you don’t. But if you do need it at some point, that’s okay too.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines bullying as unwanted aggressive behavior by another youth (or group of youths) that includes “observed or perceived power imbalance.” It can be physical, verbal, or relational (think: spreading rumors, excluding people). According to a 2017 CDC survey, 19 percent of high school students said they were bullied at some point on campus in the 12 months prior, and 14.9 percent reported being bullied online in that time. Bullying is often targeted toward minority groups: A separate 2017 CDC report said that 33 percent of gay, lesbian, and bisexual students experienced bullying (compared to 17.1 percent of heterosexual students) in the year prior.

Bullying doesn’t just affect the child being bullied; it affects every child who witnesses it. And while much has (rightfully) been written about the adverse effects of bullying on victims, it’s worth noting that kids who bully don’t fare well either; according to the US Department of Health and Human Services, they are more likely to drop out of school, get into fights, abuse drugs and alcohol, have criminal convictions as adults, and be abusive toward partners and children as adults.

“If a bully is not helped with being a bully, that’s a mental health issue,” says Mary Gordon, author of Roots of Empathy: Changing the World Child by Child. If a child you know and love is the aggressor, read on for some expert advice on what to do next.

Try not to freak out

“As a parent, I feel so badly for the parents of bullies,” Gordon says. “There’s a feeling of, ‘I’ve done something wrong, I’ve been a terrible parent.’ Don’t beat yourself up. Don’t make this about you. You’re not a bad parent.”

Psychologist Michael Reichert, author of How To Raise A Boy: The Power of Connection to Build Good Men, says that bullying behavior is fairly normative; the child who is bullying is CONTINUE READING: What parents can do to stop bullying - Vox

Let’s never see another first-grader in handcuffs- Hechinger Report

We must end the school to prison pipeline that starts in early childhood

OPINION: Let’s never see another first-grader in handcuffs
It is far past time to end the school-to-prison pipeline that starts in early childhood

The Hechinger Report is a national nonprofit newsroom that reports on one topic: education. Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get stories like this delivered directly to your inbox.

Two first-graders in Florida are not the same children today as they were last month. Consider the distress, fear and confusion that being forcibly taken, handcuffed and driven away from your school by a police officer would cause in any 6-year-old you know. Imagine it’s your child, your grandchild.

We both worked in the Obama administration, one of us as a senior policy advisor for early childhood development, and the other as a deputy assistant to the president and policy lead on criminal justice reform. Though we shared an office suite at the White House, our work worlds rarely collided. The main exception? School discipline, an issue that brings together two topics that should be separate: early childhood and criminal justice.

Last month, our worlds collided again. Two 6-year-old black children were arrested for incidents in their first-grade classroom in Florida. The officer involved in the incident was fired. But that doesn’t erase the trauma that those children faced and will continue to face. It doesn’t fix the system that enabled the officer’s behavior.

Related: TEACHER VOICE: Breaking the school-to-prison pipeline with ‘windows and mirrors’ for black boys

After months of operating in our own “lanes,” we got in touch with each other and shared our reactions to the story.

Criminalizing the developmentally appropriate behavior of  black children is something that’s been happening for generations. In past years, there have been other well-publicized cases of school-resource officers handcuffing children whose hands are too small for CONTINUE READING: We must end the school to prison pipeline that starts in early childhood

It's Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... A VERY BUSY DAY | The latest news and resources in education since 2007

Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007

It's Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... A VERY BUSY DAY | The latest news and resources in education since 2007

The Best Social Emotional Learning Resources Of 2019 – Part Two

by Larry Ferlazzo / 3h

Time for another end-of-year “Best” list! I’ll be adding this list to I’m adding this post to All My 2019 “Best” Lists In One Place! I publish a regular series called SEL Weekly Update , and I thought it would useful to readers and to me to review them and highlight the ones I think are the best of the year. You might also be interested in “Best” Lists Of The Week: Social Emotional Learning Resou

YESTERDAY

Video: “FireStorm: How Wildfires Are Spread”

by Larry Ferlazzo / 10h

skeeze / Pixabay I’m adding this new video from The Weather Channel to The Best Sites For Learning About Forest Fires:

“Students Feel More Motivated When Writing for ‘Authentic Audiences'”

by Larry Ferlazzo / 10h

Students Feel More Motivated When Writing for ‘Authentic Audiences’ is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. Shanna Peeples, Mary K. Tedrow, Amy Sandvold, and Laverne Bowers “wrap up” this five-part series on students writing for “authentic audiences.” Here are some excerpts: I’m adding it to The Best Places Where Students Can Write For An “Authentic Audience”

Video: “What if We Nuke a City?”

by Larry Ferlazzo / 10h

TGrand / Pixabay Here’s a new and terrifying video from Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell. I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Learning About Nuclear Weapons .

We’re Taping A Four Video Series On Student Motivation This Week – Here Are A Ton Of Related Resources In The Meantime

by Larry Ferlazzo / 10h

geralt / Pixabay Katie Hull and I will be videotaping a four-part (short) video series on student motivation for Ed Week, and it’s happening this week! As regular readers know, I’ve written three books on the topic and have a fourth one in the works, too. The videos will be out later this year but, in the meantime, you might want to check out A Collection Of My Best Resources On Student Motivatio

New Law In California Says Schools Will Start Later In Morning – What Opportunities Might It Offer

by Larry Ferlazzo / 12h

California’s governor just signed a law requiring schools to start later in the morning. For our school, that will mean beginning twenty minutes later (from 8:10 to 8:30 AM). Interestingly, I seldom have had students initiate a conversation about a current event as much as they did today after reading about the law online. And it was all positive. Like our state union, I wasn’t a big fan of the b

New Resources On Indigenous Peoples’ Day & Columbus Day

by Larry Ferlazzo / 13h

Alexas_Fotos / Pixabay Here are new additions to an already massive list, The Best Online Resources About Christopher Columbus & Indigenous Peoples’ Day: Columbus Day Or Indigenous Peoples’ Day? is from NPR. Illuminative is a new resource site created by Native American youth. “This isn’t a day about protesting Columbus, it’s about celebrating indigenous people,” the founder of Indigenous Peoples

My Latest BAM! Radio Show Offers Suggestions On When To Use – & Not To Use – Tech In The Classroom

by Larry Ferlazzo / 14h

Knowing When to Say Yes and When to Say No to Education Technology is the topic of my latest ten-minute BAM! Radio show. I’m joined in the discussion by Anne Jenks, Irina McGrath, and Michelle Shory, who have also all contributed written commentaries to my Education Week Teacher column. I’m adding this show to All My BAM Radio Shows – Linked With Descriptions .

Big New Study Finds That Inquiry & Problem-Based Instruction In Math/Science Is Effective

by Larry Ferlazzo / 1d

Students Learn More From Inquiry-Based Teaching, International Study Finds is an article in Education Week that does a good job summarizing a new study finding that inquiry and problem-based teaching can be effective in math and 

Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007