Jersey Jazzman: Why Scrapping School Testing This Year Is a Good Idea

Jersey Jazzman: Why Scrapping School Testing This Year Is a Good Idea

Why Scrapping School Testing This Year Is a Good Idea

During yesterday's (insane) news conference, Donald Tump made some news on the K-12 education front:

It’s official: U.S. students won't have to take annual state tests this year.

The Education Department will waive federal requirements for state testing for K-12 students, due to unprecedented school shutdowns to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus, President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced Friday.

Normally, federal law requires schools to administer exams in English and math to students in third through eighth grade, and once in high school. The results are used to examine how students are progressing and how well schools are performing.

Students usually take state tests in the spring – and school closures are likely to continue through the testing window.

Now, I've got some serious reservations about giving the SecEd broad powers -- especially when that SecEd is Betsy DeVos, who has repeatedly shown she is not up to the job. But the crisis we're now facing has obviously created a huge problem for the nation's K-12 schools, and we ought to be looking at whether current federal policies are helping or hurting. That starts, to my mind, with canceling our regular springtime battery of state tests.

It's useful to step back and think about why annual testing was implemented in the first CONTINUE READING: Jersey Jazzman: Why Scrapping School Testing This Year Is a Good Idea

Cartoons about Online Learning | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Cartoons about Online Learning | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Cartoons about Online Learning

Yes, it is that time for the monthly feature of cartoons. For March, I have collected cartoons about online learning. With K-12 schools and universities shutdown, many school leaders have turned to online courses as a way of teaching and learning as well as keeping up-to-date in the business world. Social distancing during the pandemic has expanded online teaching beyond even promoters’ dreams. So it is a moment when the cartoonist’s pen is welcomed. Enjoy!

MORE CARTOONS: Cartoons about Online Learning | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

An educator’s personal story: The year is 1949, not 2020, and the disease is polio, not covid-19 - The Washington Post

An educator’s personal story: The year is 1949, not 2020, and the disease is polio, not covid-19 - The Washington Post

An educator’s personal story: The year is 1949, not 2020, and the disease is polio, not covid-19

Larry Cuban is emeritus professor of education at Stanford University and a leading scholar on the history of school reform. Before his long Stanford tenure, he was a high school social studies teacher for 14 years and a district superintendent in Arlington, Va., for seven years.

He is the author of numerous books about education, as well as scholarship articles and op-ed pieces on classroom teaching, the history of school reform, how policy gets translated into practice and education technology. His newest book, “Chasing Success and Confronting Failure in American Schools” from Harvard Education Press, will be available in April.

Cuban has also written an education blog for 11 years, called Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice, which always offers sober and smart analysis

He wrote a recent piece on his blog that was uncharacteristically not about schools but about a personal experience he had with a viral outbreak from the past, during which he contracted polio.

It seems like an appropriate time to run his compelling story now, with most of the country’s schools closed because of the global spread of the novel coronavirus known as covid-19, and with millions of Americans hunkering down at home, fearful of getting sick.

By Larry Cuban

San Angelo is in West Texas, the county seat between Abilene and the Mexican border. Farms, oil wells and cattle ranches fenced with barbed wire dot the county. Blessed with a warm climate and reputation as a healthy place to live, in one year San Angelo added to its reputation in ways that city leaders dreaded.*

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In mid-spring, the newspaper reported that a local child had come down with a viral disease. Previously, when this disease occurred, it had not spread. This one, however, did.

Parents began arriving at Shannon Memorial Hospital with “feverish, aching youngsters in their arms,” CONTINUE READING: An educator’s personal story: The year is 1949, not 2020, and the disease is polio, not covid-19 - The Washington Post

Top 10 Things I Want My Students to do During the Coronavirus Quarantine | gadflyonthewallblog

Top 10 Things I Want My Students to do During the Coronavirus Quarantine | gadflyonthewallblog

Top 10 Things I Want My Students to do During the Coronavirus Quarantine

Dear Students,

A schoolteacher without a classroom is kind of like a firefighter without a fire.

Or a police officer without crime.

But here we are – self-quarantined at home.

Our classroom sits empty, and everyday this week we sit here at home wondering what to do.

I want you to know that I’ve been thinking about all of you.

I hope you’re doing alright during this unprecedented moment in history. It probably seemed like a lot of fun when it first happened.

No school for the foreseeable future!

The whole thing came together so quickly that our district didn’t even have time to get together work to send home with you. And like most schools throughout the country, many of you don’t have home internet access so we can’t fairly give you on-line lessons, either.

So you’ve been at home with little guidance from us. Sure we have free breakfast and lunches available for pick up at the school, but you’re probably growing a bit stir CONTINUE READING: Top 10 Things I Want My Students to do During the Coronavirus Quarantine | gadflyonthewallblog

CURMUDGUCATION: Don't Ever Forget How Much Some Folks Hate Public Education

CURMUDGUCATION: Don't Ever Forget How Much Some Folks Hate Public Education

Don't Ever Forget How Much Some Folks Hate Public Education

Interesting piece this week in the Washington Post, penned by Stuart Stevens, a GOP non-Trump fan consultant with a book coming out. The whole piece, about how the GOP has morphed into the kind of party ripe for something like this coronviracation we're now all sharing, is well worth reading, but here's just one quote:

The failures of the government’s response to the coronavirus crisis can be traced directly to some of the toxic fantasies now dear to the Republican Party. Here are a few: Government is bad. Establishment experts are overrated or just plain wrong. Science is suspect. And we can go it alone, the world be damned.

Those feelings find their way into a variety of issues, and public education is not immune.

I'm not talking about folks like the AEI-Fordham axis of disruptors. There are people in the reformster world who have (or at least show) respect for teachers, even recognize there is some value in the public education system.

But that's not everybody. I've been watching-- am, in fact, still watching-- a thread unfold on the twitter that is venomous pile-on that embraces all of the the fantasies listed above. Assertions in this thread include:

Public education should be abolished.
There's nothing special about being a teacher; anyone can do it.
Schools are oppressive prisons devoted to indoctrinating students into... well CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Don't Ever Forget How Much Some Folks Hate Public Education

CATCH UP WITH NEWBLACKMAN (IN EXILE)

NewBlackMan (in Exile)

CATCH UP WITH NEWBLACKMAN (IN EXILE)

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by Mark Anthony Neal / 1d

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Crystal Bridges – 'Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal…'

by Mark Anthony Neal / 1d

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by Mark Anthony Neal / 1d

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by Mark Anthony Neal / 1d

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by Mark Anthony Neal / 2d

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by Mark Anthony Neal / 4d

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by Mark Anthony Neal / 4d

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MAR 15

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NewBlackMan (in Exile)