Va. couple donates a libary to S. African school
Shipping container, after redecorating, will hold 20,000 donated books.
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Larry Kugler teaches English through the folk song "She'll be Coming 'Round the Mountain" in Lumka Ingcukale's classroom. (Courtesy Of The Kugler Family)
On Obama (and Jay Mathews) and teacher accountability
Really now, does anybody think teachers should not be held accountable for how they do their jobs? What professionals are not evaluated on how well they do their jobs?
The real issues are inot whether, but how, the assessments are carried out, and how the results are used. And the way a lot of school "reformers" want to hold teachers supposedly accountable is wrong.
"Teacher accountability" is one of the central themes of President Obama’s new vision for the post-No Child Left Behind era, and that two-word term, unfortunately, has come to mean something it shouldn’t.
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Obama plan flaw: achievement gap
We wlll know much more about President Obama's plan to replace No Child Left Behind in a few weeks than we do now. When both the White House and the Congress are engaged on an issue this important, lots of changes happen.
For now, I think it is important to note that my colleague Valerie Strauss's distress about the president's emphasis on teachers improving student achievement harks back to an earlier era that will never return. It is politically impossible to pass a plan that doesn't make teachers accountable for student performance. We will never return to the good old days (in the minds of some) when we ignored that factor. I agree with Valerie that there are better measures of schools, but for the moment they are way too expensive (like regular inspections) and way too complicated for voters to understand and trust
How to handle students cheating
What should we do about the computer hackers at Winston Churchill High School in Montgomery County who changed dozens of grades? What is the solution to student cheating in general?
Research suggests that rising pressure to get into good colleges has led students to cut corners. One study cited by the Educational Testing Service said only about 20 percent of college students in the 1940s said they cheated in high school, while that proportion is four times as large today.
De-emphasize the college race, some experts say, and much of this nonsense will go away. I have argued for many years that parents and students should recognize the research indicating that adult success really doesn't depend on the prestige of one's alma mater. But that approach to easing cheating isn't going to get us far. Competition is too much a part of American culture. Also, college pressure tends to affect only the top 20 percent of students who seek selective schools (it's a higher percentage in the affluent Washington area) and not students who cheat for other reasons, such as laziness or boredom.
If you have some ideas, post them as comments here. I think the solution is obvious: smart teaching.
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