March 2011 Archives

"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." -Albert Einstein "What is tested does count, but much of what counts cannot be tested." -Student Learning, Student Achievement Report Task Force Many teachers quote Albert Einstein when describing the challenges and frustrations they feel towards standardized testing and its impact on their classrooms. Teachers often explain how testing narrows the curriculum, limits the variety of student learning opportunities, emphasizes basic skills, and fails to measure higher level thinking such as creativity. Teachers feel that they help students learn so much more than what ...

How can we measure teacher effectiveness? The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) recently released their report, Student Learning, Student Achievement: How Do Teachers Measure Up? to discuss effective methods of using student learning as a measure of teacher effectiveness. The full report is available on the NBPTS website with this following description: Few education issues are raising more questions and greater interest than that of how the nation should fairly and accurately evaluate teachers and assess their influence on student performance. And few issues are more important. To help better understand how teachers are assessed in this new ...

The Digital Immigrant and Digital Native Discussions continue. We talk about how student access to the Internet is regulated by Internet filters and firewalls. Should the Internet be regulated in schools?