November 2011 Archives

More than 650 principals in New York have signed a letter protesting the new teacher-evaluation system the state is implementing as part of its Race to the Top agenda, according to an article in the New York Times. Points of contention include the allegedly haphazard way the system was put together, inconsistent applicability across subjects and grades, and a heavy reliance on what the principals consider to be "unreliable" tests.

The school leaders also appear to be less than thrilled about the training sessions they are required to take with state-paid consultants—"two days of total nonsense," in the words of one principal signee. In some of these sessions, presumably to illustrate that the evaluation system is a work in progress, the trainers have been showing a lighthearted video of workers building an airplane in mid-air. This has not gone over well. "It was supposed to be funny, but the room went silent," one attendee told the Times. "These are people's livelihoods we're talking about."

State education leaders concede the principals have legitimate concerns and that the new system is not without "bugs." But they contend that it will ultimately result in more "scientific, objective" evaluations and improve teachers' professional standing. Besides, they stress, it's the law.

Posted by Anthony Rebora at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A new study, which looked at the effects of technology on youth and the impact on parents and teachers, found that one in five teachers has either experienced or known another teacher who has been subjected to cyberbaiting. According to The Norton Online Family Report, cyberbaiting "is when students irritate or 'bait' a teacher until the teacher gets so frustrated they yell or have a breakdown. Students are ready for the teacher to crack and film the incident on cell phones so they can later post the footage online, causing further shame or trouble for the teacher or school."

The report also found that even though 67 percent of teachers believe interacting with students on social networks elevates the risk of cyberbaiting, 34 percent of teachers continue to "friend their students" on social networks. Furthermore, only 51 percent said that their school has guidelines that dictate how teachers and students can communicate with one another through social media.

Have you or one of your colleagues been the victim of cyberbaiting? What can schools do to better protect their teachers in cyberspace?

Posted by Francesca Duffy at 4:18 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

StoryCorps, a nonprofit oral history project, is asking people to give thanks to their favorite teacher on Nov. 25. David Isay, founder of StoryCorps, is encouraging people to record a tribute to a teacher and upload it to YouTube, post a memory about a teacher on Facebook with the tag @StoryCorps, "friend" a teacher on Facebook, or tweet a message using #thankateacher. There's also the option to track down a teacher and record an interview with him or her, either at home or at a StoryCorps recording facility. The project is part of the yearlong National Teachers Initiative.

Education Week recently entered into content-sharing partnership with StoryCorps, you'll be hearing more from them on our site soon.

Posted by Liana Heitin at 1:51 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

This will be my last writeup on NCTE. Overall, I have to say it was an impressive conference, especially content-wise (the logistics were a bit hectic for me, but perhaps that's to be expected with about 7,000 attendees and 50 concurrent sessions during each time slot).

On Friday, three high school teachers from Gresham, Ore., presented on ways to use pop culture in addressing state literacy standards. In their session, "Can Lady Gaga and Hamlet Coexist?," the young teachers began from the premise that the answer to their title was yes. They devoted no time to debating the value or appropriateness of particular material—instead, the presenters stuck to explaining how and to what ends they infuse lessons with pop culture.

Rana Houshmand said she uses pop culture mainly for scaffolding difficult literacy skills. She finds that students do well when they ease into a skill using content they are comfortable with. When teaching students to answer literal, influential, and evaluative questions, she begins by asking those questions about popular visual images, then about song lyrics. Eventually students dive into more difficult academic texts.

Eli Nolde, the next presenter, offered some creative ideas on incorporating pop culture to boost engagement. He explained that he had attempted to use a Nathaniel Hawthorne excerpt for a Read Aloud-Think Aloud (in which the teacher reads something to the class and stops intermittently to explain what he or she is thinking at that moment), and was dismayed to see students rolling their eyes and putting their heads down on desks. He decided to try again, this time with a text that was familiar to his students but not to him: the Call of Duty game manual. The exercise exposed his own "illiteracies," he said, and gave the students a chance to be experts. Watching him authentically struggle with comprehension gave them a model for being metacognitive in their own difficult reading, he said.

In teaching students to compare works and analyze themes, Nolde introduces a soundtrack project. Students create a mix CD soundtrack for a play, book, poem, or character, justifying each of their song choices in writing.

The presentation became a brainstorming session of sorts when the high school teachers threw it out to the audience to describe how they use pop culture to teach literacy. Here are few interesting ideas and online tools that came up:

• Toondoo—Create comic strips based on a text.

• Pinterest—Make an online bulletin board for a character or text.

• Facebook—Create a Facebook page for a fictional character. (One teacher without much access to technology gave her students the option to make pages by hand.)

• Grooveshark—Make online music playlists for the soundtrack project.

• Edmodo— Have students use this social networking site to post book quotes on the class wall and discuss the text.

Posted by Liana Heitin at 3:31 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Apparently Bill Gates isn't the only personal computing pioneer to have expressed strong concerns about the ability of America's public schools to prepare students for the economic future—and to lay a good part of the blame on teachers' union regulations. Toward the end of his bestselling biography on the late Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson recounts a private meeting between Jobs and President Obama that took place in the fall of 2010. At one point, Jobs—never one to hold back his opinions—brought up the subject of education. Isaacson writes:

Jobs also attacked America's education system, saying that it was hopelessly antiquated and crippled by union work rules. Until the teachers' unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform. Teachers should be treated as professionals, he said, not as industrial assembly-line workers. Principals should be able to hire and fire them based on how good they were. Schools should be staying open until at least 6 p.m. and be in session eleven months of the year. It was absurd, he added, that American classrooms were still based on teachers standing at a board and using textbooks. All books, learning materials, and assessments should be digital and interactive, tailored to each student and providing feedback in real time.

It's not clear from Isaacson's book whether this project ever went anywhere, but it's something teachers may want to keep an eye on: Jobs obviously had a pretty good track record on sensing well before everybody else which way the winds were blowing.

Posted by Anthony Rebora at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Take a look at Catherine Gewertz's blog post about the new National Center for Literacy Education, which NCTE announced the launch of at its conference. NCLE will offer free Web-based resources for teachers on the Literacy and Learning Exchange starting in 2012, as well as recognize and support schools and districts that implement "communities of practice"—much like PLCs—to conduct inquiries about student learning. It's still a bit hazy how the nearly two dozen partner organizations will all be involved. But Kent Williamson, executive director of NCTE, said the NCLE will be a "network of networks" and act as a "ground-up model" of reform in which school teams learn from each other. More on this down the road as the initiative's classroom and policy impacts become clear.

Posted by Liana Heitin at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The NCTE conference has ended. Now that I'm no longer chasing presenters between hotels or waiting in crowded lobbies for crawling elevators, I'll catch up on some blogging.

At a session titled "Linking Assessment and Instruction," Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey, both education professors at San Diego State University and teachers at Health Sciences High and Middle College, gave the best explanation I've heard of how to give and use feedback within the formative-assessment process.

Teachers spend hours and hours grading student papers, said Fisher, only to hand all of those "rich data" back to students. "And what do students do with [the papers]? They throw them out or are compliant and fix them." He told the story of a teacher who marked sentence fragments throughout a student's paper. When the student turned the paper in again with corrections, he had inserted "frog." throughout his text, having misunderstood the teacher's edits. Obviously, the feedback loop was ineffective—the student did not learn from it.

Poor feedback can also reinforce misconceptions, he warned. In the case above, the student re-did the assignment thinking he'd used full sentences.

Strong feedback, on the other hand, is timely, specific, actionable (pointing students in the direction of more information), and useful, said Frey. Students are given opportunities to re-learn and practice the skill again right away.

The second element of feedback, argue Fisher and Frey, is "feed forward." That is, teachers should ask themselves: How will I use what I learned in the feedback process to inform my instruction? Feed forward helps teachers anticipate misconceptions and decide what needs to be re-taught and to whom. Too many teachers fail to both a) track their feedback, and b) use the data to alter their upcoming lesson plans.

Fisher described the formative-assessment process used at his school. "We're not editors marking every error to fix" on an assignment, he said. Rather, teachers correct an error the first time they see it. The second time they see the same error, they put the student's initials on an error-coding sheet. Then they can easily see which students are struggling with the same skills, and pull them for small-group instruction. Students bring their assignment to the small group, re-learn the skill, and correct their own errors.

It seems so simple. And it can save teachers time in correcting papers. Yet in order for it to work, teachers need to be flexible in their planning and willing to veer from whole-class instruction.

Does this seem like it could work in your class? Do you already use something like it? What are the potential hurdles in implementing this sort of feedback loop?

Posted by Liana Heitin at 5:03 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Recent education reform initiatives have focused heavily on the alleged shortcomings of the teaching profession. But New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman points to new research suggesting that there's considerable room for improvement outside the classroom as well. He quotes from a multi-country study that looked at the relationship between parents' engagement in their children's learning and results on the much-discussed Program for International Student Assessment:

Fifteen-year-old students whose parents often read books with them during their first year of primary school show markedly higher scores in PISA 2009 than students whose parents read with them infrequently or not at all. The performance advantage among students whose parents read to them in their early school years is evident regardless of the family's socioeconomic background. Parents' engagement with their 15-year-olds is strongly associated with better performance in PISA.

One of the researchers told Friedman that even seemingly mundane gestures of support by parents—e.g., just talking to children about what they are learning in school—"can have the same impact as private tutoring." A separate study by the National School Boards Association, Friedman reports, reached similar conclusions.

Posted by Anthony Rebora at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Live from NCTE in Chicago

A few musings from the last two days.

• One of my favorite things about being here is listening in on English teacher side chatter. Between sessions, on the shuttle, and at meals, there's talk of allusions, metaphors, and most of all books—from A Tale of Two Cities to Speak. These teachers live up to the fairy-tale image many of us still hold of them as passionate literature devotees.

• Yesterday in a session on formative assessment (an excellent one, which I'll write about in a bit), the presenters showed a clip of a 10th grade teacher re-teaching a writing objective. Throughout the lesson, the teacher addressed her students as "kids." I realized at some point that I was wincing every time she said it. Her use of the diminutive term was strangely bothersome. I know I use the word in my own writing when referring to students, but for some reason it struck me as harsh when used to address 15- and 16-year-olds--a group that generally is being asked to behave maturely and prepare for adulthood.

I know teachers who call their students "friends," "scholars," "boys and girls," and "ladies and gentlemen." I'm pretty sure I vacillated between the last one and the all-encompassing (through probably not politically correct) "guys" as an elementary school teacher.

How do you address your students? Do you think some designations are better than others? Are there grade-appropriate names or should teachers just use what comes naturally?

• Also, I just had to get this in the blog one way or another. While sitting on the train from O'Hare to the Hilton downtown on Thursday, I noticed this banner advertisement just above my head. Serendipity? The look on that teacher's face made it seem more like a bad omen. I have a feeling cartoonish caricatures such as this are working against efforts to make teaching a more respected profession.

Posted by Liana Heitin at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Live from NCTE in Chicago

In a session called "A Marriage of Math and Reading," two ELA teachers and their math-teacher husbands described the beginnings of a collaborative research study on the effects of incorporating writing into math class. (Despite the title, there wasn't much talk of reading at all.) The four teachers are working with Amy and John Lannin, a husband/wife team of professors at the University of Missouri, Columbia, to conduct their research.

Over six weeks, the husbands assigned writing activities in their math classes, such as exit slips in which they asked students to write down what they learned and the questions they still have. Ryan Pingrey, who teaches at Hickman High School in Columbia, said one of the benefits he saw right away was that students who were hesitant to speak up in class were not hesitant to put their thoughts on paper. Asking students to write has given him better insight into what concepts his students are and are not grasping as well as helped him build relationships with quieter kids.

This kind of cross-curricular writing is nothing new, and the researchers were not claiming to have reached any definitive answers in the first month and a half of a year-long study. But the session did kick off an interesting discussion about whether math teachers should correct grammar in writing assignments. There's certainly a time management issue there, but the greater philosophical question is whether each (secondary school) teacher is responsible for only their content or student learning as a whole. Should students focus on expressing what they know about the math concepts without having to worry about style and grammar issues? Or should they be expected to use "college- and career-ready" writing at all times? The presenters argued for no copyediting, while at least one math teacher in the audience felt strongly that students should be held to high writing standards at all times. It's a dilemma that teachers of all subjects face. Where do you stand on the issue?

Posted by Liana Heitin at 6:25 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Just a quick heads up that I'll be doing some blogging from the National Council of Teachers of English's annual conference, which is being held over the next couple of days in Chicago.

I just got out of the first keynote address by the ever-present Linda Darling-Hammond. In front of a packed ballroom, with teachers even lining the back wall, the Stanford professor spoke about heightened expectations for student learning, inequitable school funding, the perils of over-testing (due to "No Child Left Untested"), and, of course, what we can learn from Finland. She railed against alternative pathways that reduce teacher-preparation requirements, merit pay based on test scores, and teacher churn. "We cannot fire our way to Finland," she said to much applause. Instead, she said we should give teachers more time to collaborate with colleagues, stating the specific goals of requiring 10 hours a week minimum and 10 full days per school year for shared professional development.

More to come, though intermittently as the conference is happening between two hotels that are about a 10-minute walk or a shuttle ride apart. Luckily the weather's looking good here in the Windy City so far...

Posted by Liana Heitin at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

An issue brief from the Center for American Progress argues that publicly identifying teachers in connection with their value-added student test-score ratings (a la The Los Angeles Times) may actually undermine efforts to improve teacher quality. By giving too much weight to one, not entirely perfect measure of performance, the brief argues, public value-added ratings could alienate teachers from more holistic evaluation efforts and possibly ward off others who are interested in the profession. "The bottom line is this," the brief's authors write: "Teachers need to be part of reforms but releasing names this way only leads to conflict and runs counter to the need for collaboration."

The obvious follow-up question (just to play devil's advocate): Is this saying that the public—e.g., parents—can't be trusted to make appropriate use of the information (information about teachers, incidentally, that school systems obviously think is important)? That seems like a potentially hazardous road to travel.

Your thoughts?

Posted by Anthony Rebora at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Washington Post education writer Jay Mathews argues that writing instruction in most schools today is "academic and lifeless." Nor does he think the new common core writing standards—redolent, in his view, of "clerical work"—will help matters much.

So what's a language arts teacher to do? Matthews agrees with educator Paula Stacey that teachers should scrap all the prescriptive writing models and process-oriented approaches and, in essence, just let kids express themselves and give them feedback on their work. This, he says, is how people learn to write:

The professional writers I know got excited not in class but while compiling personal journals, or composing poems and songs, or sending long letters or e-mails to friends, or working for the school newspaper. I have been influenced by educators who think free reading is the best homework for elementary school. Why not add some free writing?

Posted by Anthony Rebora at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A new study finds that skilled readers do not rely on sounds when reading but rather retrieve words purely from a "visual dictionary." The research, conducted by neuroscientists at Georgetown University Medical Center, may provide insight into the brain-based causes of dyslexia. And it's sure to provide fodder for debate within the neuroscience community.

The concept of a visual dictionary is not a new one to reading teachers, who tend to call words that do not need to be sounded out "sight words." Emerging readers often memorize some sight words before they've mastered letter-sound correspondence.

But as the study's lead researcher, Laurie Glezer, Ph.D., explains, there's been disagreement about how known words are accessed in the brain. "One camp of neuroscientists believes that we access both the phonology and the visual perception of a word as we read them and that the area or areas of the brain that do one, also do the other," she stated in a press release, "but our study proves this isn't the case."

The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to look at 12 volunteers' neural activity during a word recognition activity. They saw that homonyms with different spellings, like "hare" and "hair," activated different neurons. "If the sounds of the word had influence in this part of the brain we would expect to see that they activate the same or similar neurons, but this was not the case, 'hair' and 'hare' looked just as different as 'hair' and 'soup'. This suggests that all we use is the visual information of a word and not the sounds," said Glezer.

That's not to say students shouldn't learn phonics—Glezer explains that independent readers need to sound out a word the first few times before it is added to the visual dictionary.

The finding could help people with reading disorders, she said. "For example, if people with dyslexia have a problem forming this visual dictionary, it may be that there could be ways of helping train children with dyslexia to form a more finely tuned visual dictionary."

Seems to me there could be implications for how we teach all new readers—and perhaps students learning foreign languages as well.

Posted by Liana Heitin at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The Harvard Gazette has a report on a panel discussion marking the 30th anniversary of The Principals' Center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The discussion was titled "The Future of Leadership: Perspectives on the Principalship." Among the takeaways:

• Education leaders need to take action to curb the punitive learning atmospheres now prevalent in schools.

• Principals would be well-advised to share more leadership responsibilities with teachers, in part—in the words of one participant—to "unlock the tremendous overabundance of underutilized talent that gets left in the parking lot every day."

• Principals need to get behind efforts, such as those being conducted by the Gates Foundation, to identify "what great teaching looks like," and—while they're at it—to "protect" great teachers.

• School leaders should not overlook the potential value of having mentors of their own.

Posted by Anthony Rebora at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Need an excuse to take your students on a cultural outing or to organize a multiethnic potluck lunch for the class? This would be the time to do it. International Education Week, an annual initiative of the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Department of Education that started back in 2000, runs through the end of this week.

The goal of the effort, which is recognized by more than 100 countries, is to encourage international education and exchange programs. The IEW website features tips for K-12 teachers on how to incorporate an international component into their lesson plans. For instance, teachers might show a foreign film to the class, have students participate in a Model U.N., or hold a geography, foreign language, or world history bee.

Schools that plan to celebrate the week are encouraged to submit their events and upload their photos to the site to share with other classrooms around the world.

Posted by Francesca Duffy at 3:52 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I'm posting this video with some reluctance, as it's uncomfortable for all parties involved. But since it was highlighted by the conservative-leaning Education Action Group Foundation last week, it's been making the rounds on the Internet. I figured our teacher-readers might want to be aware of it and comment on it.

In a recent keynote address, Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, made some unsavory remarks about Education Secretary Arne Duncan, including a joke about him having a lisp (starting at minute 1:25). Immediately afterward, Lewis admitted it was a cheap shot, saying, "I know, that was ugly, wasn't it? I'm sorry."

Over the years, Duncan, former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, has taken heat from the unions for his support of standardized testing and charter schools.

Lewis called Duncan to apologize for mocking him during her speech at the Northwest Teaching for Social Justice Conference. An Education Department spokesperson said he has accepted her apology.

While most of the comments below the video on YouTube are spiteful and not worth a read, one person did make the comparison between the incident and ongoing bullying of students with speech impediments. However, it's clear Lewis was trying to be more of a stand-up comedian than a role model while on stage—later in the speech she referenced her own prior drug use.

UPDATE (2:15 p.m., 11/16/11): This morning, Lewis held a news conference and released this statement regarding her remarks during the keynote. "Some of what I said was inappropriate and insensitive," she said. "... But I implore you to look at the entire 35-minute video and to listen to the entire speech so you can make a decision for yourself without the filter of rightwing pundits and anti-public education, media-savvy operatives."

Posted by Liana Heitin at 2:24 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In a satirical "guide" to the social acceptability of various inequalities in the U.S.
New York Times columnist David Brooks says high school teachers are more sensitive about status inequality than college teachers:

Status inequality is acceptable for college teachers. Universities exist within a finely gradated status structure, with certain schools like Brown clearly more elite than other schools. University departments are carefully ranked and compete for superiority.

Status inequality is unacceptable for high school teachers. Teachers at this level strongly resist being ranked. It would be loathsome to have one's department competing with other departments in nearby schools.

Thoughts on the irony he points out? Is it true? Do the differences between high school and university teaching jobs necessitate divergent social norms? How might Brooks' analysis fit into the current school-reform debate?

Posted by Liana Heitin at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

NYC Educator is appalled by the way teachers in New York's absent-teacher reserve pool (that is, teachers who've lost their permanent positions and are reassigned to fill in at other schools) are being treated by the higher-ups.

A female ATR was instructed to do secretarial duties. For those unfamiliar with the concept of contract (for example, the administrators who issued this instruction) secretarial duties are to be performed by secretaries. The teacher declined, saying she was a teacher and wanted to teach. The administrator's conclusion?

"This is why none of you guys are able to get a job."

NYC Educator claims that every teacher is just one pen stroke away from being an ATR and that all teachers should therefore be supportive of their cast-off colleagues.

What are your thoughts? Is it fair to ask these teachers to do anything other than teach? Is every teacher really at risk of reassignment?

Posted by Liana Heitin at 2:08 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Hobo Teacher takes offense when his school, with air of magnanimity, informs teachers that they can have their pick of some old desks that have been salvaged from a renovation project:

I've always been a little sensitive about this, but I feel like the perception of teachers is that they will take anyone's crap. It's like we're grateful for anything as long as it is free. I can't help but to think that the conversation at Admin before the e-mail that was sent out went some thing like, "Hey these desks won't fit into the dumpster. What should we do?"

Of course, the desks were all snapped up in a heart beat—but we get the point. ...

Posted by Anthony Rebora at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Yesterday, a 3rd grade teacher in Galloway, N.J., walked out of what she had assumed was a regular school Veteran's Day assembly with a $10,000 check, according to Galloway Patch.

Terry Dougherty was the winner of the first Great American Teach-Off, sponsored by GOOD and The University of Phoenix. Dougherty, who began a free tutoring program for military children, was chosen over nine other finalists in a public online vote. The contest sponsors surprised her with the hefty classroom grant during the assembly at Roland Rogers Elementary School.

Posted by Liana Heitin at 5:16 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Cindi Rigsbee at The Dream Teacher recalls the moment she found out she'd become a National Board Certified Teacher. She writes:

I was alone in my classroom when I visited the website that day so I immediately called a friend, and then my mother, and then printed out the congratulatory letter and took it to my principal. I just felt that I needed to tell someone the amazing news. After nine long months of planning, writing, videotaping, testing, and reflecting, the day turned into everything I'd dreamed of: verification that I was impacting student learning in the classroom, the initials "NBCT" behind my name, a 12% raise provided by the state of North Carolina, and the ability to breathe again since sometime back in the fall over a year before.

It's a feeling she relives each November, she says, as a coach for other NBCT candidates. Last year, Rigsbee's mentee Vicki had the greatest reaction she'd ever seen:

Screaming at the top of her lungs, Vicki ran from hallway to hallway...I could hear her screams descend as she ran down a hall; I could tell the exact moment she turned to run back...the volume would turn up.

One of Vicki's students looked at me and asked, "What in the world did she win? A million dollars?"

"Same thing," I thought.

Are there any other professional accomplishments that are as thrilling for teachers? Would a teacher receiving a bonus in a merit-pay system be quite so jazzed?

(Also, see our post on some of the recent changes at The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, the organization that bestows the certification.)

Posted by Liana Heitin at 4:55 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

An article in Slate recently looked at differing feminist views of single-sex schooling, and concluded that co-education is more beneficial for girls.

The authors, Rebecca Bigler and Lise Eliot, who contributed to a recent peer-reviewed article in Science on the topic, explain that one group of feminists sees single-sex classes as a "protected environment" in which girls avoid the drama and distraction associated with trying to attract or compete with boys, while another group views single-sex environments as divisive. The authors support the latter perspective, for three major reasons.

First, they write, decades of research has failed to find an advantage in segregating the sexes. There are great single-sex schools, they explain, but "their success is not explained by gender composition, but by the characteristics of the entering students (such as economic background), by selection effects (for example, low performing students are not admitted, or are asked to leave), and by the substantial extra resources and mentoring these programs provide."

Second, despite "common lore among parents and teachers" that boys' brains function differently than girls', Bigler and Eliot write, "the bulk of scientific evidence demonstrates nothing of the sort." Lastly, the authors point to studies showing that treating boys and girls differently leads to the development of stereotypes and biases against the other gender. Coeducation, on the other hand, "offers boys and girls the chance to learn positive skills from each other."

Bigler and Eliot hope to convince the other feminists to work toward egalitarian rather than exclusive environments. "Whereas single-sex schools model the idea that gender exclusion is the answer to sexism, coeducational schools model the notion that the sexes must work together warmly and supportively," they write.

Not surprisingly, they've received some "unhappy responses" to their research. Where do you stand on single-sex schooling? What have you seen these schools do—and not do—well?

Posted by Francesca Duffy at 3:01 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Seems like things in Tennessee are far from settling down over the new statewide teacher evaluation system. Michael Winerip follows up on the controversy in a recent New York Times piece.

Winerip spoke with teachers and administrators who are frustrated with the evaluation system, which was implemented with haste under Tennessee's Race to the Top obligations and recent state law. "The state is micromanaging principals to a degree never seen before here," Winerip writes, "and perhaps anywhere."

One principal who now spends much of his time in his office doing paperwork told the Times, "I've never seen such nonsense. In the five years I've been principal here, I've never known so little about what's going on in my own building."

Teachers of nontested subjects receive value-added measures, which account for 50 percent of their evaluation score, based on a "bewildering set of assessment rules," Winerip writes. For 15 percent of those measures, teachers can choose the test they want to be judged on. "Few pick something related to their expertise; instead, they try to anticipate the subject that their school is likely to score well on in the state exams next spring," he says. "It's a bit like Vegas."

Winerip also gives a nod to our Education Week article, which put the controversy into a national context by saying that problems in Tennessee could undermine efforts to revamp evaluation systems in other states.

It's important to note that Winerip's take isn't exactly balanced—there are, in fact, plenty of proponents of the evaluation system outside the Tennessee department of education, as we point out in the Ed Week piece. And Winerip makes the claim that, "In the end, it's all about distrust: not trusting principals to judge teachers, not trusting teachers to educate children." I'm fairly certain at least some Tennesseans would say it's all about improving teaching to help students.

Even so, it's tempting to say that the ongoing media coverage is having an impact: The Tennessee State Board of Education recently made slight changes to the evaluation system that will, among other things, help streamline the process for principals.

Posted by Liana Heitin at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Will Richardson says that teachers urgently need to redefine their professional role in light of advancements in technology and prevailing expectations for schools. If teachers' main purpose is seen as improving student achievement as reflected in test scores, he argues, they will soon be displaced, for all practical purposes, by technology. To punctuate his point, he highlights a new data-driven personalized learning program being developed by Pearson. "Technology," he adds ruefully, "will soon provide a better 'learning' experience to kids needing to pass the test than a classroom teacher with 30 (or 50) kids."

Thus, to avoid being reduced to technical support staff, teachers have to put forth an alternative vision of schooling and instruction oriented around "inspiration and inquiry and joy in learning." Richardson writes:

We have to be about the thing that technology cannot and will not be able to do, and that's care deeply for our kids as humans, help them develop passions to learn, solve problems that are uniquely important to them, understand beauty and meaning in the world, help them play and create and apply knowledge in ways that add to the richness of life, and develop empathy and deep contextual understanding of the world. And more.

Posted by Anthony Rebora at 3:05 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, the independent nonprofit organization that bestows advanced certification on qualifying educators, has named Ronald Thorpe as its new president and CEO. Thorpe, who is a well-known education advocate, began his career as a private school teacher and administrator working under Theodore R. Sizer, and was later a program director at education foundations. Since 2003, he has been vice president for education at WNET, New York City's public television station. In that position, he helped create and direct the annual Celebration of Teaching & Learning conference.

Thorpe joins the NBPTS at a complex juncture in the organization's history. More than 90,000 teachers nationwide have now attained National-Board certification, and the organization's credentialing process has gained visibility (at least among teachers) at a time when policymakers are fervently seeking evidence-based ways to measure teachers' effectiveness and development.

At the same time, however, a number of states have sought to scale back subsidies and incentives for teachers who go through the Board-certification process. To gain standing in current education-policy discussions around teacher effectiveness, meanwhile, the NBPTS is being urged to consider incorporating standardized test scores and other measures of student-learning growth in its criteria for certification.

Posted by Anthony Rebora at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Feeling an accountability squeeze, many California schools are spending less time teaching science, despite the fact that educators say they recognize the importance of science instruction, according to a new report. Published by the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning, the report includes a number of notable findings that are arguably indicative of some larger national trends. Among them:

• Nine out of 10 California elementary school principals said giving students a strong background in science is very important or essential. Yet only 44 percent of elementary school principals said they believe students receive high-quality science instruction in their own schools.

• Forty percent of elementary school teachers spend one hour or less on science per week, and 13 percent spend 30 minutes or less, states the report. The majority of teachers attributed the lack of science instruction to limited time and an emphasis on English language arts and math. About half of teachers—particularly those in high-poverty schools—said lack of facilities was a major or moderate challenge in teaching science. Only 8 percent of teachers pointed to limited student interest as a major or moderate challenge.

• While 90 percent of elementary teacher said they feel very prepared to teach ELA and math, only about a third feel prepared to teach science. For many, that seems to be the result of insufficient professional development—more than 85 percent of elementary teachers surveyed had not received any science-related PD in the past three years.

The report, "America's High Hopes, Few Opportunities: The Status of Elementary Science Education in California," is based on the results of research surveys and case studies from 2010 and 2011.

Posted by Liana Heitin at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend