February 2012 Archives

The Chicago Tribune has a story on the apparently growing use of Twitter in 1st grade classrooms. According the article, some early-grades teachers have their students using the micro-blogging tool, as well as other kid-friendly blogging programs, to do things like send daily updates to parents or share ideas and stories with classmates.

Educators quoted in the article say using blogging and secure social-media platforms helps even very young students become more engaged in writing and begin to get a grasp on today's diverse forms of communication.

Younger students are "going to have an entire life that exists on the Internet in the virtual world," says one school technology specialist. "They need to understand the difference between the different social media tools. Starting in first grade—I don't see any negative."

It's a compelling idea, surely. But I was surprised that the story didn't provide the perspective of anyone who is skeptical of the value of this sort of trend (even as it cites the favorable view of a school-technology entrepreneur). Surely there are at least some trade-offs or concerns. What are your thoughts?

Posted by Anthony Rebora at 1:03 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A number of news stories are highlighting the courageous role that teachers played in the midst of the tragic shooting yesterday at Chardon High School in Ohio, which authorities are now saying claimed the lives of two [sigh] three students. By reports, after the gunman opened fire in the cafeteria, assistant football coach Frank Hall charged him and chased him out of the school—and into police hands. Witnesses say that Hall, known around the school as the "gentle giant," continued his pursuit even though the shooter brandished the gun at him.

Meanwhile, math teacher Joe Ricci had put his classroom on lockdown when he heard moaning coming from outside his door. According to witnesses, he went out and pulled a student who had been shot several times into his class and began administering first aid until the paramedics arrived. That student, Nick Walczak, is still alive.

Shortly after the shooting, one student at the school tweeted, "Mr Hall and Mr Ricci put themselves on the line when they didn't have to. This world needs more people like them."

And then in response to a follower who asked for details about the educators: "They're both seriously incredible men and we're lucky to have them in our lives."

Posted by Anthony Rebora at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

At a reception yesterday in Newark, N.J., 25 teams of teachers received over $200,000 in "teacher innovation" grants. Funded by Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million gift to the city's schools and managed by the Foundation for Newark's Future, the grants aim to help teachers start programs tailored to their school's needs.

According to The Star Ledger, more than 100 teacher teams applied for the grants. Among the winners were teams that will use the money to improve literacy, integrate iPads into special education classes, and assist students in chemistry research. One team won $8,600 to develop "an inquiry-based social justice curriculum" through which students will research Newark. History teacher Milagro Harris, one of the recipients of the grant, explains that the project can help Newark kids to "become experts on their own lives."

The Star Ledger also reports that Newark teachers "who wish to apply for additional innovation grants may compete this fall for nearly $400,000."

Posted by Francesca Duffy at 4:38 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Inspired by a popular YouTube meme, Ms. Eyre—who was off this week and trying at all costs to avoid thinking about New York's new teacher-evaluation plan—puts together a short list of "Stuff Teachers Say on Vacation." Here's number three, for example:

Awww, heck yeah! Sale on business casual separates at TJ Maxx!

Posted by Anthony Rebora at 2:58 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The Washington Post's Jay Mathews—initially a proponent of the Common Core State Standards—asserts in a recent blog post that Virginia is doing the right thing in refusing to adopt the new standards. Drawing on discussions with Brookings Institution scholar Tom Loveless, who recently put out a report on the topic, Mathews makes the case that the standards are but the "educational fashion of the moment" and "will fail," writing:

As Loveless notes, there are three main arguments for having all public schools teach the same subjects at the same level of rigor and complexity. First, students will learn more if their learning targets are set higher. Second, students will learn more if the passing grade for state tests are set higher. Third, students will learn more if lesson plans and textbooks are all made more complex and rigorous through required high standards.

Mathews goes on to show that each of those arguments has been disproved. However, I can't help but think there's another argument in favor of the common standards conspicuously left out of both the Loveless report and Mathews' analysis: that having public schools teach the same thing could be enormously beneficial for students moving from one state to another. As of now, do students transferring within a state tend to do better than those transferring between states? It seems logical that students who stay in-state would perform better on a state standardized test, but it would be interesting to see if they do better than their peers who move from state to state on a national test, such as NAEP, as well. That is, I'd hypothesize that students who transfer to a new school with the same standards could re-enter the curriculum more fluidly than those going to a new school with different standards.

On the same wavelength, as I wrote in a blog post several years ago, common standards could help streamline the IEP process nationally—making it easier to train special education teachers and eliminating the burden of having to rewrite IEPs for transfer students. And since it looks like the implementation of the common standards is a foregone conclusion in most states, determining the less obvious benefits could, if nothing else, increase teachers' level of receptiveness.

Posted by Liana Heitin at 1:02 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

High school social studies teachers interested in some offline professional development this summer—specifically, the chance to travel to historic sites with some like-minded colleagues—may want to look into the Founders Fellowship. The program, hosted by the Bill of Rights Institute and the Foundation for Economic Education, will take place in Washington, D.C., July 16-20, and will focus on the themes of "Civil Liberty, Commerce, and the Constitution." Attending fellows, selected based on leadership experience and interest in teaching about politics and economics, according to the website, will participate in discussion sessions with constitutional scholars and will visit historic homes and monuments, including George Washington's home at Mt. Vernon. Fellows receive free lodging, transportation, and meals during the program, and a $400 stipend toward travel to D.C. Applications for the fellowship are due March 26th.

Posted by Liana Heitin at 2:46 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In case you missed it, last week's Washington Post article on merit pay does a nice job of summing up the major rift between proponents and skeptics of a school reform effort that, according to the Post reporter, is "suddenly gaining traction."

Daniel Pink, author of the popular book about motivation, Drive, claims that merit pay doesn't improve teaching. "Rewards are very effective for some things—simple things, mechanical things," he said. "But for complicated jobs that require judgment and creativity [i.e., teaching], the evidence shows that it just doesn't work very well." In fact, extrinsic rewards can decrease intrinsic motivation, he argues. (I recall learning about this in a social psychology class—those receiving extrinsic rewards attribute their desire to complete a task to the reward, while those who do not receive extrinsic rewards convince themselves they simply want to complete the task.)

Former D.C. schools leader Michelle Rhee, on the other hand, a major advocate for merit pay, says the practice is meant to retain great teachers—not inspire mediocre ones. And Eric A. Hanushek, an economist at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, adds that it will attract people to the teaching profession who want to be held accountable.

It's notable that the two sides are entrenched based on very different assumptions about the purpose of merit pay. It seems a bit more like a misunderstanding than a true debate. Pink's point may be well-proven, that is, but if those implementing merit pay systems are doing so for the purpose of attracting and retaining more skilled teachers, then shouldn't the counterargument be based on whether or not those goals are accomplished?

Toward the end of the Post article, D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson, who replaced Rhee in 2010, makes a less scientific—and arguably more pragmatic—justification for differentiating pay. "I don't have the money to raise teachers' salaries to $100,000 across the board," Henderson said. "But I do have the money to reward my highest-performing teachers."

Posted by Liana Heitin at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Ariel Sacks, who is working on a book, reflects on the difficulties of being a teacher and writing about it at the same time:

Like Virginia Woolf argued in A Room of One's Own—a woman cannot be expected to write while she's cooking and taking care of children in a confined space. Her writing will suffer. I always hated that point, thinking it was narrowminded, but there was some truth to it. One needs mental space to bring the ideas out of the working memory and onto the paper. Space to focus on putting the words together. That process requires as much brain-power as creating materials for a lesson or a new seating plan. It is difficult to occupy both of those thought spaces at once.

Yet she goes on to explain that, hard as it is, she believes writing also makes her a better teacher—insofar as it helps her to reflect on her practice, participate in professional dialogue, and better understand her subject area.

As it happens, Sacks has an excellent piece on teaching novels in the upcoming issue of our Teacher PD Sourcebook, which will be online early next month. (In fact, I feel a little guilty because, timing-wise, it's quite possible that she wrote the above assent to Virginia Woolf just after working with us! It was a pretty tight deadline, I'm afraid ... ) Keep an eye out for it.

Posted by Anthony Rebora at 1:35 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Aaron Pallas, Professor of Sociology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, makes the argument on his blog that, within current discourse about teacher evaluation, the word rigor "is getting distorted almost beyond recognition."

In science, he writes, rigor is determined by a study's design and method for analyzing data. A study is rigorous if the scientific claims are backed by strong evidence—regardless of the content of those claims. However, when it comes to teacher-evaluation talk, he says, a system is deemed rigorous if it rates many teachers as "ineffective" and very few as "highly effective" (or whatever the language may be). That is, the rigor is dependent on the outcome. He goes on to say that "describing a teacher-evaluation system as rigorous hides the fact that the criteria for assigning teachers to performance categories—either for subcomponents or for the overall composite evaluation—are arbitrary." That is, there's no scientific basis for determining the score a teacher needs to be placed in a category. Pallas continues:

In fact, the cut-off separating "developing" from "effective" changed last week as a result of an agreement reached between the New York State Education Department and the state teachers' union—not because of science, mind you, but because of politics.

• More States Strengthening Rigor of Assessments

• Analysis Raises Questions About Rigor of Teacher Tests

The first headline is about state-standardized tests and the second about state-required teacher licensing exams. In both cases, rigor refers to the cutoff scores for passing—not the test design or amount of evidence to back the outcome. It's the same use of the term that Pallas claims is misleading in discussing teacher evaluations.

Or perhaps Pallas would argue we here at Ed Week are using the term wrong as well. Feel free to chime in, as usual.

Posted by Liana Heitin at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

There was an interesting article in the Washington Post this weekend about how manufacturers in Michigan are having a hard time finding skilled workers to fill a now-burgeoning number of good factory jobs. The problem is that many of the state's older laid-off workers do not have the technical skills needed to operate the automated equipment that is now used in most thriving factories. Meanwhile, younger people who might fill the gap appear to have little interest in or preparation for factory jobs—in part due to the perceived "volatility and stigma" of such work. Trends in education have played a role in this: Many high schools, the article notes, have scaled back vocational programs and shop classes in order to focus on college-preparation routes.

At this point, according to the Post reporter, some desperate manufacturers have resorted to seeking out candidates who have technical aptitude as opposed to specific vocational training—people "who like to fix dirt bikes and snow mobiles," for example.

Makes you think: Know any kids like that? More important: Are schools providing opportunities for them? Or are they neglecting a potentially key sector of the work force—and the types of skill-sets it will need? Where does this apparent skills gap fit into discussions about 21st-century learning?

Posted by Anthony Rebora at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Arizona state Senator Lori Klein recently introduced a bill that would punish K-12 teachers for their use of profanity in the classroom. According to Fox News, Klein introduced the measure after a parent informed her that a teacher in their district had gone unpunished for using the F-word in his daughter's class.

If the bill passes, a teacher who violates the obscenity and profanity guidelines, outlined by the Federal Communications Commission, three times would be subject to a week of suspension without pay. A teacher with five offenses would be fired.

According to the news station, Klein told the Senate committee that while she wishes this issue could be left in the hands of school boards, "she didn't feel they were protecting 'young, impressionable kids' from offensive language."

Kelly Parrish, an English teacher in Phoenix and a critic of the bill, pointed out that the restrictions could complicate matters for teachers when the curriculum they teach is not "G-rated," or when classes discuss literature that contains racial slurs and other offensive language, such as To Kill A Mockingbird. "We're supposed to be preparing them [i.e., students] for the next level," said Parrish. "If we just put them in a bubble and protect them, I don't think we're doing a good job at making them ready for real-life situations by sugar-coating everything."

Posted by Francesca Duffy at 1:29 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Education officials in Tennessee seem to be making good on their promise to find alternate student-achievement measures to be incorporated into teacher evaluations for teachers in nontested subjects—though it's teachers who are doing much of the heavy lifting in getting the idea moving.

The state jumped into a new teacher evaluation system this school year after just a few months of piloting, much to the chagrin of the teachers' unions and overwhelmed educators. Under that system, 35 percent of a teacher's evaluation score is based on student-growth measures. The temporary solution for teachers in nontested subjects was to give them a value-added score based on aggregate data.

But as Education Secretary Arne Duncan pointed out recently in a speech at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, some Memphis teachers are leading an effort to find a more logical, fair solution. Duncan said:

Just last week I met with Dru Davison, a fantastic music teacher in Memphis. Arts teachers there were frustrated because they were being evaluated based solely on school-wide performance in math and English. So he convened a group of arts educators to come up with a better evaluation system.

After Dru's committee surveyed arts teachers in Memphis, they decided to develop a blind peer review evaluation to assess portfolios of student learning. It has proved enormously popular—so much so that Tennessee is now looking at adopting the system statewide for arts instructors. If we are willing to listen, and to do things differently, the answers are out there.

You can see the details of the Memphis plan, which pertains only to fine arts teachers, here.

It's an interesting twist to hear Duncan endorse a portfolio-based measure over test scores—though he did so within a narrow realm (art). It does get you thinking though. How many other subjects could this work for? Are there other solutions that administrators and teachers can agree on "out there," waiting to be tapped?

The Memphis group will submit a full report to the Tennessee State Department of Education in May. I'll be sure to keep you apprised of where the proposal to expand the initiative goes, how teachers react, and whether other states are taking notice.

(Hat tip to our blogger Larry Ferlazzo on this one. You can see his post about on the Memphis art teachers' plan here.)

Posted by Liana Heitin at 2:18 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Earlier this week, The New York Times—which in the past has been criticized for negative coverage of educational technology—reported on a student-laptop program in the Mooresville, N.C., school district that has led to impressive gains in achievement and student engagement. The secret? By assimilating the Apple devices into their pedagogy and classroom routines, the story says, Mooresville teachers are able to provide more one-on-one instruction and allow students to work at different paces. Many teachers are also moving away from standard lecture formats and allowing students to do more collaborative and independent work. In general, the article stresses, Mooresville teachers value the computers not "for the newest content they can deliver" but for their ability to help them develop a more nuanced—perhaps more personalized—form of instruction.

But don't just take the Times' word for it. Just by coincidence (I swear), we launched a new Teaching Ahead roundtable discussion this week on the topic of classroom technology, and one of the panelists, Nancy Gardner, happens to be an English teacher at Mooresville High School. In her first post in the discussion, Gardner—a 27-year teaching veteran—discusses the way the laptop program has helped teachers in her district refine their practice:

My colleagues and I have become more student-centered. Our teaching is more focused, and we use more project-oriented, engaging activities. This intentional teaching is partly influenced by the use of data to drive instruction. However, it is also due to the nature of the tool itself: We are rethinking what students need to know and be able to do for life in the 21st century and how we can best help them reach these goals.

Gardner also notes that the program has included "ongoing opportunities for professional development"—something the Times story mysteriously neglects to mention. That would seem to be an integral part of building educators' confidence and resourcefulness in using digital tools. Another Teaching Ahead panelist, Jennie Magiera, stresses this point in her initial post:

Simply throwing devices into a classroom and putting "technology integration" as a checkbox on evaluation forms will result in—at best—mixed results. Teachers need support that speaks to their different levels of technology expertise. Professional development needs to reflect the best practices we use for teaching our own students—it must be differentiated, time-efficient, and hands-on.

Posted by Anthony Rebora at 1:45 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Cross-Posted from Teacher Beat, by Education Week's Stephen Sawchuk

Could teacher evaluations begin to offer us the best portrait yet of what instruction actually looks like in America's classrooms? And what changes might such information spur in teacher preparation and on-the-job training?

Those are implications raised by a couple of different papers looking at teacher evaluations. I've written about them on this blog before, but only from the technical aspects of the systems. In reviewing the reports again, it strikes me that they also have a lot to say about instructional quality--some of which seems frankly troubling.

First up is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's most recent release from its Measures of Effective Teaching study. As part of the study, observers scored thousands of taped teacher lessons against a bunch of different teaching frameworks.

The key data are in the charts on Pages 26-7. In essence, no matter what framework was used, teachers got higher scores on procedural tasks like planning and behavior management, but relatively low scores on things like "analysis and problem solving," "using investigation/problem-based approaches," "student participation in making meaning and reasoning," and "relevance to history and current events."

Second, the Consortium on Chicago School Research recently released final results from that city's pilot implementation of the Danielson Framework for Teaching and found similar results. Here, too, teachers generally scored lower on the domains of "using questioning and discussion techniques" and "engaging students in learning" than on managing the classroom. (See Page 14 of the report.)

It's worth pointing out, by the way, that the Chicago study also found that principals were not much better at using these techniques than teachers: They struggled to ask questions to elicit good information from teachers on their practice during the post-evaluation conferences.

The findings would appear to highlight some fairly consistent weaknesses in instruction and raise big question marks for teacher and leadership preparation--especially since the common-core state standards call for teachers to help students master precisely these kinds of higher-order reasoning and analytical skills.

Most educators in our field would agree that teachers should enter the classroom with a good repertoire of pedagogical techniques. Equally important, principals should know how to get appropriate assistance for a teacher who isn't quite up to snuff.

There's room for other interpretations in these findings, of course, such as whether the No Child Left Behind Act's focus on basic-skills tests has shifted the focus of instruction. We do know that the NCLB law has caused changes in teacher practices, but we don't know all that much about what the instructional process actually looks like in most places.

(Education Week receives Gates grant support. )

Posted by Anthony Rebora at 3:24 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, never one to shy a way from expressing contempt for teachers' unions, is calling for the executive director of the New Jersey union to resign for comments he made regarding poor families, reports NorthJersey.com.

During a discussion about vouchers on NJTV, New Jersey Education Association chief Vincent Giordano responded to the host's comment that many families can't afford to pull their kids out of underperforming public schools by saying, "Life's not always fair and I'm sorry about that." (NJEA has historically opposed school vouchers.)

According to NorthJersey.com, the Republican governor said he was "disgusted" but "not the least bit surprised" by Giordano's comment. He contended that if Giordano does not resign, the NJEA president should fire him.

Steve Wollmer, spokesman for the NJEA, called Christie's remarks an "obvious political attack." He told the news site that Giordano's comment was "open to misinterpretation" and that the NJEA has long supported disadvantaged students. "We will put our record on urban education up against the governor's anytime anywhere," said Wollmer.

Posted by Liana Heitin at 5:25 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Ward Elementary School in Winston-Salem, N.C., has created a unique program to promote reading and exercise by having students do both at the same time, according to the Winston-Salem Journal. Through the "Read and Ride" program, students exercise on donated stationary bicycles while reading a book or magazine. Started in 2009 by school counselor Scott Ertl, the program conducts 15-minute reading and riding classes for students in the trailer behind the school.

Ertl told the paper that since the program is voluntary, the impact on students is difficult to quantify. The school has not gathered data on whether students' test scores have gone up, or drawn any conclusions as to its effect on health. In addition, the counselor says that while some teachers praise the concept, not all of them embrace the idea of having to use class time to let their students participate in the program.

But some teachers appear to appreciate the idea. "So many (students) associate reading with sitting at their desk," said teacher Katie Garcia. "It kind of opens their eyes that they can pull out a book and read anywhere."

According to the Journal, other schools that have taken up similar reading and cycling programs include Naperville Central High School in Illinois and Russell Jones Elementary School in Rogers, Ark. The paper notes that Russell saw more growth in their reading benchmark tests among classes who participated in the program than those who did not. A similar program in a Canadian school showed both academic and health gains.

Posted by Francesca Duffy at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Last month, the Chicago Architecture Foundation launched DiscoverDesign.org, a free Web-based learning tool aimed at getting students excited about architecture. According to the website, it "empowers teens to gain architectural skills, learn green design principles, engage in problem solving, and connect to an online community of their peers, their teachers and design professionals around the world."

The site lists various design projects with step-by-step guides to help students develop and implement their ideas. Students can choose to design anything from a new school locker to a new technology wing for a school. Once their projects are complete, students can upload their work to the site and receive feedback and comments from teachers, architects, design professionals, and other students.

This month, the foundation announced that they will be conducting a national design competition. The project challenges high school students to redesign their school cafeteria for healthy eating in a sustainable space.

Posted by Francesca Duffy at 5:12 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Over the last few years, the teacher-evaluation debate has revolved mainly around whether—or to what extent—value-added scores should be involved. Since most researchers and educators agree an evaluation system needs multiple measures, there's also been some discourse around observations—how often they should occur and who should perform them. But for the most part, the same proposals for revamping evaluation systems have been recycled over and over.

However, just this week, two somewhat novel teacher-evaluation ideas crossed our desks here at Teacher. (A bizarre but pleasant surprise—not unlike the string of 60-degree days we've been enjoying this first week in February!)

Yesterday, we spoke with Ryan Balch, a former teacher and current Ph.D. student at Vanderbilt University who is doing research on the use of student surveys in teacher evaluations. The idea of using student surveys in and of itself is not a novel one—in fact, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Measures of Effective Teaching project incorporates student feedback as well. But Balch says his survey, unlike others, allows students to be more objective in their answers by asking for the frequency of a teacher's behaviors rather than a qualitative judgment of them. Balch also uses screening procedures to eliminate surveys he deems outliers—generally ones in which students appear not to have read the questions.

Balch conducted a pilot survey with 250 schools in Georgia and found strong correlations between the survey answers and teachers' value-added rankings. His next challenge is to determine whether students might alter their answers if they know the results could affect teacher pay or job status.

As for the second idea, a hat tip goes to The Washington Post's Jay Mathews. In his blog Class Struggle, Mathews describes the "wild" idea for improving evaluations proposed by a (brace for it...) non-educator. Luke Chung, the president of a software development company who was asked to serve on an evaluation task force in a Virginia district, offered what's essentially a new spin on peer review. The idea leverages the fact that teachers, to some extent, are at the mercy of how effective their students' previous teachers were—"like a production line." Mathews explains:

Downstream teachers should assess upstream teachers, as Chung put it. That means a teacher should evaluate the teachers who had her students in their classes the year before by judging what those students brought with them to her class, including behavior, curiosity and other non-tested traits. ... Systems such as D.C. public schools rate teachers in part by how much each of their students improves on standardized tests, but a downstream teacher would probably see improvements the tests missed.

The idea was, not surprisingly, politely dismissed by the task force, writes Mathews. (Chung said the group thought it would be "foreign and frightening" for new teachers to be in a position to evaluate veterans. Seems like there might be some objectivity issues as well, to say the least.)

Have other seemingly novel teacher-evaluation ideas come your way? Should school and district leaders (and non-educators, for that matter, like Chung) be thinking outside the box, or are we already on the right track for designing the most effective teacher evaluations?

Posted by Liana Heitin at 5:59 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In a lively podcast, Jeffrey Wilhelm, a professor of English Education at Boise State University, discusses the preliminary research behind his forthcoming book—the wonderfully titled Let Them Read Trash: The Power of Marginalized Texts to Promote Imagination, Satisfaction, and Social Action. Wilhelm's bottom line, as his title suggests, is that the types of narrative works teens are drawn to outside of school, while often "scary" and even "loathsome" to the adults in their lives, can have deep educational and developmental value.

Drawing on interviews with students, he says that such works—ranging from dystopian novels to vampire sagas to video games—help kids forge relationships, deepen conceptual knowledge, and process internal conflicts and transitions. "Vampires and teens have a lot of similarities," he notes suggestively (and, well, accurately).

Wilhelm advises teachers to make such works available to students (without necessarily "championing" them) and to give students a safe environment to reflect on their reading experiences and how fictional narratives connect to their lives. This can have "functional payoffs" for teachers, too, he said, by bridging kids' personal interests to the academic context.

Posted by Anthony Rebora at 5:09 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Having just finished scoring a batch of state English exams, NYC teacher Mrs. Eyre expresses sympathy for an ELL student who wrote one of the required essays in her native language:

This student was clearly not ready for the challenge of writing an entire essay in English. [That] was someone's decision in Albany, someone who has never met this child or knows anything about what it's like to be forced to sit for 4.5 hours (with extended time) and take an essay in a language one understands well enough to slog through a fairly insulated and well-supported school day, but not enough to write a whole essay with absolutely no assistance. ... I believe in high standards. I really do. But I don't believe in crazy ones.

She also wonders why the reading passages on standardized tests are so dull when "there is so much great and compelling writing in the world that kids might actually find themselves engaged with reading." Well, we can't have kids enjoying what they read (especially on a test), can we?

Posted by Anthony Rebora at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Google in Education recently launched its redesigned website in an effort to make navigation easier for teachers, schools, and students.

According to Mindshift, KQED's ed-tech blog, the main page is now "better organized," though much of the content offered remains the same. Listed under classroom tools is a link to Google Apps, which opens up myriad collaboration tools and lesson plans that are searchable by subject and grade level.

New this year is the News and Calendar feature, which lists upcoming workshops and conferences related to Google's education-related endeavors, and an online booklet that highlights some of the ways that teachers, students, and organizations used Google resources in 2011. Teachers can also now connect on the Google+ page for educators and share ideas for lessons and the latest in education news with one another.

Posted by Francesca Duffy at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend