Upcoming travel and events December 3-5 – International School of Amsterdam, The Netherlands February 3 – Virginia Is for Learners Innovation Network, TBD, VA February 25-26 – Missouri Educational Technology Leaders CTO Clinic, TBD, MO March 10-13 – Central & Eastern European Schools Association (CEESA) Annual Conference, Budapest, Hungary June 8-9 – Roanoke County Public...
Category: politics
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Teach students higher order or critical thinking skills? Not if the Texas Republicans have their way.
The Republican Party of Texas states in its official 2012 political platform: We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs...
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Chris Lehmann on educational colonialism
I am posting Chris Lehmann’s recent post almost in its entirety because it’s that important. Some pictures are below… there are a lot of powerful folks right now who are advocating for a pedagogy that they do not want for their own children. Some of these powerful people are running networks of schools that have...
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Giving the powerful a pass
Upcoming travel and events December 3-5 – International School of Amsterdam, The Netherlands February 3 – Virginia Is for Learners Innovation Network, TBD, VA February 25-26 – Missouri Educational Technology Leaders CTO Clinic, TBD, MO March 10-13 – Central & Eastern European Schools Association (CEESA) Annual Conference, Budapest, Hungary June 8-9 – Roanoke County Public...
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Is focus on the few poor teachers driving away even more of the good ones?
People see bad teaching and they become convinced that the real issue is planning. Eventually, they decide that it would work best to have all teachers on “the same page” (my God, what would life be like if we all approached reading that way — laboriously moving page by page in the same book as...
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The importance of basic academic skills … and much, much more
The following table represents the responses in 2005 of representative samples of American adults, state legislators, school board members, and school superintendents. They were asked to rate the relative importance of 8 broad public school goals. Note the emphasis on things other than just basic knowledge and skills. I’m guessing that we would get similar...
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Blame the method, not the kids (or educators)
Hi Karen, I regularly struggle with Diane too. See, for example: http://bit.ly/LxBKeUhttp://bit.ly/aMuPCC I often find myself wishing for data, evidence, or at least some support for what she’s saying. Sometimes what she says drives me crazy. She has a tendency to overgeneralize (e.g., ALL charter or virtual schools are bad) and I remain firmly convinced...
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Why are we educators having so much trouble mobilizing our voice in ways that are effective?
Why are we educators having so much trouble mobilizing our voice in ways that are effective? Are we afraid to speak up? Are we ineffective when we do speak up? Do we need to do a better job of marketing? Are we not taking these educational and policy changes seriously enough yet? Do we not...
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Money, politics, and educator evaluation in Iowa
Timeline December 8, 2012. Students First, an advocacy group founded by Michelle Rhee, is reported as the biggest financial contributor to the 2012 Iowa legislative elections (by a large margin). April 23, 2013. Students First begins advertising campaigns in Iowa for HF 215 (a legislative bill that proposed tying teacher evaluations to student test scores). May...
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5 big questions for the Iowa Council on Educator Development
The Iowa Council on Educator Development meets tomorrow for the first time. This is the statewide group that is supposed to make recommendations to the Iowa legislature about how to better evaluate teachers and school administrators. Given many of the practical and policy insanities that have occurred in other states around this issue – massive...
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