Monthly Archive for February, 2007

Page 3 of 3

Self-esteem

Published on 8 February 2007 in Musings, Parents and Social behavior. 3 Comments

Writing in the Washington (DC, US) Times, Paul Greenberg commented about Arkansas’ new governor, Mike Beebe, who objected to schools sending reports to parents about their children’s body mass index. In his column, entitled “Self-Esteem to the Extreme,” Mr. Greenberg used Mr. Beebe’s expression of concern about harming children’s self-esteem as the launching pad for deriding the idea of promoting self-esteem.

Remember self-esteem? It was one of the sillier — and more dangerous — fads in educational circles, which keep going round and round. The theory was that promoting kids’ self-esteem would convince them they were great. And it just might. But that’s no guarantee they are great.

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Perfect flat storm

Published on 7 February 2007 in Musings and News. 2 Comments

Based on a coalesence among three factors—disparities in literacy and numeracy skill levels among various groups, shifts in the economy (especially the balances between labor and and capital) toward more technical work, and changes in the demography (increases in aging and diverstiy in the population)—the US Educational Testing Service (ETS) is forecasting a catastrophy in the US.
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RF evaluation

Published on 6 February 2007 in Administration, News and Reading. 0 Comments

The US government’s Office of Management and the Budget (OMB) released data from an evaluation of the Reading First program 26 January 2007. The evaluation shows that Reading First is making progress toward the objectives specified for the evaluation. The evidence for this judgment is based on the (a) purpose and design, (b) planning, (c) management, and (d) results and accountability of the Reading First program.

Although the last of these is the one of greatest interest to folks such as I who are primarily concerned about education improving students’ outcomes, the first few are important, too. Given the criticism heaped on the Reading First program because of the report by the US Department citing mismanagement, especially by those opposed to systematic and explicit teaching of reading, the findings in this report that management was good is a bit of an exoneration of those who managed the program.
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Teaching relevant skills

Published on 6 February 2007 in Musings and News. 0 Comments

Over on Letters from Lisa, Lisa Fischler has a couple of good posts under the heading “common myths about special education.” In the first post, she takes on this idea:

If I let this child (have extra time on tests, type his work, take more frequent breaks, etc.) I will have to let every child do it, in order to be fair.

In the second post, she provides observations about this idea:

This student is complaining that he’s “bored”, but I can’t give him more challenging work to do. He can’t even hand in the work that he already gets. His homework is always late, if he turns it in at all, and his written responses are too short and simplistic. How is he going to handle more difficult material?

Jump over there to read common myth #1 and common myth #2.

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Zig bk–chapter 3

Published on 5 February 2007 in News. 0 Comments

Today’s the day that chapter 3, Follow Through continues, of Zig Engelmann’s book, The Outrage of Project Follow Through: 5 million failed kids later, becomes available at http://zigsite.com. To secure your free copy, you need to download it within the next two weeks.

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More w-w-c

Published on 1 February 2007 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

The What Works Clearinghouse posted three new reports of results 19 Jan 2007. They focus on Interactive Shared Book Reading, Phonological Awareness Training plus Letter Knowledge Training, and Talent Search. Link to the WhatWorks site’s page on PA and reading. Link to the section on Talent Search.

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