Teach Effectively!

The National High School Center has released an issue brief, “Dropout Prevention for Students with Disabilities: A Critical Issue for State Education Agencies,” that purports to examine the problem of high drop-out rates among students with disabilities—> 3 in 5 students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders drop out of school!—and provide recommendations for addressing the problem. Louise Kennelly of the National High School Center, who is credited with authoring the report, also listed “promising programs,” but there are few data about effectiveness of them at this time. Snag a copy of the report from http://www.betterhighschools.org/pubs/.

The Forum on Educational Accountability (FEA) issued a press release stating it’s views on the re-authorization of the “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) law, the current incarnation of the venerable Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The joint statement of > 100 organizations list 14 major recommendations. Here’s the main idea:

As U.S. Senate and House committees consider revisions to the federal “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) law, 128 national education, civil rights, religious, civic, labor and disability groups have now signed on to a Joint Organizational Statement on NCLB, which states “the law’s emphasis needs to shift from applying sanctions for failing to raise test scores to holding states and localities accountable for making the systemic changes that improve student achievement.”

Link to the press release as html or PDF. and to the FEA site.

Read RedKudu’s post “How To Break Up A Fight.”

Professor Andrew Leigh of the Australian National University has reported the results of a study of the relationship between students’ outcomes and which teachers those students have. Professor Leigh examined the test scores for both literacy and numeracy of more than 90,000 students as they progressed through 3rd, 4th, and 5th or 5th, 6th, and 7th grades; he connected those scores to the students’ teachers and determined what part of the changes in students’ outcomes were attributable to the teachers.
Continue reading ‘Teacher effects’

Over on ms_teacher, a middle school teacher has an intriguing post about differentiating between someone who cannot do something and someone who can do that something but does not do it. The example she uses, which she drew from the recent debate at Edspresso (“Nancy Creech vs. Ken De Rosa on Whole Language”), makes the argument that those who can read but don’t read are functionally equivalent to those who cannot read.
Continue reading ‘Can-doesn’t vs. can’t’

Over on Instructivist there’s an off-handed piece about the ever-so-popular constructivism. It’s called “Soliciting ed guru advice.” I chuckled.

The What Works Clearinghouse released reports on Early Intervention in Reading (Beginning Reading), Read, Write, & Type!™ (Beginning Reading), and Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies© (for English Language Learners).
Continue reading ‘WWC new releases’

Several years ago I published a paper for some folks. Carl Binder, Elizabeth Haughton, and Barbara Bateman had written Fluency: Achieving True Mastery in the Learning Process and were looking for a way to disseminate it. It’s been out in the wild since 2002 and I know a few folks have read it. But lots more folks should read it, in my view. So I’m issuing a reminder about it here.

How can you tell whether someone has truly mastered a skill? What is the measurable indicator that a person really knows how to do something? These questions should be at the heart of every teaching decision, every observation of a child’s performance, and every evaluation we make about the success of an educational program. Yet for many educators, and certainly for most parents, answers to these questions are anything but clear. Most of us have grown up in a “percentage correct world” where 100% correct is the best anyone can do. But is perfect accuracy the definition of mastery? Or is there another dimension that makes the difference? In fact, we see many children and adults who can perform skills and demonstrate knowledge accurately enough – given unlimited time to do so. But the real difference that we see in expert performers is that they behave fluently – both accurately and quickly, without hesitation.

Continue reading ‘Promoting mastery’