Teach Effectively!

Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media is promoting its “Tools for Reporting on Teaching: What to Look for in Classrooms,” a Web site aimed at helping journalists know what to look for in teaching. It’s a dang clever idea, because the illustrations set the agenda for reporters. Those who buy the vision of teaching put forth on the site will likely look askance at some examples they see in classrooms and provide favorable views of classrooms that are similar to those portrayed on the site.
Continue reading ‘Hechinger Institute examples’

Hmmmm… someone’s written a little script that reads a Web page and computes a readability level for it. It’s selling itself by publishing a link to a company that sells loans (“cash advances”) in the code that displays the shield shown here. (I excised that code, but one can probably find it elsewhere when one sees a similar shield.) Anyway, I wondered what algorithm was employed in determining the readability level. Had I more time, I’d scour the Web in search of an explanation. Had I even more time, I’d construct a group of Web pages that were sensitive to different readability formuli and run the test against each of them….sigh.

In a comparison of students’ literacy in 40 countries, fourth-grade-age children in Russia, Hong Kong, and Singapore have the highest levels of literacy. Although the average score for students in the United States and England was above the scale average, those scores ranked 17th and 18th, respectively.
Continue reading ‘PIRLS Data Compare Literacy by Country’

It appears that there is a disagreement about how to teach mathematics effectively in at least a half dozen communities around the US. You may already know about rumblings in the states of Washington, as represented by the folks at “Where’s the Math?”, and Missouri, where it’s Columbia Parents for Math that Works. But, what do you know about Ridgewood (NJ, US), Beaverton (OR, US), New York (NY, US), Thousand Oaks, Westlake Village, and Newbury Park (CA, US), and Chicago (and elsewhere in IL, US)? If you know of other groups such as these, please drop a note about them in the comments.

Continue reading ‘Math reform matters’

The Consortium to Prevent School Violence has launched its Web site. There’s a note on EBD Blog giving more information.

Jay P. Greene and Marus A. Winters examined the prevalence and costs of placement of students with disabilities in private facilities, and they found that much of the rhetoric about this controversial expenditure of schools funds was exaggerated. Professors Greene and Winters examined data from the US Department of Education, aggregating those data across states. They reported that only 1.48 percent of the 6 million students with disabilities are placed in private facilities. Furthermore, the estimated total cost of such placements—just under $1 billion—is just 0.24% of the total budget for education.
Continue reading ‘Out-of-LEA placements not as costly as portrayed’

I received volume 8, number 1 of the Journal of Evidence-Based Practices for Schools recently. This special issue of JEBPS reflects the efforts of the Wing Institute (see link under “Web Resources”) to promote effective instructional and management practices in schools.

1. Introduction—T. Steuart Watson
2. Roles and Responsibilities of Researchers and Practitioners for Translating Research to Practice—Mark D. Shriver
3. A Roadmap to Evidence-based Education: Building an Evidence-based Culture—Ronnie Detrich, Randy Keyworth, and Jack States
4. Establishing and Sustaining Statewide PBS Implementation: A Description of Maryland’s Model—Teri Lewis-Palmer and Susan Barrett
5. NCLB, Contingencies, and Utah’s Alternate Assessment—Karen D. Hager, Timothy A. Slocum, and Ronnie Detrich

Link to the publisher’s Web site for JEBPS where one can download a PDF of Professor Shriver’s lead article.