In his recurring posts for the Washington Post, Dan Willingham has three suggestions about how to approach the problem of creating a system for evaluating teachers’ contributions to students’ outcomes. The guidelines are sensible and worth reviewing. Read them here.
Sphere: Related ContentMonthly Archive for August, 2010
Ed Week reporter Christina Samuels reminded me that the US Department of Education has announced awards under the “Investing in Innovation Fund” (“i3″ program). There are substantial funds for cooperative agreements or grants aimed at promoting practices with demonstrated benefits.
Program Description: The Investing in Innovation Fund, established under section 14007 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), provides funding to support (1) local educational agencies (LEAs), and (2) nonprofit organizations in partnership with (a) one or more LEAs or (b) a consortium of schools. The purpose of this program is to provide competitive grants to applicants with a record of improving student achievement and attainment in order to expand the implementation of, and investment in, innovative practices that are demonstrated to have an impact on improving student achievement or student growth, closing achievement gaps, decreasing dropout rates, increasing high school graduation rates, or increasing college enrollment and completion rates.
These grants will (1) allow eligible entities to expand and develop innovative practices that can serve as models of best practices, (2) allow eligible entities to work in partnership with the private sector and the philanthropic community, and (3) identify and document best practices that can be shared and taken to scale based on demonstrated success.
I’m regularly a little wary about “innovation,” as an interest in what’s “new” or “innovative” too often trumps the employment of well-established (“old school”) practices that have a documented track record for success. Let’s hope that the track records for these innovations are actually well established. Also, let’s hope the US Department of Ed applies a level of scrutiny to them that at least approximates the evaluation that it focused on the Reading First initiatives.
Although Ms. Samuels focused her analysis on projects that fit with special education (a sensible take, given that special ed is her beat), there are many others. Readers can see a complete list of the funded projects on a site provided by the department by following this link and learn about the program by following this one.
Sphere: Related ContentAccording to Stannis Steinbeck, principal of Broadus Elementary School in Pacoima (CA, US), this is the view of the members of her faculty. According to data about the teachers’ effects on student achievement, not all teachers are effective. It should come as no surprise that some are more effective than others and some are woefully ineffective.
Jason Felch, Jason Song, and Doug Smith of the Los Angeles Times aggregated achievement test data over seven years and across many students assigned to 6000 teachers to assess which teachers consistently improved and which consistently diminished their students’ outcomes.
Continue reading ‘“Our teachers think they’re all effective.”’
Merrow on reading
Over on Learning Matters in his blog, Taking Note, John Merrow published an entry entitled “On Learning to Read” that raises some good points, but nearly omits a terrifically important one. I suspect regular readers (whom I’ve neglected terribly in the recent months—sorry) can guess which one was omitted.
Here’s Mr. Merrow’s lead:
Continue reading ‘Merrow on reading’
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