Archive for the 'Musings' Category

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PISA results as Rorschach

Published on 8 December 2010 in Musings, News, Policy and The press. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

The education press is abuzz about the release of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 results, so it’s a good time for some semi-snarky speculation about excuses for the less-than-stellar relative scores for US students and about proposals we’ll be hearing or reading regarding what the US education system should do to correct underlying problems leading to those scores. Here’s a start. Feel free to add your own in the comments. (For bonus points, drop in references to news stories, letters to the editor, and etc. where people actually express one of the prototypical positions!)
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Bing REDU

Published on 16 November 2010 in Musings, News and Policy. 1 Comment

The Microsoft folks who bring us the search engine Bing have begun an effort to promote change in US education with REDU. The Web site makes a good case for why there should be concern about education in the US: high rates of dropping out, low rankings in international comparisons, aging teaching force, proportion of children attending schools in high-poverty areas, and so forth.

REDU stands for rethinking, reforming and rebuilding US education. Powered by people and technology, REDU is a movement designed to expand and encourage the national conversation around education reform by providing information and resources to learn, a community platform to connect, and tools and initiatives to act.

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Who? Who? Who?

Published on 5 November 2010 in Administrivia, Musings, News and The press. 4 Comments Tags: , .

Some traffic has been arriving from relatively new sources. What are these blogs? Who are the authors?

Liz Ditz says who she is. So does Joanne Jacobs. Ken DeRosa owns up to his posts. It’s easy to m know what Andrew Rotherham writes. Now, I can understand why, under certain circumstances, folks might need anonymity. But, I hope most folks promoting changes in education can speak openly about their views with fear of recrimination. It’s O.K.

Of course, if one simply makes inflammatory comments, then that’s a different matter. Maybe anonymity is advised. (That’s not to say that all anonymous commentators are flamers, just as not all spotted objects are Dalmatians.)

Anyway, anyone know what’s up with these sources?

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Tech talk

Published on 14 October 2010 in Administration, Musings, News, Technology and The press. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

I usually leave the technology cheering up to colleagues who know better than I about the topic, but this piece from the mainstream press is too good to let pass without amplification. In the Wall Street Journal, Jennifer Valentino-DeVries reported about children using contemporary devices as assistive technologies to their great benefit. Under the headline “Using the iPad to Connect: Parents, Therapists Use Apple Tablet to Communicate With Special Needs Kids,” she reported about the popular tablet device allowing a young child with disabilities to communicate.

Before she got an iPad at age two, Caleigh Gray couldn’t respond to yes-or-no questions. Now Caleigh, who has been diagnosed with cerebral palsy, uses a $190 software application that speaks the words associated with pictures she touches on Apple Inc.’s device.

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Schools scorecard

Published on 2 October 2010 in Administration, Assessment, Musings, News, Policy, Standards and The press. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Thanks to GreatSchools and its partners, there is a way for parents to examine the relative outcomes of different schools. Although I’m not among them, this is likely to make advocates of charter schools crow. For me, though, it’s a good time to celebrate the nose of the camel getting into the tent.

To be sure, many of these data have been available on the Web previously, but this version is especially accessible and has a very high profile. Now that these data are aggregated here, I long even more for the day when schools will routinely publish the results of regular measurements of students’
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Left AND right brain

Published on 20 September 2010 in Administration, Musings, News, Research, Teacher education and The press. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

Teach Effectively pal Dan Willingham’s entry for this week at the Washington Post is about the myth of the left-brain-vs-right-brain dichotomy. He drives a very large convoy of vehicles through the gaping hole in the putative theory, a hole that was reopened by a report published by Arne Dietrich and Riam Kanso in a prestigious Psychological Bulletin article entitled “A Review of EEG, ERP, and Neuroimaging Studies of Creativity and Insight.”

Professors Dietrich and Kanso examined a shipload of studies that used multiple methods to examine the relationships between neurological functions and structures and creative thinking. What they found does not accord with the Pop-Ed views one is likely to hear in what passes as professional development sessions provided by at least some—if not many—schools and teacher education programs.
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Two effective educators

Published on 17 September 2010 in Musings, Reading and Research. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

I came across this photo when I was moving from the office I occupied for the past five years into a new one in an adjacent building. It’s a keeper!

As I recall, I caught this shot of Bonnie Grossen and Joanna Williams, two people who know more than I could ever hope to learn about teaching students both fundamental and sophisticated literacy skills, when they were chatting between sessions at a meeting of researchers in Washington (DC, US). I think the event was an annual gathering of people who had federally funded research projects, and Professors Williams and Grossen just happened to slip aside to catch up on some matters.
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“Our teachers think they’re all effective.”

Published on 15 August 2010 in Administration, Arithmetic and mathematics, Elementary, Musings, News, Parents, Policy, Reading and The press. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

According 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.
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