Archive for the 'Policy' Category

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Chicago grading teachers down

Published on 17 June 2010 in Administration, News, Policy and Teacher education. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Writing under the headline “Fewer Chicago teachers making the grade: Study shows new evaluation system rates teachers on a tougher curve” in the Chicago (IL, US) Tribune, Tara Malone and Azam Ahmed report about the two-year-old Excellence in Teaching Project that has identified 20 times as many teachers as unsatisfactory as were identified under an earlier system.

Far more Chicago schoolteachers received the worst rating under a new evaluation system intended to measure how educators connect with students, new research shows.
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Teachers are not widgets

Published on 16 June 2010 in Administration, Assessment, News, Policy, Teacher education and The press. 0 Comments

Over on The Widget Effect, billed as “our national failure to acknowledge and act on differences in teacher effectiveness,” one can learn about an effort to alter the assessment of teachers. The project published report in 2009 about a study of teacher evaluation that people associated with the project conducted. That report describes the ways in which teachers are evaluated in four different U.S. states as well as the views of several professional (teacher or administrator) organziations.

The perspective taken in the report is captured in the following excerpt:

If teachers are so important, why do we treat them like widgets?
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Going to Hong Kong

Published on 29 April 2010 in News, Policy, Research and Teacher education. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .
HKIE Poster
Click for really big version

I am scheduled to be in Hong Kong as a guest of the Hong Kong Institute of Education in late May of 2010 where I shall speak about the importance of educators employing evidence-based procedures in collaborative teaching procedures. I am very honored that F. C. Ho has invited me to talk about this topic. As regular readers know, it’s a foundational concept for me.

Learn more about special education and counselling at HKIE. Also, see my note from our 2006 stop to visit with FC and colleagues.

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Children of the Code posts Engelmann 2

Published on 13 April 2010 in Arithmetic and mathematics, Behavior Management, Content learning, Elementary, News, Policy, Primary, Reading, Research, Secondary, Spelling, Teacher education, The press and Written Expression. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Over on Children of the Code, David Boulton and colleagues affiliated with Learning Stewards, a non-profit organization, posted the second segment of an extended video interview entitled “Professor Siegfried Engelmann Part 2: Improving the Quality of Learning.” Here’s a snippet from the the announcement:

Siegfried “Zig” Engelmann is Professor of Education at the University of Oregon, the Director of the National Institute for Direct Instruction, and President of Engelmann-Becker Corporation, which develops instructional materials and provides educational services for students with various educational needs. The creator of “Direct Instruction”, Professor Engelmann is also the author or co-author of more than 100 articles and chapters of professional books, and more than a dozen professional books and monographs.

“It doesn’t matter what your theory of learning is, all you need to do is look at the facts of what you did and the facts of what the kids are doing.”

I like that quote. It captures the raw empiricism that undergirds Professor Engelmann’s approach to teaching and instructional design.

Siegfried Engelmann 2: Improving the Quality of Learning
Read an earlier entry from Teach Effectively that links to the first part of the interview: “Engelmann interview on instructional design.”

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Evidence-based education in Head Start?

Published on 2 March 2010 in Administration, News, Policy, Primary, Research and The press. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Isabel Sawhill and Jon Baron published an editorial in Education Week calling for a new approach to the venerable Head Start program, one founded on evidence about effectiveness. They argue that in the wake of the discouraging Head Start Impact Study reported by US Department of Health & Human Services, it’s time to bring research into the nation’s play pre-schools.

A new approach is needed. One that has been suggested—defunding these programs—would amount to giving up the fight against major social problems such as educational failure and poverty that damage millions of American lives. A far better alternative is to use rigorous evidence about “what works” to evolve Head Start and other federal efforts into truly effective programs over time, and to use sophisticated models to trace their longer-term effects on children’s life prospects.

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Read the Rose Report on reading

Published on 26 February 2010 in Administration, News, Policy, Reading and The press. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Those readers from the UK are almost surely familiar with the “Rose Report,” but readers in other parts of the world may not know about it. Identifying and Teaching Children and Young People with Dyslexia and Literacy Difficulties: An independent report from Sir Jim Rose to the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families was published in June 2009 and is available for free.

Overall, this the Rose Report presents a clear, sensible, and valuable understanding of reading problems and dyslexia, including many valuable recommendations for instruction. It is not perfect, to be sure. For example, there is a strong endorsement of Reading Recovery, which I find unwarrented given its record and costs. Still, a well-informed reader will find much to like in this document.
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Rating LEAs’ teaching?

Published on 17 February 2010 in Administration, Musings, Policy and Standards. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Today in Washington (DC, US) the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute launch a public service Web site that allows visitors to learn about the healthiness of localities on a county-by-county basis across the US. The news got me thinking—Danger!—about the possibility of creating a similar resource for consumers of education: Providing a scientifically credible metric for the quality of teaching in each local education agency around a country.
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Socrates questions educators

Published on 6 January 2010 in Administration, News, Policy, Teacher education and The press. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Over on Zig Site, Siegfried Engelmann has a new series of articles in which Socrates questions fictitious educators about educational concepts. In the first, Socrates engages one Dr. Gibbs, a “prominent professor of education.” Here’s an excerpt:

Dr. Gibbs: Learning is extremely complicated and influenced by a host of factors, including motivation and parental attitudes. The point I try to make to my students is that every child is an individual who learns according to his or her time table, and in his or her unique way.

Socrates: You give us a lot to think about. But is there some fact or rule that describes all learning?

Dr. Gibbs. Of course not. The learner is what the learner does and what the learner has inherited. Learning is not some kind of cut-and-dried process. The most specific thing one could confidently say about all learning is that it occurs in a series of predictable stages, which have been described by Piaget and others.

Just imagine the hash that Socrates makes of such bologna!

In another, Socrates and Dr. Baram Rosenthal, an “educational guru,” discuss reading instruction. Catch ‘em at Zig Site. Look in the left rail.

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