Posted: April 25th, 2013 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | 1 Comment »
From Kevin Andrews:
Dear Friends,
As you know, we are mourning the loss of our beloved student Martin Richard who died during the tragic events at the Boston Marathon. He was laid to rest Tuesday Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 22nd, 2013 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | 2 Comments »
Jennifer Borgioli:
But some of the criticism that has been directed toward the tests has been misplaced. Understanding basic principles of test design makes it possible to see that the tests are doing their best to accomplish a steep, socially important task.
Very good short essay. Worth reading the whole thing.
Posted: April 17th, 2013 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | No Comments »
From TNTP, a new 24-page paper:
Leap Year explores a simple idea: The first year is the most important year of a teacher’s career, and we need to treat it that way. While many schools and teacher training programs treat teachers’ first year like a warm-up, we should instead see it as a critical window of opportunity to help teachers develop essential skills and determine whether they can make a successful career teaching.
Couldn’t agree more.
The mission of Match Teacher Residency (MTR) is to create unusually effective rookie teachers.
Posted: April 16th, 2013 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | No Comments »
From the Globe:
Neighbor Dan Aguilar said the Richard family was close, and that on most days — regardless of the weather — Martin Richard and his brother were in the family’s backyard, playing soccer, hockey, or baseball.
“They are just your average little boys,’’ Aguilar told reporters gathered near the family’s home on Carruth Street. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 14th, 2013 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | 4 Comments »
Harvard’s Jal Mehta writes in the NYT:
By these criteria, American education is a failed profession. There is no widely agreed-upon knowledge base, training is brief or nonexistent, the criteria for passing licensing exams are much lower than in other fields, and there is little continuous professional guidance.
It is not surprising, then, that researchers find wide variation in teaching skills across classrooms; in the absence of a system devoted to developing consistent expertise, we have teachers essentially winging it as they go along, with predictably uneven results.
Read the whole thing.
Posted: April 11th, 2013 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | 1 Comment »
Stephen Sawchuk of EdWeek writes:
Middle school Teach For America teachers in Texas seem to be holding their own in the classroom, outperforming other novice teachers in math, according to a recently released study from the San Antonio, Texas-based Edvance, an independent evaluation firm.
TFA alumni also did better than other veteran teachers in that subject, the study found.
The effect size was equivalent to 4+ months of extra time in school.
Some positive effects for English, too, though smaller.
Hat tip to Eduwonk.
Posted: April 11th, 2013 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | 1 Comment »
a. Born in the U.S.A.
b. The Star-Spangled Banner
c. My Country Tis of Thee
d. America the Beautiful
e. Gangnam Style
Love this idea:
Ultimately we settled on a modest idea: use the existing U.S. Citizenship Test as a graduation requirement from public high school and admission to college.
The test is fairly simple and straightforward — the kind of thing every schoolboy knew when schoolboys used to know things: What are checks and balances? Name a freedom guaranteed in the First Amendment. What did Susan B. Anthony or Martin Luther King, Jr. do? There are 100 questions on the test. Would-be citizens are asked ten; answer six correctly and you pass.
Small beer? Without a doubt…
…Education reformers often complain that we lack a sense of urgency, but we also lack a sense of scale. It is all well and good to set big, audacious goals and to raise the expectations for all students. By all means, let’s raise the ceiling. But let’s also set the floor. Rebuilding our shared national base of historic and civic knowledge is a good and obvious place to start.
Read the whole thing in the Atlantic.
Posted: April 10th, 2013 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | 1 Comment »
I’ve led some p.d. sessions for school leaders on “how to run a faculty meeting.” A frequent concern among leaders — whether from Catholic, traditional, pilot, private, or charter schools — was that a single teacher might set a negative vibe, and teachers who felt differently behaved as a silent majority.
(A frequent concern among teachers was that the leader didn’t invest enough time in preparation, so the agenda isn’t tight, and time is managed poorly, and the meeting drags on way too long….but that’s another story).
I came across this Seth Godin blog which captures the basic idea.
The meeting troll is a common creature, one that morphs over time and is good at hiding (snaring you when it’s too late to avoid him.)
The meeting troll has a never0ending list of reasonable objections. It’s the length of the list that makes the objections unreasonable. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 9th, 2013 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | 1 Comment »
From the Austin Statesman American:
Kipp Austin Academy of Arts & Letters teacher Julie Ann Clark helps Kevin Villanueva across the finish line during the 15th annual Statesman Junior ‘Dillo Kids Run on Saturday, April 6, 2013
Go Julie!
Posted: April 9th, 2013 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | 11 Comments »
If you teach English, or you’re a school leader — and I’m particularly looking at you, friends in No Excuses charter schools, with our collective student gains in math that are 4x higher than those in English — I think a bare minimum threshold is that you can:
a. Explain E.D. Hirsch’s arguments
b. Describe the degree to which your class/school adheres to or rejects his view
c. Justify why
I got turned onto re-reading Hirsch through Robert Pondiscio, who until recently worked for Hirsch’s Core Knowledge Foundation as a blogger.
I have since read a lot more original Hirsch, including a number of his recent blogs. Here are five for your consideration. Please click through to all five if you have the chance, it’s worth your time.
*
1. From Research Revolution
Being in my ninth decade, and having been interested in this topic for at least six of those decades, I have studied a wide range of psycholinguistic research. My hunch about the answer to that question is: Yes, there are far better and faster ways to induce language growth in our students.
