Author: abendelow
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The seeds of revolution: school textbooks?
Whoever says that teachers and classroom experiences don’t “build the future” ignores the fact that ideas children learn affect them in the long-term. This interesting read from the Los Angeles Times suggests that putting Tunisian kids through a paradigm of change–in this case, wresting the textbooks away from the religious in the mid-1990s and letting…
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Climbing the mountain of NCLB: a scorecard of progress
Thanks to Rachel Jachino’s presentation on a central Illinois school district’s state test scores, we have this stark image of the madness of NCLB: How powerful and rational the slope, and how mountainous. For a flat-lander like, me, mountains are exciting. So if nothing else, NCLB has taken us all on an exhilarating trip up…
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How the Internet is expanding
We are still on the ground floor of tomorrow’s knowledge base–the chart from Flowtown makes a good point, however: so much of the new data is really a copy. Only 25% of new data is original.Flowtown – Social Media Marketing Application
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A snapshot of data-driven decision making
Educational professionals wishing to use technology to make effective decisions for school improvement should heed what Arne Duncan’s Department of Education communicated last summer. The 124-page National Educational Technology Plan (NETP 2010) points out how technology produces data, the life-blood of school improvement. The smart use of technology-based data improves “entire education system[s], improve[s] student…
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Chop down the biggest and oldest trees
That’s where the money is.It’s plain old economics: firing a more veteran teacher (more senior in the district) results in less lay-offs and less productivity loss per “budget-cut.” Save a hundred grand by laying off one veteran, and retain two new-bodies. Out with the old and in with the new. According to this article in…
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Digging for data? Try these sites.
As part of my new CUC class, EDT 6050 Using Technology for Effective Decision Making, we’re going to be looking for, collecting, analyzing, and displaying all sorts of education related data in order to make better decisions (you have heard, no doubt, that “data-driven decisions” are the only ones now valid). This means wikiness readers…
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AP bio, history tests finally get somewhat "real"
Thanks to my colleague Ms. Mckinney, who sent this NYTimes article on the changes that being made to the AP history and biology tests. It seems the folks at College Board Corp have finally read Charles Dickens’ Hard Times and understood the problem with the Gradgrind curriculum. Because high schools measure themselves on AP-ness, juniors…
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Some important things not measured by the ACT or SAT
are brought up in this Education Week article. According to researchers at Michigan State University, the following qualities are essential to–not college eligibility, but college readiness (and hence, success): Conscientiousness, as measured by such traits as dependability, perseverance through tasks, and work ethic Agreeableness, including teamwork Emotional stability Extroversion Openness to new experiences As of now,…
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Here comes 2011: the year the people abandoned schools to corporate wolves?
Anthony Cody As Anthony Cody blogged on New Year’s Day, it is no longer possible to ignore the coordinated attacks being launched on the public schooling in the USA. Unless teachers and concerned citizens can derail their plans, corporate-backed “reformers” will succeed in the next few months in dismantling public schools from coast to coast.…
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Larry Ferlazzo's list: capturing a contentious year in US public ed
Larry Ferlazzo is an exciting new edu-blogger I’ve found via Twitter. He’s on Huffington Post now, and his end-of-year list (“The best and worst of education news 2010”) is a fine compendium of the crazy year we in public education are almost through with. On the positive side of the ledger, Ferlazzo cites the forces…
The Wikiness 