To be a school “reformer” is to support:
* a heavy reliance on fill-in-the-bubble standardized
tests to evaluate students and schools, generally in place of more authentic
forms of assessment;
* the imposition of prescriptive, top-down teaching
standards and curriculum mandates;
* a disproportionate emphasis on rote
learning—memorizing facts and practicing skills—particularly for poor kids;
* a behaviorist model of motivation in which rewards
(notably money) and punishments are used on teachers and students to compel
compliance or raise test scores;
* a corporate sensibility and an economic rationale for
schooling, the point being to prepare children to “compete” as future
employees; and
* charter schools, many of which are run by for-profit
companies.
Group items tagged
How to Create Nonreaders - 7 views
-
Reflections on Motivation, Learning, and Sharing Power
Actually, practice doesn't always make perfect - new study - The Washington Post - 3 views
-
"How many times have you heard that "practice makes perfect?" Well, a new meta-analysis of dozens of previous studies shows that it is not always true. In this post, Alfie Kohn explains and talks about the consequences of this when it comes to education. Kohn is the author of 13 books about education and human behavior, including "The Schools Our Children Deserve," "The Homework Myth," and "The Myth of the Spoiled Child: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom About Children and Parenting." He lives (actually) in the Boston area and (virtually) at www.alfiekohn.org."
Alfie Kohn: Homework: New Research Suggests It May Be an Unnecessary Evil - 0 views
Beware of School "Reformers" - Alfie Kohn - 0 views
-
-
Almost never questioned, meanwhile, are the core elements of traditional schooling, such as lectures, worksheets, quizzes, grades, homework, punitive discipline, and competition. That would require real reform, which of course is off the table.
Trouble with Rubrics - 0 views
-
“we need to look to the piece of writing itself to suggest its own evaluative criteria” – a truly radical and provocative suggestion.
-
Wow, nice concept. Getting further into subjectivity though. Where do we get an understanding of how to determine a pieces distinct 'evaluative criteria'
-
-
Thus, the dilemma: Either our instruction and our assessment remain “out of synch” or the instruction gets worse in order that students’ writing can be easily judged with the help of rubrics.
-
In fact, when the how’s of assessment preoccupy us, they tend to chase the why’s back into the shadows.
- ...1 more annotation...
Well, Duh! - 9 views
The education question we should be asking - 5 views
-
""While we're at it, maybe we should just design classrooms without windows. And, hey, I'll bet kids would really perform better if they spent their days in isolation." My friend was reacting (facetiously, of course) to a new study that found kindergartners scored better on a test of recall if their classroom's walls were completely bare. A room filled with posters, maps, and the kids' own art constituted a "distraction." The study, published last month in Psychological Science [1] and picked up by Science World Report, the Boston Globe, and other media outlets, looked at a whopping total of 24 children. A research assistant read to them about a topic such as plate tectonics or insects, then administered a paper-and-pencil test to see how many facts they remembered. On average, kids in the decorated rooms were "off task" 39 percent of the time and had a "learning score" of 42 percent. The respective numbers for those in the bare rooms were 28 percent and 55 percent. Now if you regularly read education studies, you won't be surprised to learn that the authors of this one never questioned, or even bothered to defend, the value of the science lessons they used - whether they were developmentally appropriate or presented effectively, whether they involved anything more than reading a list of facts or were likely to hold any interest for 5-year-olds. Nor did the researchers vouch for the quality of the assessment. Whatever raises kids' scores (on any test, and of any material) was simply assumed to be a good thing, and anything that lowers scores is bad."
1 - 8 of 8
Showing 20▼ items per page