"The achievement gap between the U.S. and the world's top-performing countries can be said to be causing the equivalent of a permanent recession," Mr. Hanushek wrote for Education Next.
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Ed schools vs. education - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - 5 views
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Today we lead the world only in how much we spend per pupil.
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There are many reasons for this, of course. But, why do you suppose we're not getting the achievement? -
Is it because we are forcing all kids to fit the same standards rather than develop different standards for different needs of the students? -
Not in % of GDP we spend... Of course, those other countries spend on pupil support: extended parental leave, full health care...
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Far and away the most important factor in student learning is the quality of teachers. If we got rid of just the bottom 5 percent to 7 percent of teachers, that alone would lift our kids to Canadian levels, Mr. Hanushek calculates.
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This is a delicate subject. But, we all know folks who don't put forth the effort that they should. What IF we did this?
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How do you compare this? In my school, I will have 183 students in my classes this year, and none will be considered advanced math students. Our calc teacher will have a majority of the advanced students and his enrollment numbers are at 93. How does this compare?
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I only teach the lower level students (no complaints about that, I'm good at what I do) but they will not hit "advanced"!!
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Our teachers "do not know anything," according to Terrence Moore, who teaches history at Hillsdale College. That's largely because most have degrees in education rather than in the subjects they teach.
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Teachers are constrained by many different influences. Creativity is stifled, we teacher to the lowest common "core" denominator. Schools are not bold but old. We are rewarded by passing many useless measures, which unfortunately this article is based off of. Standardized test scores have blinded the public to what is important. Being able to problem solve and to be creative has always been the mark of an American, but that is being stripped of this generation b/c of the drive to wards testing.
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And what are elementary teachers supposed to have degrees in? Do you really want a second grade teacher with a major in history? Or chemistry? In college, I took engineering and business calculus classes, business statistics and accounting, in addition to my education math classes. Does it matter that I didn't get a degree in math? Isn't it better that I also have courses in ancient near eastern history? And Arthurian legends? And American and English literature and American government?
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"Future teachers are better served by getting good grounding in academic subject matter."
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Is that true? Or, is it better to learn how to teach and to use technology for what its capable of doing, etc etc?
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Ed schools seem to think knowing stuff isn't important.
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"If you confront [teachers] with the fact that they, just as their students, can tell you nothing about the first 10 presidents or the use of the gerund, they will blithely respond that it is not so important for them to know things as to know 'how to know things,' " said Mr. Moore.
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The reform needed is to remove state "certification" requirements. The reason for them, we're told, is to guarantee that only the qualified teach. Their real purpose is to keep the knowledgeable out of the classroom.
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"Yet these education schools," Mr. Moore points out, "not only do not impart real knowledge of academic subjects; they are actively hostile to it."
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The first three out of four years in college were spent taking more non-education courses than education related. We all had to take the full math/English/history/science core courses, then added psychology and sociology in addition to the education courses and several internships as well.
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If instead of being forced to hire the certified, schools were free to hire the qualified, colleges of education would wither away -- and learning would blossom.
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Many qualified folks lost their positions when they weren't deemed 'highly qualified.'
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Isn't that what certification is? An official statement that the person is indeed qualified?
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But, wasn't he just complaining several paragraphs ago that 60% of teachers are certified in their subjects? And he wants to add more uncertified teachers?
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Students learn a lot from the teacher who knows a lot," Mr. Moore said. "They learn nothing from the teacher who knows nothing."
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they aren't allowed to teach.
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Why would they? The work is difficult, the pay is terrible and everyone outside of education thinks you're lazy.
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A medical doctor teaching in HS? What, around their appointments with patients?
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And politicians take cushy jobs as lobbyists. I can't think of many teachers who only need to teach civics. It's only a small part of the full curriculum.
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Not so many years ago, our schools were the best in the world
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WiZiQ free Virtual Classroom - 38 views
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Educational Leadership:Teaching for the 21st Century:21st Century Skills: The Challenge... - 1 views
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But in fact, the skills students need in the 21st century are not new.
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What's actually new is the extent to which changes in our economy and the world mean that collective and individual success depends on having such skills.
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This distinction between "skills that are novel" and "skills that must be taught more intentionally and effectively" ought to lead policymakers to different education reforms than those they are now considering. If these skills were indeed new, then perhaps we would need a radical overhaul of how we think about content and curriculum. But if the issue is, instead, that schools must be more deliberate about teaching critical thinking, collaboration, and problem solving to all students, then the remedies are more obvious, although still intensely challenging.
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To complicate the challenge, some of the rhetoric we have heard surrounding this movement suggests that with so much new knowledge being created, content no longer matters; that ways of knowing information are now much more important than information itself. Such notions contradict what we know about teaching and learning and raise concerns that the 21st century skills movement will end up being a weak intervention for the very students—low-income students and students of color—who most need powerful schools as a matter of social equity.
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What will it take to ensure that the idea of "21st century skills"—or more precisely, the effort to ensure that all students, rather than just a privileged few, have access to a rich education that intentionally helps them learn these skills—is successful in improving schools? That effort requires three primary components. First, educators and policymakers must ensure that the instructional program is complete and that content is not shortchanged for an ephemeral pursuit of skills. Second, states, school districts, and schools need to revamp how they think about human capital in education—in particular how teachers are trained. Finally, we need new assessments that can accurately measure richer learning and more complex tasks.
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Why would misunderstanding the relationship of skills and knowledge lead to trouble? If you believe that skills and knowledge are separate, you are likely to draw two incorrect conclusions. First, because content is readily available in many locations but thinking skills reside in the learner's brain, it would seem clear that if we must choose between them, skills are essential, whereas content is merely desirable. Second, if skills are independent of content, we could reasonably conclude that we can develop these skills through the use of any content. For example, if students can learn how to think critically about science in the context of any scientific material, a teacher should select content that will engage students (for instance, the chemistry of candy), even if that content is not central to the field. But all content is not equally important to mathematics, or to science, or to literature. To think critically, students need the knowledge that is central to the domain.
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Because of these challenges, devising a 21st century skills curriculum requires more than paying lip service to content knowledge.
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Advocates of 21st century skills favor student-centered methods—for example, problem-based learning and project-based learning—that allow students to collaborate, work on authentic problems, and engage with the community. These approaches are widely acclaimed and can be found in any pedagogical methods textbook; teachers know about them and believe they're effective. And yet, teachers don't use them. Recent data show that most instructional time is composed of seatwork and whole-class instruction led by the teacher (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research Network, 2005). Even when class sizes are reduced, teachers do not change their teaching strategies or use these student-centered methods (Shapson, Wright, Eason, & Fitzgerald, 1980). Again, these are not new issues. John Goodlad (1984) reported the same finding in his landmark study published more than 20 years ago.
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Why don't teachers use the methods that they believe are most effective? Even advocates of student-centered methods acknowledge that these methods pose classroom management problems for teachers. When students collaborate, one expects a certain amount of hubbub in the room, which could devolve into chaos in less-than-expert hands. These methods also demand that teachers be knowledgeable about a broad range of topics and are prepared to make in-the-moment decisions as the lesson plan progresses. Anyone who has watched a highly effective teacher lead a class by simultaneously engaging with content, classroom management, and the ongoing monitoring of student progress knows how intense and demanding this work is. It's a constant juggling act that involves keeping many balls in the air.
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Most teachers don't need to be persuaded that project-based learning is a good idea—they already believe that. What teachers need is much more robust training and support than they receive today, including specific lesson plans that deal with the high cognitive demands and potential classroom management problems of using student-centered methods.
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Without better curriculum, better teaching, and better tests, the emphasis on "21st century skills" will be a superficial one that will sacrifice long-term gains for the appearance of short-term progress.
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The debate is not about content versus skills. There is no responsible constituency arguing against ensuring that students learn how to think in school. Rather, the issue is how to meet the challenges of delivering content and skills in a rich way that genuinely improves outcomes for students.
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"ensuring that students learn how to think" You would think that this is the essence of education but this is not always asked of students. Memorize, Report and Present but how often do students think and comment on their learning?
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practice means that you try to improve by noticing what you are doing wrong and formulating strategies to do better. Practice also requires feedback, usually from someone more skilled than you are.
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Students need to be taught how to work as part of a group. The need to see mistakes and be given a chance to improve on them. Someone who already knows how to work as a team player is the best coach/teacher.
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A Fistful of Challenges for Ed Tech -- THE Journal - 5 views
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But the No. 1 challenge in ed tech, according to the report, is with teachers themselves and the inadequacy of their preparation and ongoing training.
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differentiated instruction for teacher training - all our teachers get the same PD - with our without access to technology - yawn. -
We stress to our students that they need that 21st Century Skill to 'learn how to learn.' Perhaps we need to re-invigorate our teachers and administrators with that idea as well. -
Just had this discussion with a teacher today. She was telling me she is an auditory learner and doesn't learn well in a large group setting. I said we don't do with our adult learners what we say should be done with our students. I try to accomodate different learnning styles when I work with teachers.
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"The challenge is due to the fact that despite the widespread agreement on its importance, training in digital literacy skills and techniques is rare in teacher education and school district professional development programs," the report said.
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And, I would add, that the training is designed to teach the skills and not the pedagogy for using those skills in class. Teachers still see this as an aside to their job of teaching the content for the purpose of scoring high on the tests.
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The third critical challenge cited by the authors was the failure of both technology and teaching practices to meet demands for differentiated, personalized learning.
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But the No. 1 challenge in ed tech, according to the report, is with teachers themselves and the inadequacy of their preparation and ongoing training.
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But the No. 1 challenge in ed tech, according to the report, is with teachers themselves and the inadequacy of their preparation and ongoing training.
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But the No. 1 challenge in ed tech, according to the report, is with teachers themselves and the inadequacy of their preparation and ongoing training.
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But the No. 1 challenge in ed tech, according to the report, is with teachers themselves and the inadequacy of their preparation and ongoing training.
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National Teachers Initiative | StoryCorps - 2 views
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"StoryCorps' National Teachers Initiative will collect, preserve, and share stories that celebrate the impact of great educators on all of our lives. Focusing on the heroic work of teachers in classrooms across America, the National Teacher's Initiative is a unifying project of profound importance, inclusive of all ethnicities, cultures, and ages. By focusing on the voices and stories of teachers, the National Teachers Initiative will underscore the influence of educators on our lives and our nation's future."
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shared by Lauri Brady on 03 Apr 13
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Five Strategies for Data-Driven Instructional Coaching « Press - Kickboard - 0 views
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shared by Lauri Brady on 03 Apr 13
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"Just as teachers need data to most effectively support students, instructional coaches need data to support their teachers. We recently spoke with Paola Valdivia, Manager of Teacher Leadership Development (MTLD) in Teach For America's Southern Louisiana region, about how she uses data to support first- and second-year teachers, called corps members. Regardless of the grade-level, experience-level, or content-area of the teachers you support, or the school in which they teach, we think these strategies for data-driven instructional coaching will help."
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School of One - School Of One - New York City Department of Education - 4 views
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"The mission of School of One is to provide students with personalized, effective, and dynamic classroom instruction so that teachers have more time to focus on the quality of their instruction. To achieve this mission, School of One re-imagines the traditional classroom model. Instead of one teacher and 25-30 students in a classroom, each student participates in multiple instructional modalities, including a combination of teacher-led instruction, one-on-one tutoring, independent learning, and work with virtual tutors. To organize this type of learning, each student receives a unique daily schedule based on his or her academic strengths and needs. As a result, students within the same school or even the same classroom can receive profoundly different instruction as each student's schedule is tailored to the skills they need and the ways they best learn. Teachers acquire data about student achievement each day and then adapt their live instructional lessons accordingly. By leveraging technology to play a more essential role in planning instruction, teachers have more time to focus on doing what they do best - delivering quality instruction and insuring that all students learn."
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Teacher Professional Development Sourcebook: The Changing Landscape of Teacher Learning - 8 views
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So the challenge is to find ways to create online teacher professional development that seems both compelling in its content and also more convenient, easier to fit into the work life of a teacher than the face-to-face courses.
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online teacher professional development that includes an asynchronous component helps with that kind of reflection. Plus, the online format provides a layer of distance that helps people feel more willing to share things that are a little bit risky than they might in a face-to-face environment.
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I think the kinds of professional development that involve people sharing artifacts of their practice and talking about them within a larger conceptual framework are becoming more and more popular with teachers.
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The first is that it’s easier to do online professional development at scale than it is with local or purely face-to-face professional development.
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I think this financial crunch is going to force people to move to some other model—one that probably uses a lot of technology,
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"An education-technology scholar discusses the current state and promise of online teacher PD. Chris Dede, a professor of learning technology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, is a leading authority on online teacher professional development."
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You've Got Your Teacher Evaluation. Now What? - Learning Forward's PD Watch - Education... - 8 views
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A couple of weeks ago, Megan Allen, a fifth-grade teacher in Tampa who blogs at transformED, wrote a post entitled "I've got my teacher evaluation. Now what?" In her post, Allen shared six suggestions that would help link teacher evaluations to effective professional development. The following post is our response to Megan.
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Free Social Network for Kids, Teachers & Parents - imbee - imbee - 0 views
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A web-based site developed for the tweener set. Features a spot for teachers to have their own class pages and even includes lesson plans. The animated look draws kids in, and the site has all the social networking gadgets of the larger sites, but the teacher areas are open only to whomever the teacher allows in-other teachers, students, and parents. This site gets contributed content from its corporate sponsors, which include PBS and Disney.
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| CFY's PowerMyLearning.com | Educational Games | Videos | Activities for Elementary, M... - 7 views
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"PowerMyLearning.com is an acclaimed free online platform for K-12 students, teachers, and parents, developed by the national nonprofit organization, CFY. CFY has unique expertise in selecting the most effective digital learning activities available on the web and making them easily accessible and usable in one trusted place. This expertise comes from more than a decade of experience working directly with more than 50,000 students, along with their teachers and parents, in more than 100 schools across the country. A free account grants access to a world of smart and engaging resources… * 1,000+ thoroughly vetted academic games, interactive simulations, and videos * Easy-to-find activities tagged by subject, grade, and Common Core Standards * "Playlist" feature to sequence activities and individualize learning by student or class * Lesson plans to incorporate activities into instruction * Detailed reports for teachers, parents, and students * Badges and Playpoints to reward student usage * Flexible platform that can be used in school, after-school, at home, or anywhere in between With PowerMyLearning, students and parents can discover fun and stimulating activities to reinforce classroom learning and spark new areas of interest. Teachers can take advantage of the free instructional resources and use this tool to help meet the specific learning needs of their students. "
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The Sun Magazine | Why Schools Don't Educate - 1 views
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"Laments about our schools are nothing new; everyone is an expert, it seems, when it comes to education. While most critics point to the lack of funding or the shortage of teachers, John Taylor Gatto insists the problem goes deeper; we've turned our schools, he says, into "torture chambers." If that sounds abrasively radical, consider this: Gatto, with almost thirty years' experience as a public-school teacher, has just been named New York City's Teacher of the Year for 1989. Gatto teaches seventh grade at Junior High School 54 on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Something of a local legend, he's a chess player and a songwriter - and he grows garlic. He was once named Citizen of the Week for coming to the aid of a woman who had been robbed. He has lectured on James Joyce's Ulysses at Cornell University and has taught philosophy at California State College. Perhaps it's not surprising that he's been approached by a film company interested in making a movie of his life. Gatto once ran for the New York State Senate on the Conservative Party ticket, and some of his ideas are quite traditional: he stresses "family values" and questions increased funds for education. But he's too much of a maverick to be easily labeled. At a recent hearing in New York, he castigated the school system for "the murder of 1 million black and Latino children," and was met with a standing ovation. What follows is the text of the speech he gave upon being named Teacher of the Year."
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Publications: SRN LEADS - 0 views
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Research shows that professional learning can have a powerful effect on teacher skills and knowledge and on student learning. To be effective, however, it must be sustained, focused on important content, and embedded in the work of collaborative professional learning teams that support ongoing improvements in teachers’ practice and student achievement.
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the type of support and on-the-job training most teachers receive is episodic, often fragmented, and disconnected from real problems of practice.
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Most states and districts are still not providing the kind of professional learning that research suggests improves teaching practice and student outcomes,”
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Workshop overload. Research shows that professional development should not be approached in isolation as the traditional “flavor of the month” or one-shot workshop but go hand-in-hand with school improvement efforts. The report finds that teachers still take a heavy dose of workshops and do not receive effective learning opportunities in many areas in which they want help.
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But fewer than half found the professional development they received in other areas, such as classroom management, to be of much value, despite the fact that they want more support in this area.
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Nation Making Progress in Ensuring More Teachers Have Deep Content Knowledge and Mentoring But U.S. Teacher Development Lacks Intensity, Follow-up, & Usefulness
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shared by Darcy Goshorn on 07 Sep 09
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Copyright and Fair Use Guidelines for Teachers in an easy chart - 0 views
www.mediafestival.org/...chartshort.html
copyright fairuse guidelines chart teachers resources law policy copy media video materials
shared by Darcy Goshorn on 07 Sep 09
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Teachers in the classroom make the decisions closest to the field of instruction and it is teachers that have been the greatest rights---rights that even their districts do not have. This Copyright Chart was designed to inform teachers of what they may do under the law. Please reproduce it as necessary
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Eigth habits of highly effective 21st century teachers - 0 views
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We expect our students to be life-long learners. Teachers, must continue to absorb experiences and knowledge, as well. We must endeavour to stay current. I wonder how many people are still using their lesson and unit plans from five years ago. To be a teacher, you must learn and adapt as the horizons and landscapes change.
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Teachers need to be encouraged to showcase their love of learning. If not lifelong learners, how can teachers expect students to love learning?
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We hear a lot about the 21st century learner - but what about the 21st century teacher? Andrew Churches investigates what makes them succeed.
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Building a Better Teacher - NYTimes.com - 3 views
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Cover Story in this week's NY Times Magazine. Can teachers be taught to be better teachers? -
Cover Story in this week's NY Times Magazine. Can teachers be taught to be better teachers?
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Why Great Teachers Quit: And How We Might Stop the Exodus » Edurati Review - 3 views
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If, for example, I were to limit my workday to 9 hours, of which 7.5 were in school, how could I conceivably read and correct papers from the vast majority of my 192 students in order for those corrections to be part of a meaningful learning experience? Do I limit the amount of work I assign in order to keep up with it? Do I shortchange the feedback to which my students are entitled? Do I allow the responsibilities of effective teaching to consume time that should be available for things outside of my school responsibilities? None of the three choices is truly acceptable, yet in reality for many teachers such are the options from which they can choose. Choices like this are just one example of the pressures that many good teachers experience, and that can help drive them from the profession.
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It's time we work smarter not harder. We don't have to be the center of the learning experience. Teachers should be really creative travel agents that set up the trip for the students to explore, explain, get lost, fail, connect, help someone else, make a difference (a real difference). If you have interest or create it you just have to get out of the way. It's not easy to do this, that's why we need to work smarter and share the load. It's just to hard anymore to do alone.
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he final four pages of text, 153-156, are under the title of “Afterward: Final Thoughts” and these pages bring together final conclusions from the wealth of material Farber has provided. There are three sections, titled respectively, Why Teachers Teach,: To Educational Leaders, Policy Makers and Politicians; and To Teachers
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We can no longer continue the ongoing loss of skilled teachers. It costs too much financially. It costs even more in lost learning and benefits to our society.
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shared by Pamela Stevens on 12 Sep 09
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TeachPaperless: Top Eleven Things All Teachers Must Know About Technology (or: I promis... - 0 views
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technology web2.0 teachers teachpaperless Blog education
shared by Pamela Stevens on 12 Sep 09
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Top Eleven Things All Teachers Must Know About Technology (or: I promised Dean Groom I wouldn't write a top ten list; so this one goes up to eleven.) The Top Eleven Things All Teachers Must Know About Technology