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Bradford Saron

What do international tests really show about U.S. student performance? | Economic Poli... - 2 views

www.epi.org/...us-student-performance-testing

policy performance tests international

shared by Bradford Saron on 01 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Secretary Duncan said, U.S. educational reform policy is motivated by a belief that the U.S. educational system is particularly failing disadvantaged children. Yet an analysis of international test score levels and trends shows that in important ways disadvantaged U.S. children perform better, relative to children in comparable nations, than do middle-class and advantaged children. More careful analysis of these levels and trends may lead policymakers to reconsider their assumption that almost all improvement efforts should be directed to the education of disadvantaged children and few such efforts to the education of middle-class and advantaged children
  • A re-estimated U.S. average PISA score that adjusted for a student population in the United States that is more disadvantaged than populations in otherwise similar post-industrial countries, and for the over-sampling of students from the most-disadvantaged schools in a recent U.S. international assessment sample, finds that the U.S. average score in both reading and mathematics would be higher than official reports indicate (in the case of mathematics, substantially higher).
  • Disadvantaged and lower-middle-class U.S. students perform better (and in most cases, substantially better) than comparable students in similar post-industrial countries in reading. In math, disadvantaged and lower-middle-class U.S. students perform about the same as comparable students in similar post-industrial countries.
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  • This re-estimate would also improve the U.S. place in the international ranking of all OECD countries, bringing the U.S. average score to sixth in reading and 13th in math. Conventional ranking reports based on PISA, which make no adjustments for social class composition or for sampling errors, and which rank countries irrespective of whether score differences are large enough to be meaningful, report that the U.S. average score is 14th in reading and 25th in math.
  • To make judgments only on the basis of national average scores, on only one test, at only one point in time, without comparing trends on different tests that purport to measure the same thing, and without disaggregation by social class groups, is the worst possible choice. But, unfortunately, this is how most policymakers and analysts approach the field.
  • Bradford Saron on 01 Mar 13
     
    A must read. 
Vince Breunig

Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » Numbers Can Lie: What ... - 2 views

zhaolearning.com/...pisa-truly-tell-us-if-anything

education international rating assessment

shared by Vince Breunig on 16 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Vince Breunig on 16 Dec 12
     
    The fact the U.S. as a nation is still standing despite of its abysmal standing on international academic tests for over half a century begs two questions: Is education as important to a nation's national security and economy as important as believed? If it is, are the numbers telling the truth about the quality of education in the U.S. and other nations?
Bradford Saron

Social Media + Learning is more than Social Learning - by Jane Hart | E-Learning Council - 1 views

www.elearningcouncil.com/...more-social-learning-jane-hart

E-Learning social social media learning

shared by Bradford Saron on 11 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • There are two key areas where this is happening and where it is having an impact on organisational learning.Extensive use of public social media sites like YouTube, Scribd, Slideshare, Blogger, Wordpress, Wikipedia, and so on, that support the creation, sharing and commenting of content, as well as the co-creation of content, means that workers are now using similar approaches in their organisations to co-create and share their own content within their own work teams.Extensive use of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc where individuals have built a personal network of trusted friends, means that they are using similar approaches to build networks of trusted colleagues (both internally and externally), as well as power team workspaces and internal communities of practice.
  • This new approach will embrace both the use of external social media tools as well as internal tools, but what is clear these tools will need to support - as well as power - far wider approaches to learning, than has hitherto been the case. In fact as learning and working become much more closely integrated, “learning” will not be seen as a separate activity requiring separate, dedicated learning systems or platforms, but will need to be supported and enabled within the normal workflow collaboration systems.
  • Bradford Saron on 11 Oct 11
     
    Must read. 
Bradford Saron

The Hard Science of Teamwork - Alex "Sandy" Pentland - Harvard Business Review - 1 views

blogs.hbr.org/...ew_science_of_building_gr.html

science teamwork harvard

shared by Bradford Saron on 21 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Our data show that great teams: Communicate frequently. In a typical project team a dozen or so communication exchanges per working hour may turn out to be optimum; but more or less than that and team performance can decline.Talk and listen in equal measure, equally among members. Lower performing teams have dominant members, teams within teams, and members who talk or listen but don't do both. Engage in frequent informal communication. The best teams spend about half their time communicating outside of formal meetings or as "asides" during team meetings, and increasing opportunities for informal communication tends to increase team performance.Explore for ideas and information outside the group. The best teams periodically connect with many different outside sources and bring what they learn back to the team.
  • Bradford Saron on 21 Mar 12
     
    Great article on Teamwork, and the internal dynamics of human interaction (or lack there of). 
Bradford Saron

Too Many Projects Not Enough Time | The Thinking Stick - 3 views

www.thethinkingstick.com/-many-projects-not-enough-time

projects edtech administrator

shared by Bradford Saron on 28 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • The Google Apps Ninja Program that I started back in September and blogged about here has completely taken me by surprise. There are now over 150 educators who have access to the Google Docs. Seeing that there might be something here that I can support long term I decided to move all the files to their own Google Apps domain. So the Google Apps Ninja Program is now officially found at www.ninjaprogram.com the website isn't finished but after reading this blog post if you are interested in using the files and helping to keep them updated, fill out this form and I'll get you in. I'm excited to focus on this next year as one of my projects.
  • Bradford Saron on 28 Jan 12
     
    Let's us all in on his schedule and the life of an international educator. 
  • Robert Slane on 30 Jan 12
     
    The Google Apps Ninja Program is an interesting way to motivate students and have them direct their own learning. Something to look into.
Vince Breunig

Effects of Inequality and Poverty vs. Teachers and Schooling on America's Youth - 0 views

www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp

Poverty edreform inequality

shared by Vince Breunig on 22 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • What does it take to get politicians and the general public to abandon misleading ideas, such as, “Anyone who tries can pull themselves up by the bootstraps,” or that “Teachers are the most important factor in determining the achievement of our youth”? Many ordinary citizens and politicians believe these statements to be true, even though life and research informs us that such statements are usually not true.
  • till further discouraging news for those who advocate testing as a way to reform schools comes from the PISA assessments (The Program for International Student Assessment). Nations with high-stakes testing have generally gone down in scores from 2000 to 2003, and then again by 2006. Finland, on the other hand, which has no high-stakes testing, and an accountability system that relies on teacher judgment and school level professionalism much more than tests, has shown growth over these three PISA administrations (Sahlberg, 2011).
  • Now, in the USA, our parents are a greater determiner of our income in life than either our weight or our height.
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  • what the best and wisest parents want for their children should be what we want for all children. Thus, that same kind of opportunity to catch up in school should not be denied to youth who come from poorer families
  • citizens calling for school reform without thinking about economic and social reforms are probably being foolish. The likelihood of affecting school achievement positively is more likely to be found in economic and social reforms, in the second bill of rights, than it is in NCLB, the common core of standards, early childhood and many assessments after that, value-added assessments, and the like. More than educational policies are needed to improve education.
  • I think everyone in the USA, of any political party, understands that poverty hurts families and affects student performance at the schools their children attend. But the bigger problem for our political leaders and citizens to recognize is that inequality hurts everyone in society, the wealthy and the poor alike. History teaches us that when income inequalities are large, they are tolerated by the poor for only so long. Then there is an eruption, and it is often bloody! Both logic and research suggest that economic policies that reduce income inequality throughout the United States are quite likely to improve education a lot, but even more than that, such policies might once again establish this nation as a beacon on a hill, and not merely a light that shines for some, but not for all of our citizens.
  • Vince Breunig on 22 Oct 12
     
    What does it take to get politicians and the general public to abandon misleading ideas, such as, "Anyone who tries can pull themselves up by the bootstraps," or that "Teachers are the most important factor in determining the achievement of our youth"? Many ordinary citizens and politicians believe these statements to be true, even though life and research informs us that such statements are usually not true. citizens calling for school reform without thinking about economic and social reforms are probably being foolish. The likelihood of affecting school achievement positively is more likely to be found in economic and social reforms, in the second bill of rights, than it is in NCLB, the common core of standards, early childhood and many assessments after that, value-added assessments, and the like. More than educational policies are needed to improve education.
Bradford Saron

School Funding Myths & Stepping Outside the "New Normal" « School Finance 101 - 0 views

schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/...tepping-outside-the-new-normal

funding myths school

shared by Bradford Saron on 18 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Reformy myth #1: That every state has done its part and more, to pour money into high need, especially poor urban districts. It hasn’t worked, mainly because teachers are lazy and overpaid and not judged on effectiveness, measured by value-added scores. So, now is the time to slash the budgets of those high need districts, where all of the state aid is flowing, and fire the worst teachers. And, it will only help, not hurt.
  • Reformy myth #2: The only aid to be cut, the aid that should be cut, and the aid that must be cut in the name of the public good, is aid to high need, large urban districts in particular. The argument appears to be that handing down state aid cuts as a flat percent of state aid is the definition of “shared sacrifice.” And the garbage analysis of district Return on Investment by the Center for American Progress, of course, validates that high need urban districts tend to be least efficient anyway. Therefore, levying the largest cuts on those districts is entirely appropriate.
    • Bradford Saron
      Bradford Saron on 18 Feb 11
       
      "Shared sacrifice" sounds very familiar right now. In reality, in Wisconsin we've the only public field under a revenue limit and under a qualified offer directive, so the problems that Wisconsin is dealing with is not because of education. We've already been the ones "sacrificing," through revenue caps and the QEO. 
  • Reformy myth #3: The general public is fed up and don’t want to waste any more of their hard earned tax dollars on public schools. They are fed up with greedy teachers with gold plated benefits and fed up with high paid administrators. They don’t care about small class sizes and…well… are just fed up with all of this taxing and spending on public schools that stink. As a result, the only answer is to cut that spending and simultaneously make schools better.
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  • Reformy myth #4: None of this school funding stuff matters anyway. It doesn’t matter what the overall level of funding is and it doesn’t matter how that funding is distributed. As evidence of this truthiness, reformers point to 30+ years of huge spending growth coupled with massive class size reduction and they argue… flat NAEP scores, low international performance and flat SAT scores. Therefore, if we simply cut funding back to 1980 levels (adjusted only for the CPI) and fire bad teachers, we can achieve the same level of outcomes for one heck of a lot less money.
  • Bradford Saron on 18 Feb 11
     
    Does anyone have any myths for Wisconsin?
ron saari

Google Reader (1000+) - 0 views

www.google.com/...view

teacher bashing

shared by ron saari on 23 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • fair ways of assessing classroom effectiveness that include test scores but go far beyond these limited numbers. Such sane efforts, however, get forgotten in the wake of wave after wave of anti-teacher union tirades.
  • In doing so, they have narrowed the role of schools to being an arm of the economy reinforcing the fiction that all U.S. schools, not just urban ones, are lousy and that “effective” teachers and schools can solve poverty, put every kid into college, and end the skills gap with international competitors.
  • ron saari on 23 Mar 11
     
    A good article about teachers and unions
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