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Laura Shaw

Usable Knowledge: Measure for measures: What do standardized tests really tell us about... - 1 views

www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/...video-DD315-608-1.html

testing research

shared by Laura Shaw on 16 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • The problem is that as people have become increasingly focused on the tests that matter, the tests for which people are held accountable, scores on those tests have often become misleading, sometimes wildly misleading. And that’s ironically undermined what we can say with confidence about how much kids actually know and can do.
  • nobody is spending a lot of time prepping kids specifically for that test. So when scores go up on one of those tests, we have a fair degree of confidence that kids really know more.
  • look for the big picture. Make comparisons to countries that make sense to compare us to, but don’t pay attention to small differences, because you can’t trust them.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • there is no international average, other than the average of the countries that happened to participate that time.
Laura Shaw

What Happened to Obama's Passion? - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...appened-to-obamas-passion.html

NYTimes.com obama blog

shared by Laura Shaw on 08 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public — a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it.
  • He would have had to stare down those who had wrecked the economy, and he would have had to tolerate their hatred if not welcome it. But the arc of his temperament just didn’t bend that far.
  • he backed away from his advisers who proposed a big stimulus, and then diluted it with tax cuts that had already been shown to be inert. The result, as predicted in advance, was a half-stimulus that half-stimulated the economy.
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  • the average American had no idea what Democrats were trying to accomplish by deficit spending because no one bothered to explain it to them with the repetition and evocative imagery that our brains require to make an idea, particularly a paradoxical one, “stick.”
  • at this point, I have no idea what Barack Obama — and by extension the party he leads — believes on virtually any issue.
  • THE real conundrum is why the president seems so compelled to take both sides of every issue, encouraging voters to project whatever they want on him, and hoping they won’t realize which hand is holding the rabbit.
  • The most charitable explanation is that he and his advisers have succumbed to a view of electoral success to which many Democrats succumb — that “centrist” voters like “centrist” politicians.
  • A second possibility is that he is simply not up to the task by virtue of his lack of experience and a character defect that might not have been so debilitating at some other time in history.
  • A somewhat less charitable explanation is that we are a nation that is being held hostage not just by an extremist Republican Party but also by a president who either does not know what he believes or is willing to take whatever position he thinks will lead to his re-election.
  • When he wants to be, the president is a brilliant and moving speaker, but his stories virtually always lack one element: the villain who caused the problem, who is always left out, described in impersonal terms, or described in passive voice, as if the cause of others’ misery has no agency and hence no culpability.
Laura Shaw

The Weekend Interview with Bill Gates: Was the $5 Billion Worth It? - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...3554904576461571362279948.html

CorporateReform

shared by Laura Shaw on 25 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Since 2000, the foundation has poured some $5 billion into education grants and scholarships.
  • One of the foundation's main initial interests was schools with fewer students.
  • designed to—and did—promote less acting up in the classroom, better attendance and closer interaction with adults.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • overall impact of the intervention, particularly the measure we care most about—whether you go to college—it didn't move the needle much
  • Instead of trying to buy systemic reform with school-level investments, a new goal is to leverage private money in a way that redirects how public education dollars are spent.
  • next to nothing is spent on education research
  • schools of education are not about research. So we come into this thinking that we should fund the research."
  • Of late, the foundation has been working on a personnel system that can reliably measure teacher effectiveness. Teachers have long been shown to influence students' education more than any other school factor, including class size and per-pupil spending. So the objective is to determine scientifically what a good instructor does.
  • Instead, the Gates Foundation's five-year, $335-million project examines whether aspects of effective teaching—classroom management, clear objectives, diagnosing and correcting common student errors—can be systematically measured. The effort involves collecting and studying videos of more than 13,000 lessons taught by 3,000 elementary school teachers in seven urban school districts.
  • he'll have a tough sell with teachers unions, which give lip service to more-stringent teacher evaluations but prefer existing pay and promotion schemes based on seniority—even though they often end up matching the least experienced teachers with the most challenging students.
  • Mr. Gates's foundation strongly supports a uniform core curriculum for schools
  • sees common standards as a money-saver at a time when many states are facing budget shortfalls. "In terms of mathematics textbooks, why can't you have the scale of a national market?
    • Laura Shaw
      Laura Shaw on 25 Jul 11
       
      Monopoly??
  • "Behind this core curriculum are some very deep insights. American textbooks were twice as thick as Asian textbooks. In American math classes, we teach a lot of concepts poorly over many years. In the Asian systems they teach you very few concepts very well over a few years." Nor does he see the need for competition among state standards.
  • Mr. Gates is particularly fond of the KIPP charter network and its focus on serving inner-city neighborhoods
  • Mr. Gates is less enamored of school vouchers.
  • honestly, if we thought there would be broad acceptance in some locales and long-term commitment to do them, they have some very positive characteristics."
  • "We haven't chosen to get behind [vouchers] in a big way, as we have with personnel systems or charters, because the negativity about them is very, very high."
  • Gates Foundation's approach to education reform—more evolution, less disruption
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