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The whole of South Korea waited with baited breath last week as 668,500 students took the day-long standardized college scholastic ability test at 1191 centers nationwide.  Flights were rescheduled, military training was suspended and emergency services were on standby, ready to rush delayed and injured students to their exam centre.

Addressing Rural Challenges to Implementing the Common Core State Standards - meeting handouts inc PwrPts

Lots of searchable activities for academic assistance, enrichment, college and career readiness, etc, aligned with Texas state standards. All subject areas.

Denise Pope, senior lecturer at Stanford's Graduate School of Education and co-founder of the advocacy group Challenge Success, questions the assertions by the College Board about AP exams

"What Is Transformational In Your Educational Vision?      Part of the challenge in educational reform is that not everyone defines learning or education the same way.  Sure, we all refer to things such as literacy, college and career ready, 21st century skills, etc.        However, what is the core purpose of one's education?  Beyond specifics related to employment skills, literacy skills and standards mastery, I offer up this idea: Education is meant to transform one's life.  In other words, education has to dramatically, or even radically, transform the person into a new, improved person that is more emotionally, socially, and intellectually ready for any challenge the world has to offer."

Asa Spencer of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute writes in the Education Gadfly Weekly: "Traditionalists cringe, tech buffs rejoice: This latest NAEP writing assessment for grades eight and twelve marks the first computer-based appraisal (by the "nation's report card") of student proficiency in this subject. It evaluates students' writing skills (what NAEP calls both academic and workplace writing) based on three criteria: idea development, organization, and language facility and conventions. Results were predictably bad: Just twenty-four percent of eighth graders and 27 percent of twelfth graders scored proficient or above. Boys performed particularly poorly; half as many eighth-grade males reached proficiency as their female counterparts. The use of computers adds a level of complexity to these analyses: The software allows those being tested to use a thesaurus (which 29 percent of eighth graders exploited), text-to-speech software (71 percent of eighth graders used), spell check (three-quarters of twelfth graders), and kindred functions. It is unclear whether use of these crutches affected a student's "language facility" scores, though it sure seems likely. While this new mechanism for assessing kids' writing prowess makes it impossible to track trend data, one can make (disheartening) comparisons across subjects. About a third of eighth graders hit the NAEP proficiency benchmark in the latest science, math, and reading assessments, compared to a quarter for writing. So where to go from here? The report also notes that twelfth-grade students who write four to five pages a week score ten points higher than those who write just one page a week. Encouraging students to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) is a start."

Editorial about a recommendation by the AFT Pres to develop a professional certification for teachers.  It's about time...

Mark & Michelle, thank you for your comments. When I posted this I knew the words "standardized test" would be a flashpoint. It is for me too. With nearly 40 years in the classroom, teaching a creative art (music) to all different levels (kindergarten through college and well beyond), I have often railed against reducing any education, any student, to a number. Very little in what I have taught can be measured with a pencil-and-paper test. What I see here is different than this. It is the union that she is saying should be the "gate-keeper" to our profession, rather than some generic government standard test. Yes, tests would be a part of the certification, but from what I read, so would much more, including actual classroom work. The certification would be similar to the AMA for physicians or the Bar for attorneys. These are certifications designed and administered by the profession - not the government - and validate a candidate's readiness to practice. Yes, I too am strongly against the government, or any organization outside of our profession, to certify, to validate, a teacher's ability to do the job. But we have to admit there is a problem with teacher certification and validation. There are people who simply should not be in the classroom (haven't we all seen them?). It is very difficult to remove folks who are dragging the respect for our profession down. Yes, there is remediation. Yes, it should be a difficult process to remove someone in order to protect against administrative abuses. But what is talked about here is the profession policing itself - something that the teacher's unions, in general, have steadfastly refused to do. What the AFT Pres is suggesting is that the best thing we can do to raise the status of teaching as a profession is to take action ourselves to make it happen. Really, if we in the profession do not do this, then it will be imposed from those outside who do not know what we do, how we do it and why we do it.

You are still talking about a standardized test. Let's face it--doctors have to have specific knowledge to do their job. Whether or not they are creative or engaging is not as important as their knowledge base. The same with lawyers--knowledge of the law is essential, and everything else is secondary. However, in teaching, although educational theory and knowledge of their subject area is important (and already tested, by the way) the most essential aspect of teaching is how you can creatively engage students, interact with parents and peers, and stay organized and motivated. These things CAN'T BE TESTED. Right now, teachers already go through extensive training, evaluation, and continuing education. Do you REALLY think that a standardized test will really improve teaching? I know a lot of university professors who can easily pass a test, but few of them can teach worth beans.

This will be the future tests that will be required starting 2014

Cybersafety @ Coomera Anglican College website. Still under production but designed to be an aggregator website that with curriculum resources for all year levels. Teachers can use the site to keep CyberSafety on the agenda or as the main source of their training for teachers and course work for students. Concepts spiral to be revisited every couple of years. ***Still under construction but will be ready for Term 4 (October)***

Brooks describes an imaginary human life and the forces that shape it's pathway.

For over a decade, professional learning communities (PLCs) have been touted as an effective way to build upon the knowledge and skills of experienced teachers, yet much of the evidence base is derived from self-reports by practitioners. Although several generations of school reform (the standards movement, No Child Left Behind, and now the Common Core State Standards) have cited improving teacher effectiveness as key to improving student achievement, little change has occurred in the nature of professional development. This article argues that professional development generally, and PLCs in particular, would benefit from the insights gleaned from the extensive literature on teacher expertise that focuses on how well teachers understand the content they teach and how well they understand how students learn that content.