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N Carroll

Why National Standards Won't Fix American Education | The Heritage Foundation - 56 views

www.heritage.org/...gnment-of-Power-and-Incentives

nationa_standards

shared by N Carroll on 17 Jul 10 - Cached
  • From a “Common Core” to National Standards
  • Misconceptions About the Promise of National Standards and Testing
  • N Carroll on 17 Jul 10
     
    Article discussing Why National Standards won't fix education
Steven Szalaj

The Common Core - Who's Minding the Schools? - NYTimes.com - 57 views

www.nytimes.com/...-whos-minding-the-schools.html

common core standards education

shared by Steven Szalaj on 10 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Steven Szalaj on 10 Jun 13
     
    An essay on the effects of implementing Common Core Standards and testing related to those standards.
A Gardner

10 Reasons the Tests Are Lowering Our Standards « Cooperative Catalyst - 94 views

coopcatalyst.wordpress.com/...sts-are-lowering-our-standards

cooperative catalyst reasons tests lowering standards blog

shared by A Gardner on 06 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Kids will work hard to learn, because they are naturally curious.
  • extrinsic motivation
  • extrinsic motivation, it moves to economic norms, where they learn to do the least possible work for the highest results
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The test is longer than the Bar Exam or the MCATs. It’s insane
  • Students should be able to have instant feedback regarding how well they did.
  • two things vying for a student’s attention: the grade and the learning
  • Risk Aversion: Learning involves taking risks.
  • same myopic view of success
Yozo Horiuchi

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Standardized Testing (HBO) - 44 views

www.youtube.com/watch

news testing standardized testing

shared by Yozo Horiuchi on 05 May 15 - No Cached
  • Yozo Horiuchi on 05 May 15
     
    This is probably not the forum for this video but I love that John Oliver took a stand and explained the ridiculous issues the United States education system faces with standardized tests.
Phillip Long

Stagnant Future, Stagnant Tests: Pointed Response to NY Times "Grading the Digital Scho... - 72 views

hastac.org/...-response-ny-times-grading-dig

technology education nytimes edtech Davidson testing teaching test_scores assessment

shared by Phillip Long on 30 Oct 11 - No Cached
anonymous

The Coach in the Operating Room - The New Yorker - 37 views

www.newyorker.com/...personal-best

coaching teaching professional development

shared by anonymous on 14 Dec 16 - No Cached
Xiaojing Kou liked it
  • I compared my results against national data, and I began beating the averages.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      this is one of the most important reasons for data and using the data to help guide instruction
  • the obvious struck me as interesting: even Rafael Nadal has a coach. Nearly every élite tennis player in the world does. Professional athletes use coaches to make sure they are as good as they can be.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      Why wouldn't we want a coach? Our supervisor or administrator often serves as an evaluator but might not have the time due to time constraints to serve as an effective and dedicated coach. Yet, a coach doesn't have to be an expert. Couldn't the coach just be a colleague with a different skill set?
  • They don’t even have to be good at the sport. The famous Olympic gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi couldn’t do a split if his life depended on it. Mainly, they observe, they judge, and they guide.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      PROFOUND!!!
  • ...31 more annotations...
  • always evolving
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      Please tell me what profession isn't always evolving? It something isn't evolving, it is dying! So, why doesn't everyone on the face of the earth - regardless of his/her profession or station in life - need coaching periodically to help them continue to grow and evolve?
  • We have to keep developing our capabilities and avoid falling behind.
  • no matter how well prepared people are in their formative years, few can achieve and maintain their best performance on their own.
  • outside ears, and eyes, are important
  • For decades, research has confirmed that the big factor in determining how much students learn is not class size or the extent of standardized testing but the quality of their teachers.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      So, instead of having students take test after test after test, why don't we just have coaches who observe and sit and discuss and offer suggestions and divide the number of tests we give students in half and do away with half? Are we concerned about student knowledge? student performance? student ability? student growth or capacity for growth? What we really need to identify is what we value!
  • California researchers in the early nineteen-eighties conducted a five-year study of teacher-skill development in eighty schools, and noticed something interesting. Workshops led teachers to use new skills in the classroom only ten per cent of the time. Even when a practice session with demonstrations and personal feedback was added, fewer than twenty per cent made the change. But when coaching was introduced—when a colleague watched them try the new skills in their own classroom and provided suggestions—adoption rates passed ninety per cent. A spate of small randomized trials confirmed the effect. Coached teachers were more effective, and their students did better on tests.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      Of course they are more effective! They have a trusted individual to guide them, mentor them, help sustain them. The coach can cheer and affirm what the teacher is already doing well and offer suggestions that are desired and sought in order to improve their 'game' and become more effective.
  • they did not necessarily have any special expertise in a content area, like math or science.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      Knowledge of the content is one thing and expertise is yet another. Sometimes what makes us better teachers is simply strategies and techniques - not expertise in the content. Sometimes what makes us better teachers could simply be using a different tool or offering options for students to choose.
  • The coaches let the teachers choose the direction for coaching. They usually know better than anyone what their difficulties are.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      The conversation with the coach and the coach listening and learning what the teacher would like to expand, improve, and grow is probably the most vital part! If the teacher doesn't have a clue, the coach could start anywhere and that might not be what the teacher adopts and owns. So, the teacher must have ownership and direction.
  • teaches coaches to observe a few specifics: whether the teacher has an effective plan for instruction; how many students are engaged in the material; whether they interact respectfully; whether they engage in high-level conversations; whether they understand how they are progressing, or failing to progress.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      This could provide specific categories to offer teachers a choice in what direction they want to go toward improving - especially important for those who want broad improvement or are clueless at where to start.
  • must engage in “deliberate practice”—sustained, mindful efforts to develop the full range of abilities that success requires. You have to work at what you’re not good at.
  • most people do not know where to start or how to proceed. Expertise, as the formula goes, requires going from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence and finally to unconscious competence.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      Progression
  • The coach provides the outside eyes and ears, and makes you aware of where you’re falling short.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      The coach also makes you aware of where you are excelling!
  • So coaches use a variety of approaches—showing what other, respected colleagues do, for instance, or reviewing videos of the subject’s performance. The most common, however, is just conversation.
  • “What worked?”
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      Great way to open any coaching conversation!
  • “How could you help her?”
  • “What else did you notice?”
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      These questions are quite similar to what we ask little children when they are learning something new. How did that go? What else could you do? What could you do differently? What more is needed? What would help?
  • something to try.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      Suggestions of something to try! Any colleague can offer this - so why don't we ask colleagues for ideas of something to try more often?
  • three colleagues on a lunch break
  • Good coaches, he said, speak with credibility, make a personal connection, and focus little on themselves.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      I probably need this printed out and stuck to the monitor of my computer or tattooed on my hand!
  • “listened more than they talked,” Knight said. “They were one hundred per cent present in the conversation.”
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      patient, engaged listening
  • coaching has definitely changed how satisfying teaching is
  • trying to get residents to think—to think like surgeons—and his questions exposed how much we had to learn.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      Encouraging people to think - it is important to teach and encourage thinking rather than teaching them WHAT to think!
  • a whole list of observations like this.
  • one twenty-minute discussion gave me more to consider and work on than I’d had in the past five years.
  • watch other colleagues operate in order to gather ideas about what I could do.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      This is one of the greatest strategies to promote growth - ever!
  • routine, high-quality video recordings of operations could enable us to figure out why some patients fare better than others.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      I always hate seeing a video of me teaching but I did learn so much about myself, my teaching, and my students that I could not learn in any other way!
  • I know that I’m learning again.
  • It’s teaching with a trendier name. Coaching aimed at improving the performance of people who are already professionals is less usual.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      But it still works and is effective at nudging even those who are fabulous to be even better!
  • modern society increasingly depends on ordinary people taking responsibility for doing extraordinary things
  • coaching may prove essential to the success of modern society.
  • We care about results in sports, and if we care half as much about results in schools and in hospitals we may reach the same conclusion.
  • anonymous on 14 Dec 16
     
    Valuable points about coaching - makes me want my own coach!
Glenda Baker

Beyond the Bubble Test: How Will We Measure Learning in the Future? | MindShift - 1 views

mindshift.kqed.org/...t-how-will-we-measure-learning

Standardized-tests test assessment performance-based

shared by Glenda Baker on 18 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Glenda Baker on 18 Jul 11
     
    Article about new testing movement
Tracy Tuten

How to Fix the Schools - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...ra-how-to-fix-the-schools.html

how to nytimes schools education pedagogy higher ed

shared by Tracy Tuten on 20 Sep 12 - Cached
  • Teachers — many of them — will continue to resent efforts to use standardized tests to measure their ability to teach.
  • Tucker, 72, a former senior education official in Washington, is the president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, which he founded in 1988. Since then he has focused much of his research on comparing public education in the United States with that of places that have far better results than we do — places like Finland, Japan, Shanghai and Ontario, Canada. His essential conclusion is that the best education systems share common traits — almost none of which are embodied in either the current American system or in the reform ideas that have gained sway over the last decade or so.
  • His starting point is not the public schools themselves but the universities that educate teachers. Teacher education in America is vastly inferior to many other countries; we neither emphasize pedagogy — i.e., how to teach — nor demand mastery of the subject matter. Both are a given in the top-performing countries. (Indeed, it is striking how many nonprofit education programs in the U.S. are aimed at helping working teachers do a better job — because they’ve never learned the right techniques.)
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Tucker believes that teachers should be paid more — though not exorbitantly. But making teacher education more rigorous — and imbuing the profession with more status — is just as important. “Other countries have raised their standards for getting into teachers’ colleges,” he told me. “We need to do the same.”
  • High-performing countries don’t abandon teacher standards. On the contrary. Teachers who feel part of a collaborative effort are far more willing to be evaluated for their job performance — just like any other professional. It should also be noted that none of the best-performing countries rely as heavily as the U.S. does on the blunt instrument of standardized tests. That is yet another lesson we have failed to learn.
  • Tracy Tuten on 20 Sep 12
     
    On what's wrong with our education system 
Matt Renwick

Common Sense for the Common Core - edu Pulse - 27 views

blogs.scholastic.com/...sense-for-the-common-core.html

commoncore

shared by Matt Renwick on 01 Jan 15 - No Cached
Sheri Edwards liked it
  • literacy achievement gains tend to be fleeting
  • Without administrators who have a solid knowledge of effective literacy instruction
  • two huge obstacles may eventually cause the downfall
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • became necessary when it was blatantly apparent that not all students in U.S schools had equal opportunity to learn
  • standards are necessary but insufficient
  • isolated skills and/or standards
  • depends on teachers and leaders knowing how to expertly implement them
  • proliferating “Common Core-aligned” materials
  • We are a “quick fix” society, and we often reject a commitment to long-term goals and outcomes. 
  • What’s on the test is what gets taught
  • high-stakes testing that accompanies the standards
  • Administrators need to take the lead
  • Become discerning readers and writers.
  • Do more read-alouds of excellent literature.
  • Standards do not transform teaching and learning
  • Organize curriculum through emphasizing big ideas and important concepts.
  • Embed shared experiences in your teaching.
  • a culture of trust, inquiry, coaching, collaboration, celebration of strengths, and, yes, even joy
Sam Boswell

Deborah Meier on Standardized Testing | Diane Ravitch's blog - 39 views

dianeravitch.net/...-meier-on-standardized-testing

Summative vs. formative assessment

shared by Sam Boswell on 04 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Sam Boswell on 04 Mar 13
     
    Misuse of standardised testing
Jason Schmidt

The Associated Press: Schools urge parents not to take kids to work - 11 views

www.google.com/...230Bxn6-Upff18dn_BUJwD9F88UHO0

shared by Jason Schmidt on 22 Apr 10 - Cached
  • At schools where standardized tests aren't being given that day, the exams may be looming. Student test scores have become increasingly important to public schools since the 2002 No Child Left Behind law was enacted, linking standardized test results to federal funding
    • Jason Schmidt
      Jason Schmidt on 22 Apr 10
       
      Is this statement really accurate? How much would/could kids' test scores be affected by missing one day of school?
  • But McKecuen, from the Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Foundation, said the event gives students a chance to see the connection between what they learn in school and the skills they will need as adults. He said it also can spark children's interest in careers they might not have considered or known about.
Glenda Baker

U.S. Plans Major Changes in How Students Are Tested - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...03testing.html

Testing assessment technology

shared by Glenda Baker on 18 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Glenda Baker on 18 Jul 11
     
    Predictions for big changes starting by 2012 for standardized testing - only a year away!
Jon Tanner

In Kentucky, Moving Beyond Dependence On Tests : NPR Ed : NPR - 14 views

www.npr.org/...students-succeed-without-tests

pli personalized learning personal kentucky npr

shared by Jon Tanner on 03 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Jon Tanner on 03 Jun 14
     
    Succeeding without standardized tests.
Steve Ransom

Principal: 'I was naïve about Common Core' - 4 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...-i-was-naive-about-common-core

commoncore testing standardizedtesting highstakestesting accountability critique

shared by Steve Ransom on 06 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • The promise of the Common Core is dying and teaching and learning are being distorted.  The well that should sustain the Core has been poisoned.
  • Whether or not learning the word ‘commission’ is appropriate for second graders could be debated—I personally think it is a bit over the top.  What is of deeper concern, however, is that during a time when 7 year olds should be listening to and making music, they are instead taking a vocabulary quiz.
  • Real learning occurs in the mind of the learner when she makes connections with prior learning, makes meaning, and retains that knowledge in order to create additional meaning from new information.  In short, with tests we see traces of learning, not learning itself.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Teachers are engaged in practices like these because they are pressured and afraid, not because they think the assessments are educationally sound. Their principals are pressured and nervous about their own scores and the school’s scores. Guaranteed, every child in the class feels that pressure and trepidation as well.
  • I am troubled that a company that has a multi-million dollar contract to create tests for the state should also be able to profit from producing test prep materials. I am even more deeply troubled that this wonderful little girl, whom I have known since she was born, is being subject to this distortion of what her primary education should be.
  • The Common Core places an extraordinary emphasis on vocabulary development
  • Parents can expect that the other three will be neglected as teachers frantically try to prepare students for the difficult and high-stakes tests.
  • They see data, not children. 
  • Data should be used as a strategy for improvement, not for accountability
  • A fool with a tool is still a fool.  A fool with a powerful tool is a dangerous fool.
C CC

One in four boys fails writing test for seven-year-old pupils - Education News, Educati... - 0 views

www.independent.co.uk/...venyearold-pupils-1777208.html

shared by C CC on 27 Aug 09 - Cached
  • Girls swept the board in national curriculum tests for seven-year-olds, beating boys in every paper – reading, writing, speaking and listening, maths and science. The biggest gap was in writing, where one in four boys failed to reach the standard expected, compared with just 13 per cent of girls.
    • C CC
      C CC on 27 Aug 09
       
      I find it a very sad state of affairs in the UK that this article constitutes a story. It has been widely acknowledged amongst child developmentalists that there is going to be a gulf between the sexes at such an age due to the internal developments taking place. Although testing is 'voluntary' in the UK, it is clearly still widespread to accountability purposes. We are talking about 7-year-olds here. What is disappointing also, is the fact further on in the article that a politician sees this as capital to attack the government, rather than the whole 'testing' regime for 7 year olds.
Richard Fanning

A short introduction concerning the implementation of the Horizon system at t... - 4 views

liber-maps.kb.nl/...popla11.htm

Horizon automation ILS

shared by Richard Fanning on 29 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Horizon is a third generation system
  • marketed by Ameritech Library Services, a subsidiary of the Ameritech Corporation, one of the world's largest communication companies
  • new system Horizon was built on the Marquis, Dynix library system, and is being developed by Ameritech Library Service in collaboration with the University of Chicago and Indiana University. It was first introduced in the USA in 1991
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Horizon is a fully integrated client/server library management system, providing a graphical user interface for the library, and offering the functionality and standards required for an open system, including Web access, Z39.50 standard for information exchange, the TCP/IP communication standard, UNIX and Windows NT for portability. Horizon uses the SQL database management system, available from Sybase or Microsoft.
  • the main hardware is a SUN computer Sparc Server 1000 with a UNIX Solaris 2.5 operating system
  • the centre of any library system is the cataloguing module.
  • Cataloguing and Authority Control contain the bibliographic database used by all Horizon modules
  • project will contain four stages of activity. Three of them include:
  • the preparation of standardised cataloguing rules and their implementation working out subject classification exchange of records among different systems preparation of legal and financial responsibilities collecting money for buying software and technical equipment etc. (we have already received $705,000 from the Mellon Foundation) implementation of system testing of the National Catalogue module schedule preparation for creation of databases users' training
  • Generally speaking, the main points of plan in Nicholas Copernicus University Library have been successfully realised. The progress is visible. Since September 1998 new modules have been implemented and tested. In the opinion of our users they work quite well. Of course, problems arise from time to time, and sometimes they are quite troublesome, but they are solved on a daily basis.
  • Richard Fanning on 29 Jul 10
     
    Horizon library automation system
Ann Darling

NAEP Gets It One-Third Right -- THE Journal - 15 views

thejournal.com/...our-space.aspx

shared by Ann Darling on 24 Oct 09 - Cached
  • gets, the more the debate will stir and positive things can come of all this.
  • 9 Gail Desler California I look forward to following this discussion! Currently many school districts have the same keyboarding + MS Office requirement for tech proficiency shared above by Interested Parent. I think to continue with that model well into the 21st century is really the train wreck waiting to happen. I've read through the NAEP draft. as well as some of their referenced documents from ISTE, http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/ DOT , and the http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/2 DOT 1stcentdefinition and am hopeful that the NAEP framework will promote the integration of technology literacy across the curriculum. Thanks for starting the conversation.
  • Wed, Sep 9, 2009 Dick Schutz http://ssrn.com/author=1199505 The framework defines technology as "any modification of the natural or designed world done to fulfill human needs or desires." I can't think of any human action that wouldn't fall under that definition The definition of technological literacy is "the capacity to use, understand, and evaluate technology as well as to apply concepts and processes to solve problems and reach one’s goals. It encompasses the three areas of Technology and Society, Design and Systems, and Information and Communications Technology." That's pretty much universal expertise. This is to be measured with a 50 minute test starting at Grade 4. The specs for the tests at Grades 8 and 12 merely get more detailed and more abstract. By the time this gets run through the Item Response Theory wringer we'll have results that are sensitive to racial/SES differences but not to instructional differences. I'll look forward to your forthcoming explanations of how this came to happen.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The problem? Namely, this: With no established federal definition of technological literacy, most states have chosen to follow the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) established by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), and to create their curricula and assessments accordingly.
  • gical literacy that is very different from anything any state or No Child Left Behind (NCLB) envisioned. From the draft document: "In recent decades the meaning of technological literacy has taken on three quite different… forms in the United States. These are the science, technology, and society approach, the technology education approach, and the information and communications technology approach. In recognition of the importance, educational value, and interdependence of these three approaches, this framework includes all three under its broad definition of technological literacy."
  • Geoffrey H. Fletcher is the editorial director of 1105 Media's Education Group. He can be reached at gfletcher@1105media.com. Comments
Steve Ransom

Schools Matter: Resolution: NCTE will oppose common core standards and national tests - 102 views

www.schoolsmatter.info/...e-will-oppose-common-core.html

NCTE commoncore nationalstandards opposition critique

shared by Steve Ransom on 12 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • The way to improve education is to have national standards and national tests to reveal whether standards are being met.
  • Our schools are not broken. The problem is poverty.
  • No educator is opposed to assessments that help students to improve their learning. We are, however, opposed to excessive and inappropriate assessments.
Nate Fish

The Toughest Places to Be a Student: Korea | EducationGrant.org - 3 views

educationgrant.org/-competitive-test-in-the-world

shared by Nate Fish on 17 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Nate Fish on 17 Dec 12
     
    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.
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