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Martin Burrett

@NFERClassroom launches free 'Assessment Hub' resource for teachers - 10 views

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    "The NFER Assessment Hub, which has been designed to help school practitioners build their confidence with classroom assessment, offers a host of free support written by NFER's team of assessment researchers with teaching backgrounds. This support includes a collection of short-read articles which introduce various aspects of classroom assessment, as well as an exclusive new practitioner guide series titled 'Brushing up on assessment', due to be released weekly throughout October and November. From guidance on understanding assessment policies to tips on making the most of assessment data, the guides will offer valuable insight and advice to support practitioners in delivering an assessment approach that is right for their pupils and their school."
Sigrid Murphy

Five U.S. innovations that helped Finland's schools improve but that American reformers... - 64 views

    • anonymous
       
      Interesting Top Five
    • anonymous
       
      Answer explanation is almost as important as mathematic problem solving.  If we really want to know if a student understands ANY concept, we need to ask him/her to write their explanation.  Sometimes the understanding comes from the thinking required to do the writing - writing to make it make sense!
    • anonymous
       
      Why don't we consider relating almost every lesson to everyday life?  Seems like an obvious thing to do to me!
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    • anonymous
       
      Wow!  I think the concept of doing less of something in order to make time for experimentation is a fabulous idea!  Do you mean there are different aspects of student assessment and testing beyond a bubble sheet?  :)
  • Most of them have studied psychology, teaching methods, curriculum theories, assessment models, and classroom management researched and designed in the United States
    • anonymous
       
      Finland's successful practices are something they learned here in the U.S.  So, why aren't our teachers here in the U.S. employing those same practices successfully?
  • Professional development and school improvement courses and programs often include visitors from the U.S. universities to teach and work with Finnish teachers and leaders.
  • in an ideal classroom, pupils speak more than the teacher
    • anonymous
       
      Hooray!
  • the entire Finnish school system looks like John Dewey’s laboratory school in the U.S.
  • cooperative learning has become a pedagogical approach that is widely practiced throughout Finnish education system
  • Finnish teachers believe that over 90 percent of students can learn successfully in their own classrooms if given the opportunity to evolve in a holistic manner.
  • After abolishing all streaming and tracking of students in the mid-1980s, both education policies and school practices adopted the principle that all children have different kinds of intelligences and that schools must find ways how to cultivate these different individual aspects in balanced ways.
  • it is ironic that many of these methods were developed at U.S. universities and are yet far more popular in Finland than in the United States. These include portfolio assessment, performance assessment, self-assessment and self-reflection, and assessment for learning methods.
    • anonymous
       
      Alternative assessments!  Performance, portfolio, self-assessment, self-reflection, and assessment of learning methods...
  • Peer coaching—that is, a confidential process through which teachers work together to reflect on current practices, expand, improve, and learn new skills, exchange ideas, conduct classroom research and solve problems together in school
    • anonymous
       
      Working together and reflecting on current practices - Reflection helps to expand, improve, and provides an opportunity to learn and exchange ideas to solve problems
  • the work of the school in the United States is so much steered by bureaucracies, test-based accountability and competition that schools are simply doing what they must do
    • anonymous
       
      Sadness Abounds!  We are teaching folks what works best.  Then, they enter the classroom and get wrapped up in bureaucracies and test-based accountability to the point that teachers are just going through the motions instead of facilitating quality learning
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    Pasi Sahlberg Blog Finnish education reform Originally published in Washington Post, 24 July 2014 An intriguing question whether innovation in education can be measured has an answer now. The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development in its recent report "Measuring Innovation in Education: A New Perspective, Educational Research and Innovation" measures Innovation in Education in 22 countries and 6 jurisdictions, among them the U.S.
meghankelly492

Legislation and Common Law Impacting Assessment Practices in Music Education - Oxford H... - 1 views

  • Russell and Austin (2010) have claimed that in music education, a system of benign neglect in assessment practices has been allowed to endure, even though there has (p. 4) been a long-term, consistent call for reform, for more meaningful assessments, and for policymakers to adapt to laws as they are enacted and court rulings as they are handed down.
  • ead to the growing body of scholarship in educational law, the evolving and more active role courts are taking in impacting educational practices,
  • chapter is to inform music teachers about contemporary court cases that have resulted in rulings on assessment issues in educational settings, and how these rulings impact assessment in the music classroom.
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  • in teacher preparation programs and in professional development activities so that students and in-service music educators will better be able to negotiate the increasingly litigious educational world
  • egal issues facing music educators remain one of the least important topics of conversation for preservice music educators.
  • how active they have been willing in inserting their decisions in school-based assessment policy.
  • Historically, courts have been somewhat deferential to school leaders and have not been willing to hear too many cases dealing with educational law and assessment.
  • Based on this decision, courts would be more likely to defer to school leaders in making their final rulings.
  • distinguish issues are purely academic from those that are purely disciplinary.
  • s. Three basic factors must exist for constitutional due process to exist: a student must have proper notice, a student must be given the chance to be heard, and the hearing should be conducted in a fair manner
  • The court decided that denying a student of education, regardless of the amount of time, could not be considered an inconsequential thing and claimed that a person’s right to education was equitable to the rights to liberty and property. In the majority decisions, the Supreme Court justices argued:
  • The US Supreme Court’s decision in Goss created the opportunity for students, parents, and their representatives to challenge not only disciplinary suspensions and expulsions but also other decisions by school officials that may affect liberty or property rights, including grades and grading policies.
  • that of courts taking a more active role and deferring less often to school leaders.
  • Because of these high stakes (real or imagined),
  • little more than attendance and participation, others feel that grades must represent academic achievement and that “allowing non-academic factors to affect academic grades distorts the truth about students’
  • however, because music is addressed minimally in these laws, their enactment has had minimal direct impact on music educators’ assessment practices.
Rich Robles

News: The 'Prior Learning' Edge - Inside Higher Ed - 15 views

  • An examination of the educational records of more than 62,000 adult undergraduates at 48 colleges finds that students who had sought and been awarded academic credit by their institutions for "prior learning" earned in the military, corporate training and other non-classroom settings were more than twice as likely to graduate, and to persist even if they did not graduate, than were their peers who had not earned such credit.
  • “CAEL’s research confirms that prior-learning assessment can help adults move faster toward their associate’s and baccalaureate degrees. We need to see more institutions offering this option and more adults participating in it.”
  • The concept of "prior learning assessment" is decades old, and it has grown to include multiple types of mechanisms for measuring knowledge and skills that students have accumulated through various types of formal and less formal formats, such corporate training, work experience, and independent study. The most common types of assessments include standardized exams developed by the College Board (the College Level Examination Program exams and Advanced Placement exams), the American Council of Education's guides for recognizing credit for instructional programs offered in the military and by employers, and institutional reviews of individualized student portfolios.
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  • credit awarded through prior learning assessments offers an opportunity to entice adults back to college with the prospect that they can build on learning they've already gained and reduce both the time and money they might have to expend to earn a credential.
  • "Do PLA students have higher graduation rates because PLA enhances the self-esteem and motivation of students by showing them that they have already mastered college-level learning? Is it also because PLA students already possess characteristics that are associated with better academic outcomes? What institutional policies are influencing whether and how students are using (or not using) PLA, and whether or not this helps them achieve a shorter time to degree?"
Sirkku Nikamaa-Linder

CBI: Change is possible - but we must be clearer about what we ask schools to develop i... - 1 views

    • Sirkku Nikamaa-Linder
       
      Question: What are the goals set out on the political level? What does Gove want to achieve?
  • lacks
  • guardrails
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  • which makes transformational change
  • ifficult
  • In Finland, the goals of education are explicitly linked to competitiveness, research and innovation.
  • nowhere in the UK do they really drive the terms under which schools are assessed.
  • In England, the government has defined its approach as being based on curriculum rigour.
  • This lack of a comprehensive statement of the achievement we are looking for schools to deliver is a key failing.
  • best schools
  • areas of high disadvantage
  • define the outcome they need
  • in the face of the complex and inconsistent demands the system places on them.
    • Sirkku Nikamaa-Linder
       
      Clear indication that the system as a whole is not supporting a generally accepted set of goals. Instead, the schools are trying to achieve a goal they see as important at worst while fighting the systemic demands.
  • One such school leader told us they had taken a conscious decision with one group of young people to focus on five key subjects and some life skills, knowing that the accountability system would score them down for it, as it expected eight qualifications from all students at that time.
  • Our system should reward schools making brave decisions which focus on boosting long-term outcomes for pupils, not punish them.
  • It should be able to survive changes of government and provide the test against which policy changes and school actions are judged
  • shine the light on whether the system is truly addressing the needs of all students, rather than just the few required to meet a government target.
  • Focus on raising the ambition and attainment for every child as far as their abilities permit
  • guide young people effectively on their choice of enabling subjects…
  • thos and culture that build the social skills also essential to progress in life and work, and allow them time to focus on this
  • Have a school accountability and assessment framework that supports these goals rather than defining them.
  • social literacy
  • a range of core subjects
  • ncluding critically maths, English, the sciences
  • effective use and understanding of computer science.
  • ‘enabling subjects’
  • humanities, languages, arts, technical and practically-based subjects
  • equip a young person to move on
  • o university, or to an apprenticeship or vocational qualification
  • a set of behaviours and attitudes,
  • An exclusive focus on subjects for study would fail to equip young people with these, though rigour in the curriculum does help
  • ‘employability skills’
  • Behaviours can only be developed over time, through the entire path of a young person’s life and their progress through the school system.
  • right context at school
  • A supportive culture, pastoral care and the right ethos are all needed to make the difference.
  • a long tail of pupils failing to achieve the desired outcomes can no longer be accepted.
  • enable all of our young citizens to reach the desired standards.
  • conflicting expectations placed on schools.
  • renewed system should be able to judge performance against the goals based on more complex metrics.
  • judgement
  • on overall culture and ethos, teaching and governance
  • group of data points, including testing but also outcomes data.
  • Development of a clear, widely-owned and stable statement of the outcome that all schools are asked to deliver.
  • beyond the merely academic, into the behaviours and attitudes schools should foster
  • basis on which we judge all new policy ideas, schools, and the structures we set up to monitor them
  • Ofsted
  • asked to steward the delivery of these outcomes
  • resourcing these bodies to develop an approach based on a wider range of measures and assessments than are currently in use,
Josh Flores

PARCC Governing Board Quarterly Meeting | PARCC - 15 views

  • Retest
  • allow retest opportunities in the summer of 2015
  • PARCC will
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  • offer retests once per year for grades 3-8 ELA/literacy and mathematics
  • three times per year for each high school end-of-course assessment
  • PARCC will make these retests available
  • states will set their own policies
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    PARCC retest policy
Stephen Bright

http://www.open.ac.uk/personalpages/mike.sharples/Reports/Innovating_Pedagogy_report_Ju... - 26 views

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    Innovating Pedagogy 2012. First report of an OU working group looking at exploring new forms of teaching, learning and assessment, to guide educators and policy makers
Roland Gesthuizen

Innovating Pedagogy | Open University Innovations Report #1 - 0 views

  • The first report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education.  You can see a summary of each innovation at the menu on the right.
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    "The series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation."
Nigel Coutts

Educational Disadvantage - Socio-economic Status and Education Pt 2 - The Learner's Way - 9 views

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    An unavoidable element of the discourse around educational disadvantage or equality is how we define and assess equality. One definition will see this as being in equality of access to education, funding for education and/or resources. Such an approach has largely been seen in government funding models however subtle variations on this theme have resulted in significant differences in resulting policies.
Peter Beens

What a Zero Really Says | Teaching on Purpose - 4 views

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    A story was recently reported about an Edmonton teacher being suspended for giving his students zero's in class in a school that has a no zero policy.  (Incidentally, this article is located in the "news" tab and should be moved to the "opinion" tab.  I always taught my kids that reporters should refrain from putting their personal bias into a news article.  So if you read it, read it with a grain of salt.)
Christina Melly

A dozen ways to teach ethical and safe technology use - Home - Doug Johnson's... - 142 views

  • Responsible teachers recognize that schools must give students the understandings and skills they need to stay safe not just in school, but outside of school where most Internet use by young people occurs. Over-filtered school networks set up a false sense of security; the real world of the Internet is quite different from the Internet at school.
    • Rob Weston
       
      Can't agree enough with this, the over-use of filters in schools is making everybody complacent when it comes to teaching students to self-filter.
    • Christina Melly
       
      Right -- if students don't take ownership of their own messages, we see a lot more of those inappropriate messages when the "babysitter" is taken away.
  • A district’s current acceptable use policy should include language about posting private information about both oneself and others
  • A district’s current acceptable use policy should include language about posting private information about both oneself and others
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  • Verbalization of how we personally make decisions is a very powerful teaching tool, but it’s useless to lecture about safe and appropriate use when we ourselves might not follow our own rules.
  • If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything
  • 9. Create environments that help students avoid temptations
  • Assess children’s understanding of ethical concepts. Do not give technology-use privileges until a student has demonstrated that he or she knows and can apply school policies. Test appropriate use prior to students gaining online access.
  • Privacy - I will protect my privacy and respect the privacy of others. Property - I will protect my property and respect the property of others. a(P)propriate Use - I will use technology in constructive ways and in ways which do not break the rules of my family, church, school, or government.
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    2. Stress the consideration and application of principles rather than relying on a detailed set of rules. Although sometimes more difficult to enforce in a consistent manner, a set of a few guidelines* rather than lengthy set of specific rules is more beneficial to students in the long run. By applying guidelines rather than following rules, students engage in higher level thinking processes and learn behaviors that will continue into their next classroom, their homes, and their adult lives.
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    Teaching ethical and safe use of ICTs.
Sharin Tebo

New Blog Series: Promising Policies for Personalized Learning - iNACOL - 15 views

  • How might policymakers remove barriers and support enabling conditions for optimizing learning for each student’s unique needs — both inside and outside of classroom walls?
    • Sharin Tebo
       
      That is the KEY question, as teachers don't have control over systems' barriers and policies. 
  • Personalized learning is tailoring learning for each student’s strengths, needs and interests — including enabling student voice and choice in what, how, when and where they learn — to provide flexibility and supports to ensure mastery of the highest standards possible.
  • According to this RAND study, students attending schools using breakthrough, personalized learning models “made gains in mathematics and reading over the past two years that were significantly greater than a comparison group made up of similar students selected from comparable schools.”
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  • Redefine courses and Carnegie units into competencies.
  • Build educator capacity and professional judgement in calibration on assessing evidence on common performance tasks
Dan French

Some Thoughts on Disciplining Educational Innovation - 20 views

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    In education, our research and development ("R&D") systems are curriculum development and professional development. These are the primary systems we utilize to improve instruction, and these systems are traditionally hierarchical and organized around school or district boundaries. We rely on top down policies and approaches such as standards and state-level assessments to influence the improvement of these systems even though there is significant lag time, often several years, between the development of standards and the implementation of their related assessments.
anonymous

Crash Test | Texas Monthly - 24 views

    • anonymous
       
      This same accountability "fear factor" has been applied nationwide, too.
  • STAAR replaced the four tests previously required for graduation with fifteen—more than any other state. Lawmakers also mandated that the new tests, known as end-of-course exams, would count for 15 percent of a student’s grade in each subject area
    • anonymous
       
      Sounds like the middle school testing requirements here in TN.
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  • “cult of educational testing” and argued that the accountability system was doing more harm than good
    • anonymous
       
      What wonderful wording!
  • Longtime observers of education policy are openly speculating that we are seeing the beginning of the end of the accountability movement, right here in the state where it was born.
    • anonymous
       
      Isn't that amazing?!  How long will this concept take to catch on and make it nationwide?
  • Of course, the stakes are high not just for kids but for adults too. Teachers whose students fail to improve—or don’t improve sufficiently—can find themselves out of a job. Students at poor-performing schools can transfer to better schools in their district—and take their state funding with them.
    • anonymous
       
      This is happening locally - I have witnessed such!
  • Shortly before he resigned as education commissioner, Robert Scott warned that assessment and accountability had grown into something akin to a “military-industrial complex,” a kind of public policy juggernaut with its own internal momentum.
Peter Beens

A zero policy in Ontario - Winnipeg Free Press - 26 views

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    Students in Ontario are facing the threat of a zero on assignments they hand in late this school year...
Chris Betcher

What Works Clearinghouse - 10 views

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    The high volume of research on different programs, products, practices, and policies in education can make it difficult to interpret and apply the results. We review the research. Then, by focusing on the results from high-quality research, we try to answer the question "What works in education?"  Our goal is to provide educators with the information they need to make evidence-based decisions.
Jennie Snyder

Why Kids Need Schools to Change | MindShift - 118 views

  • The current structure of the school day is obsolete, most would agree. Created during the Industrial Age, the assembly line system we have in place now has little relevance to what we know kids actually need to thrive
  • Yet therein lies the paradox. It’s exactly during these uncertain times when people must be willing to try new things, to be more open, curious and experimental, she said. In education, although there are great new models of learning and schooling, they are the exceptions, and the progressive movement has not gained much momentum.
  • “One thing we know for sure is that kids learn better when teachers are invested and paying attention and showing they care,” she said. “The biggest impact you’ll have as a teachers is the relationship you establish with your student.”
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  • The five criteria that Challenge Success brings to schools attempts to modernize the obsolete system in place today: scheduling, project based learning, alternative assessment, climate of care, and parent education.
  • Research shows that kids do better in classes where teachers know their names and say hello to them, and when they have their own advocates or advisers at school.
Scott Kinkoph

BYOD: Increase Chances for Success! - 44 views

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started by Scott Kinkoph on 22 Oct 12 no follow-up yet
Matt Renwick

Educational Leadership:Faces of Poverty:Boosting Achievement by Pursuing Diversity - 19 views

    • Matt Renwick
       
      This is a critical point. Allowing middle class families to pick and choose where there kids should go without valid reasons (i.e. work) can hurt high poverty schools.
    • Matt Renwick
       
      Have we?
  • Residential poverty tends to be concentrated, and successful school integration requires either a district with enough socioeconomic diversity within its boundaries or a group of neighboring districts which, when combined, have enough diversity to facilitate an interdistrict integration plan.
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  • A weighted lottery is the simplest way for schools to ensure that they enroll a diverse student body while still relying on choice-based enrollment.
    • Matt Renwick
       
      A possible solution?
  • ndividual success stories and a review of research suggest that it is possible, by offering all students a single challenging curriculum, to reduce the achievement gap without harming the highest achievers (Burris, Wiley, Welner, & Murphy, 2008; Rui, 2009).
  • In the middle grades, students at City Neighbors start their day with half an hour of highly specialized, small-group instruction called intensive. Intensive provides an opportunity for extra support or enrichment in different subjects, allowing teachers to meet different students' needs while still teaching most of the academic time in mixed-ability classrooms.
    • Matt Renwick
       
      Sounds like an intervention block, something many buildings have or are looking at.
  • small but growing number of schools are attempting to boost the achievement of low-income students by shifting enrollment to place more low-income students in mixed-income schools. Socioeconomic integration is an effective way to tap into the academic benefits of having high-achieving peers, an engaged community of parents, and high-quality teachers.
  • A 2010 meta-analysis found that students of all socioeconomic statuses, races, ethnicities, and grade levels were likely to have higher mathematics performance if they attended socioeconomically and racially integrated schools (Mickelson & Bottia, 2010).
  • Research supporting socioeconomic integration goes back to the famous Coleman Report, which found that the strongest school-related predictor of student achievement was the socioeconomic composition of the student body (Coleman et al., 1966).
  • nd results of the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress in mathematics show steady increases in low-income 4th graders' average scores as the percentage of poor students in their school decreases (U.S. Department of Education, 2011).
  • a number of studies have found that the relationship between student outcomes and the socioeconomic composition of schools is strong even after controlling for some of these factors, using more nuanced measures of socioeconomic status, or comparing outcomes for students randomly assigned to schools (Reid, 2012; Schwartz, 2012).
  • Rumberger and Palardy (2005) found that the socioeconomic composition of the school was as strong a predictor of student outcomes as students' own socioeconomic status.
  • Socioeconomic integration is a win-win situation: Low-income students' performance rises; all students receive the cognitive benefits of a diverse learning environment (Antonio et al., 2004; Phillips, Rodosky, Muñoz, & Larsen, 2009); and middle-class students' performance seems to be unaffected up to a certain level of integration.
  • A recent meta-analysis found "growing but still inconclusive evidence" that the achievement of more advantaged students was not harmed by desegregation policies (Harris, 2008, p. 563).
  • he findings suggested that, more than a precise threshold, what mattered in these schools was maintaining a critical mass of middle-class families, which promoted a culture of high expectations, safety, and community support.
  • istricts have chosen to let school boundaries reflect or even amplify residential segregation.
Roland Gesthuizen

City Teacher Data Reports Are Released - SchoolBook - 36 views

  • The rankings stem from a desire by policy makers to find an objective way to distinguish between effective and ineffective teachers, untainted by the subjective judgment of individual evaluators, like school principals.
  • Critics also say there are aspects of a child’s life — or distractions on test day — that the numbers cannot capture: supportive parents, a talented principal, the help of a tutor, allergies or a relentlessly barking dog outside the classroom.
  • there are schools where students are taught by multiple teachers, making it difficult to figure out the weight of their individual contributions
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  • The union has warned that the result will be sweeping, with good teachers steering clear of grades that have standardized tests, parents’ attempts to switch their children to other classrooms, low morale among teachers and worse.
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    After a long legal battle and amid much anguish by teachers and other educators, the New York City Education Department released individual performance rankings of 18,000 public school teachers on Friday, while admonishing the news media not to use the scores to label or pillory teachers.
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