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As a result, classes that used to be termed “college-prep” are now seen as college proper.

This is not a criticism of high school teachers. Many are excellent educators and care deeply about students. But they often teach more classes than college faculty do, have myriad extracurricular responsibilities, and lack the requisite training that enables college faculty to introduce best practices in the field. In contrast, college faculty members expect a higher level of work from students, including having them study independently, write in the discipline and be exposed to the latest research. They are less likely to offer extra credit, or evaluate students based on an inflated high school norm.

High school students, especially sophomores and juniors, are not like college students. A collection of 15-, 16-, and 17-year-olds are normally at a different stage of intellectual and moral development than are college students. Treating a high school student like a college student does not always do them a favor.

Reflections of a Teacher and Learner: David teaches kids at a private college in Turkey and he also is a distance student on the University of Manchester’s MA in EdTech & TESOL programme

An A-Z of ELT: This blog is managed by the man who wrote An A-Z of ELT in 2006, Scott Thornbury.

Authentic Teaching: This blogger has taught EFL in Brazil, and taught ELT for several years as well. He now is earning an MA in Education in London

Jeremy Harmer’s Blog: Jeremy is a writer and teacher/teacher-trainer for English to speakers of other languages, and he blogs about presentation.

Marisa Constantinides — TEFL Matters: This blogger runs CELT Athens, a teacher development center based in Greece.

Shaun Wilden’s Blog: Shaun has been involved in English language teaching for almost twenty years. He also maintains several online teaching sites including ihonlinetraining.net.

So this is English… This blog is filled with ideas, thoughts, discoveries, feedback and more about the teaching and learning of English.

Teaching Village: Barbara is an English teacher currently living in Kitakyushu, Japan, and using Web 2.0 tools and virtual worlds.

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.

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,

Continuously upgrade educators' classroom technology skills as a pre-requisite of "highly effective" teaching

Home Advocacy Top Ten in '10: ISTE's Education Technology Priorities for 2010 Through a common focus on boosting student achievement and closing the achievement gap, policymakers and educators alike are now reiterating their commitment to the sorts of programs and instructional efforts that can have maximum effect on instruction and student outcomes. This commitment requires a keen understanding of both past accomplishment and strategies for future success. Regardless of the specific improvement paths a state or school district may chart, the use of technology in teaching and learning is non-negotiable if we are to make real and lasting change.  With growing anticipation for Race to the Top (RttT) and Investing in Innovation (i3) awards in 2010, states and school districts are seeing increased attention on educational improvement, backed by financial support through these grants. As we think about plans for the future, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has identified 10 priorities essential for making good on this commitment in 2010: 1. Establish technology in education as the backbone of school improvement . To truly improve our schools for the long term and ensure that all students are equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve in the 21st century, education technology must permeate every corner of the learning process. From years of research, we know that technology can serve as a primary driver for systemic school improvement, including school leadership, an improved learning culture and excellence in professional practice. We must ensure that technology is at the foundation of current education reform efforts, and is explicit and clear in its role, mission, and expected impact. 2. Leverage education technology as a gateway for college and career readiness . Last year, President Obama established a national goal of producing the highest percentage of college graduates in the world by the year 2020. To achieve this goal in the next 10 years, we must embrace new instructional approaches that both increase the college-going rates and the high school graduation rates. By effectively engaging learning through technology, teachers can demonstrate the relevance of 21st century education, keeping more children in the pipeline as they pursue a rigorous, interesting and pertinent PK-12 public education. 3. Ensure technology expertise is infused throughout our schools and classrooms.  In addition to providing all teachers with digital tools and content we must ensure technology experts are integrated throughout all schools, particularly as we increase focus and priority on STEM (science-technology-engineering-mathematics) instruction and expand distance and online learning opportunities for students. Just as we prioritize reading and math experts, so too must we place a premium on technology experts who can help the entire school maximize its resources and opportunities. To support these experts, as well as all educators who integrate technology into the overall curriculum, we must substantially increase our support for the federal Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) program.  EETT provides critical support for on-going professional development, implementation of data-driven decision-making, personalized learning opportunities, and increased parental involvement. EETT should be increased to $500 million in FY2011. 4. Continuously upgrade educators' classroom technology skills as a pre-requisite of "highly effective" teaching . As part of our nation's continued push to ensure every classroom is led by a qualified, highly effective teacher, we must commit that all P-12 educators have the skills to use modern information tools and digital content to support student learning in content areas and for student assessment. Effective teachers in the 21st Century should be, by definition, technologically savvy teachers. 5. Invest in pre-service education technology

Instead, the school is plastered with signs and handmade posters promoting a "growth mindset."

The focus is always more on putting out effort than on getting the right answers. Teachers have been trained to change the way they see students, and how they speak to them.

praise students for their focus and determination.

"If I was an outsider and I was hearing this conversation, I might think that this was some kind of hippie-dippy love fest," concedes the teacher, Nathan Cearley. "But what you see is actually a more rigorous and risky learning environment."

In three years, Cearley says, he's seen kids grow less afraid of making mistakes, and more willing to ask for help. Test scores at Lenox have jumped 10 to 15 points.

The number of schools using Brainology is expected to double this year, from 500 to 1,000.

A limited intervention, she says, if not consistently reinforced in and out of school, can only have limited results. "We don't know whether we've had any effect — the jury's out," says Duckworth. "It just seems to me extremely implausible that that's going to permanently and impressively change a child."

"Grit as a goal seems to be multiply flawed and very disturbing," says education writer Alfie Kohn. For starters, he says, "the benefits of failure are vastly overstated, and the assumption that kids will pick themselves up and try even harder next time, darn it — that's wishful thinking."

if there's a problem with how kids are learning, the onus should be on schools to get better at how they teach — not on kids to get better at enduring more of the same.

I don't think people can become truly gritty and great at things they don't love," Duckworth says. "So when we try to develop grit in kids, we also need to find and help them cultivate their passions. That's as much a part of the equation here as the hard work and the persistence."

But now, three years into the growth-mindset training at Lenox Academy, Blaze says, she believes "you can teach old dogs new tricks."

Does Teaching Kids To Get 'Gritty' Help Them Get Ahead?

After years of focusing on the theory known as "multiple intelligences" and trying to teach kids in their own style, Hoerr says he's now pulling kids out of their comfort zones intentionally.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Most of them have studied psychology, teaching methods, curriculum theories, assessment models, and classroom management researched and designed in the United States

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

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.

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

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

all schools – kindergarten through college – should employ exit exams allowing us to determine what students have actually learned. We owe it to our students to make sure that they’ve been properly taught.

Then there are the questions of what to do with the results. I have actually sat through an extended discussion of how we could use regression analysis to parse out the contribution different teachers made to a group of students’ performance on a set of standardized tests. The answer was, yes it was possible, and could in fact be used to award merit pay increases. But nobody left the room feeling very comfortable that there would be any gain in what we knew made for good teaching.

Roughly half of the nation’s students are taking tests under NCLB that are completely free of open-ended questions.

educators have a strong incentive to “teach to the test.” In this case, that means teaching low level skills at the expense of the more demanding material that everyone says students need to master in today’s complicated world.

But is it fair to give students what amounts to a counterfeit passport to college or work? And do such tests spur high school teachers and principals to aim high with their students? To both questions, the answer is, “No.” In most states today, high school exit tests serve the same role as the standardized tests mandated by NCLB: they try to jack up the floor of student achievement in the nation’s schools. The best high school exit tests would be end-of-course exams akin to the “comprehensive” exams that many colleges and universities require students to pass in their majors before graduation – tests, that is, that would raise the ceiling of student achievement.

High-stakes testing has narrowed and dumbed down curricula; eliminated time spent on untested subjects like social studies, art, and even recess; turned classrooms into little more than test preparation centers; reduced high school graduation rates; and driven good teachers from the profession. Those are all reasons why FairTest and other experts advocate a sharp reduction in public school standardized testing and a halt to exit exams.

igh school grade

point average is a better predictor of college success than either the SAT or the ACT.

For younger students, I think that the ability to make something professional-looking, like a real grown-up would, is paramount.  Sadly, I think this means that LOGO and BASIC aren't much use any more*.

So, we have a few choices.  You can try to write phone apps that look just like real phone apps, design interactive websites that look just like real interactive websites, or do something with embedded systems / robotics.  Avoid the temptation to make these things into group projects; the main thing every student needs to experience is the process of writing code, running it, debugging it, and watching the machine react to every command.

It is important to consider what an 11 to 18-year old is familiar with in terms of mathematics and logical thinking. An average 11-year old is probably learning about fractions, simple cartesian geometry, the concept of units, and mathematical expressions. By 15, the average student will be taking algebra, and hopefully will have the all-important concept of variables under his/her belt. So much in CS is dependent on solid understanding that symbols and tokens can represent abstract concepts, values, or algorithms. Without it, it's still possible to teach CS, but it must be done in a very different way (see Scratch).

At this point, concepts such as variables, parenthesis matching, and functions (of the mathematical variety) are within easy reach. Concepts like parameter passing, strings and collections, and program flow should be teachable. More advanced concepts such as recursion, references and pointers, certain data structures, and big-O may be very difficult to teach without first going through some more foundational math.

The key is that the concepts in CS aren't just there for the hell of it. Everything was motivated by a real problem, and few things are more satisfying than fixing something you really want to work with a cool technique or concept you just learned.