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Suzie Nestico

Father: Why I didn't let my son take standardized tests - The Answer Sheet - The Washin... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...ABkgICTB_blog.html

edu_news administrator all_teachers curriculum education reform education standardized tests standardized testing

shared by Suzie Nestico on 27 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • My wife and I had Luke “opt out” of No Child Left Behind standardized testing (here in Pennsylvania known as the Pennsylvania System of School Achievement, or PSSAs).
  • Last week I did just that. I looked at the test and determined that it violated my religion. How, you might ask? That’s an entirely different blog, but I can quickly say that my religion does not allow for or tolerate the act of torture and I determined that making Luke sit for over 10 hours filling in bubble sheets would have been a form of mental and physical torture, given that we could give him no good reason as to why he needs to take this test.
  • ch a reason for opting out of the PSSA testing will negatively affect the school’s participation rate and could POTENTIALLY have a negative impact on the school’s Adequate Yearly Progress under the rules of No Child Left Behind.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • I asked Luke what he thought about it all. He just smiled. I also asked him what some of his friends were saying. According to Luke, they did not believe that NCLB and PSSAs were going to be used to evaluate the school. They didn’t know about AYP and the sanctions that came with it. Luke’s friends just thought the tests, “were used to make sure our teachers are teaching us the right stuff.” My guess is that is what most parents believe. Why wouldn’t they believe it? They’ve been told for nine years that we are raising standards, holding teachers accountable, and leaving no children behind. Who wouldn’t support that?
  • This time, instead of having Luke sit through another meeting, he researched the Japanese earthquake and tsunami as a current events project.
  • The point was to give Luke some experience in how to conduct planned civil disobedience in a lawful manner.
  • That, of course, is the real problem. NCLB and the standards movement is a political bait and switch. Sold as one thing (positive) to the public and then in practice, something radically different (punitive). This is probably one of the biggest reasons I decided to do the boycott—to make my community aware and to try and enlighten them of the real issues.
  • My answer is that the government is not listening. Teachers, principals, teacher educators, child development specialists, and educational researchers have been trying to get this message out for years. No one will listen.
  • Civil disobedience is the only option left. It’s my scream in a dark cave for light. I want teachers to teach again. I want principals to lead again. I want my school to be a place of deep learning and a deeper love of teaching. I want children exposed to history, science, art, music, physical education, and current events—the same experience President Obama is providing his own children.
  • Maybe civil disobedience will be contagious. Maybe parents will join us in reclaiming our schools and demand that teachers and administrators hands be untied and allow them to do their jobs—engage students in a rich curriculum designed to promote deep learning and critical thinking.
  • Suzie Nestico on 27 Mar 11
     
    Another PA parent opts his child out of PSSA standardized testing as a measure of civil disobedience.  Word of caution:  This can very much hurt a school's Adequate Yearly Progress and ultimately the school may suffer.  But, what if this movement spread amongst parents?  What then?  Would the government take over the school?  
Vicki Davis

What is digital fluency? | - 12 views

blog.core-ed.org/...what-is-digital-fluency.html

digitalcitizenship digital_literacy

shared by Vicki Davis on 29 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Vicki Davis on 29 Oct 15
     
    "Crucially, the outcome of being digitally fluent relates to issues of responsibility, equity and access. We all have the right to fully participate in a digitally-enabled education system and in an increasingly digitised society. If we work with fluency in the way we use technologies, we are able to keep ourselves safe online and take full advantage of life chance opportunities such as being able to apply for work, manage our finances, or be part of our local community). "In the years ahead, digital fluency will become a prerequisite for obtaining jobs, participating meaningfully in society, and learning throughout a lifetime. (Resnick, 2002, p. 33) [via White, 2013]" As more services - health, civil, safety, even voting - move online, it has never been more important to ensure citizens are not disenfranchised from accessing services that are central to the well-being of all."
Deron Durflinger

Niall Ferguson: How American Civilization Can Avoid Collapse - The Daily Beast - 4 views

www.thedailybeast.com/...zation-can-avoid-collapse.html

History collapse ferguson america US education skills pay vanmeter van meter

shared by Deron Durflinger on 03 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • “killer applications
  • Competition
  • The Scientific Revolution
  • ...29 more annotations...
  • Modern Medicine
  • The Consumer Society
  • The Work Ethic
  • The Rule of Law and Representative Government.
  • these killer apps were essentially monopolized by Europeans and their cousins who settled in North America and Australasia
  • the great divergence
  • They also grew more powerful
  • 20th century, just a dozen Western empires—-including the United States—controlled 58 percent of the world’s land surface and population, and a staggering 74 percent of the global economy.
  • tendency of Western societies to delete their own killer apps.
  • But there is a second, more insidious cause of the “great reconvergence,” which I do deplore—and that is the
  • Ask yourself: who’s got the work ethic now? The average South Korean works about 39 percent more hours per week than the average American. The school year in South Korea is 220 days long, compared with 180 days here. And you don’t have to spend too long at any major U.S. university to know which students really drive themselves: the Asians and Asian-Americans
  • Yet life expectancy in the U.S. has risen from 70 to 78 in the past 50 years, compared with leaps from 68 to 83 in Japan and from 43 to 73 in China.
  • On no fewer than 15 of 16 different issues relating to property rights and governance, the United States fares worse than Hong Kong. Indeed, the U.S. makes the global top 20 in only one area: investor protection
  • The future belongs not to them but to today’s teenagers
  • The latest data on “mathematical literacy” reveal that the gap between the world leaders—the students of Shanghai and Singapore—and their American counterparts is now as big as the gap between U.S. kids and teenagers in Albania and Tunisia.
  • Yet statistics from the World Intellectual Property Organization show that already more patents originate in Japan than in the U.S., that South Korea overtook Germany to take third place in 2005, and that China is poised to overtake Germany too
  • the United States’ average competitiveness score has fallen from 5.82 to 5.43, one of the steepest declines among developed economies. China’s score, meanwhile, has leapt up from 4.29 to 4.90.
  • Perhaps more disturbing is the decline of meaningful competition at home, as the social mobility of the postwar era has given way to an extraordinary social polarization. You don’t have to be an Occupy Wall Street leftist to believe that the American super-rich elite—the 1 percent that collects 20 percent of the income—has become dangerously divorced from the rest of society, especially from the underclass at the bottom of the income distribution.
  • Far more than in Europe, most Americans remain instinctively loyal to the killer applications of Western ascendancy, from competition all the way through to the work ethic. They know the country has the right software. They just can’t understand why it’s running so damn slowly.
  • What we need to do is to delete the viruses that have crept into our system: the anticompetitive quasi monopolies that blight everything from banking to public education; the politically correct pseudosciences and soft subjects that deflect good students away from hard science; the lobbyists who subvert the rule of law for the sake of the special interests they represent—to say nothing of our crazily dysfunctional system of health care, our overleveraged personal finances, and our newfound unemployment ethic
  • And finally we need to reboot our whole system.
  • If what we are risking is not decline but downright collapse, then the time frame may be even tighter than one election cycle
  • Western Civilization's Killer Apps
  • COMPETITION
  • THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
  • THE RULE OF LAW
  • MODERN MEDICINE
  • THE CONSUMER SOCIETY
  • THE WORK ETHIC
Jocelyn Chappell

Zimbabwe teachers say they are targets in violence, clergy call for international help ... - 0 views

www.iht.com/...AF-POL-Zimbabwe.php

all_teachers digital_citizenship educators violence zimbabwe

shared by Jocelyn Chappell on 04 May 08 - Cached
  • Jocelyn Chappell on 04 May 08
     
    It turns out that teachers and low ranking civil servants (ie.key electoral workers numbering >1700) are a special target of post election violence in Zimbabwe -- Roman Catholic Justice and Peace Commission is also calling for international coordination of runoff election.
  • Jocelyn Chappell on 04 May 08
     
    Does anyone know how best we can all organise our colleagues to write to UN and President Mugabe whom we could encourage between them to put this awful matter right...?!
John Marr

History Now. In This Issue - 5 views

www.gilderlehrman.org/...past.php

shared by John Marr on 19 Jul 11 - Cached
  • HISTORY NOW is a quarterly online journal for American history teachers and students, launched in September, 2004. All issues are archived below: Issue One, September 2004: Elections Issue Two, December 2004: Primary Sources on Slavery Issue Three, March 2005: Immigration Issue Four, June 2005: American National Holidays Issue Five, September 2005: Abolition Issue Six, December 2005: Lincoln Issue Seven, March 2006: Women's Suffrage Issue Eight, June 2006: The Civil Rights Movement Issue Nine, September 2006: The American West Issue Ten, December 2006: Nineteenth Century Technology Issue Eleven, March 2007: American Cities Issue Twelve, June 2007: The Age Of Exploration Issue Thirteen, September 2007: The Constitution Issue Fourteen, December 2007: World War II Issue Fifteen, April 2008: The Supreme Court Issue Sixteen, June 2008: Books that Changed History Issue Seventeen, September 2008: Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Era Issue
  • John Marr on 19 Jul 11
     
    Quarterly journal from Gilder Lehrman Institute on particular history topics.
Felix Gryffeth

School Suspensions Lead to Legal Challenge - NYTimes.com - 5 views

www.nytimes.com/...19suspend.html

civil rights constitutional education teachers legal legislation courts school district students pupils

shared by Felix Gryffeth on 19 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Felix Gryffeth on 19 Mar 10
     
    Racial and constitutional questions are raised in the suspension of students after a fight at their high school.
Felix Gryffeth

Op-Ed Contributor - How to End the Slavery Blame-Game - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...23gates.html

slavery Africa civil rights obama reparations war abolish lincoln

shared by Felix Gryffeth on 23 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Felix Gryffeth on 23 Apr 10
     
    The debate over slavery reparations ignores Africans' role in selling human beings.
Clif Mims

The Crisis in Darfur: A Mini-Lesson that Teaches So Much - 0 views

clifmims.com/75

civil-rights curriculum-integration games geography history lesson-plans social-studies teaching technology technology-integration

shared by Clif Mims on 29 Mar 08 - Cached
lolaemam liked it
  • Clif Mims on 29 Mar 08
     
    This lesson about the crisis in Darfur makes use of video and an online game.
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