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I agree. Students who got to read the passages ahead of time had an advantage - of course, is anyone looking to see if there was a "hit" on other textbook passages - is this luck or is it corruption. Either way - it smells like corruption. There is a conflict of interest if you're testing and selling textbooks to help kids do better on testing.  "students who read the Pearson test before seeing it on the state test had the opportunity to fill the gaps in their own knowledge-whether through class discussion or simply by reading and answering the questions provided in the curriculum-before they took the test. And that means that the validity of a test that aims to differentiate between "good" and "poor" readers is necessarily called into question. Unfortunately, it seems that New York education officials don't realize how significant this problem is. Or even that it is a problem. (Meryl Tisch, New York Board of Regents chancellor, actually defended the quality of the assessments, boasting that, thanks to a rigorous new quality-control review, the Department of Education had avoided the kinds of problems that lead to last year's now-famous pineapple scandal. And that failure to recognize what may be a far more serious and consequential challenge may be the biggest red flag that Common Core assessment decisions are in trouble in the Empire State."

This is the photo permisison form used by the state of New Jersey schools. I'm not sure if you should be required to specifically notify parents that photo recognition software is available. I do like the different levels of permission but am not sure how they track it in photos, etc. This seems like it would be a bit of a struggle, I guess it would have to be done with the use of colored dots on field trips, etc. 

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND CLASSROOM MATERIALS TO SUPPORT THE STUDY OF WORLD HISTORY Bridging World History is organized into 26 thematic units along a chronological thread. Materials include videos, an audio glossary and a thematically-organized interactive. There are so many more ways to study history than looking at simply military, nation-state analysis. This site  addresses other tools historians use to investigate world history, such as the frameworks of geography and chronology. A geographical area can be used to explore commonalities across political borders to discover the effect of trade, disease, and migration. Included in this unit are readings, resources, maps, audio clips, a video to watch, as well as a transcript of the video. Pertinent questions and activities are also provided. There are so many more ways to study history than looking at simply military, nation-state analysis. This site  addresses other tools historians use to investigate world history, such as the frameworks of geography and chronology. A geographical area can be used to explore commonalities across political borders to discover the effect of trade, disease, and migration. Included in this unit are readings, resources, maps, audio clips, a video to watch, as well as a transcript of the video. Pertinent questions and activities are also provided.

Weel written post by a very concerned parent on the state of our schools today and the very harmful policies being put forth by our national and state government.

Weclome to SpeechWars, a great way to see what the candidates are saying. Simply type in a word, click "Go", and SpeechWars shows you how often the candidates used the word in their speeches. You can also compare two words by using both text boxes.

The United States Library of Congress has selected SpeechWars for inclusion in its official historic collections of Internet materials related to Election 2008. The United States Library of Congress preserves the Nation's cultural artifacts and provides enduring access to them. The Library's traditional functions, acquiring, cataloging, preserving and serving collection materials of historical importance to the Congress and to the American people to foster education and scholarship extend to digital materials, including Web sites. The Library will make this collection available to researchers. The Library's vision is to preserve these Web materials about Election 2008, and to permit researchers from across the world to access them.

The Reflective Principal: A Taxonomy of Reflection (Part IV) Reflection can be a challenging endeavor. It's not something that's fostered in school - typically someone else tells you how you're doing! Principals (and instructional leaders) are often so caught up in the meeting the demands of the day, that they rarely have the luxury to muse on how things went. Self-assessment is clouded by the need to meet competing demands from multiple stakeholders. In an effort to help schools become more reflective learning environments, I've developed this "Taxonomy of Reflection" - modeled on Bloom's approach. It's posted in four installments: 1. A Taxonomy of Reflection 2. The Reflective Student 3. The Reflective Teacher 4. The Reflective Principal It's very much a work in progress, and I invite your comments and suggestions. I'm especially interested in whether you think the parallel construction to Bloom holds up through each of the three examples - student, teacher, and principal. I think we have something to learn from each perspective. 4. The Reflective Principal Each level of reflection is structured to parallel Bloom's taxonomy. (See installment 1 for more on the model) Assume that a principal (or instructional leader) looked back on an initiative (or program, decision, project, etc) they have just implemented. What sample questions might they ask themselves as they move from lower to higher order reflection? (Note: I'm not suggesting that all questions are asked after every initiative - feel free to pick a few that work for you.) Bloom's Remembering : What did I do? Principal Reflection: What role did I play in implementing this program? What role did others play? What steps did I take? Is the program now operational and being implemented? Was it completed on time? Are assessment measures in place? Bloom's Understanding: What was

Several states have taken the NETS standards one to several steps further in identifying what K-12 education must achieve in terms of facilitating student proficiency in the defined skills. These efforts have, in some cases, led to standards being issued by each state for its own students to meet, including:

Starting your own online program. Advice annd resources from iNACOL

"The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release September 24, 2011 WEEKLY ADDRESS: Strengthening the American Education System WASHINGTON-In this week's address, President Obama told the American people that it is time to raise the standards of our education system so that every classroom is a place of high expectations and high performance. On Friday, the President announced that states will have greater flexibility to find innovative ways of improving the quality of learning and teaching, so that we can strengthen performance in our classrooms and ensure that teachers are helping students learn rather than teaching to the test. By modernizing our schools and improving the education system, the United States can continue building an economy that lasts into the future and prepare the next generation to succeed in the global economy."

flash animation of the 3 states of matter (no plasma)

Another game for states and capitals review.

A resolution being submitted to the National Council of Teachers of English blaming current US problems on poverty not the education system. (On a note from me: The country is crying out for change in education. Change can be done to you or by you. To defiantly state there are no problems is to deny the truth. Every system has issues. No school is perfect. But right now, the national opinion is that there are problems. I'd be offering solutions you can live with or live with the solutions handed down to you by a clueless bureaucrat who only was in a classroom when he/she was a child. The one thing that is an advantage is that when industries standardize, we often see innovation. How much time is wasted in aligning with 50 different state standards?))

"Say what you like about Hogwarts but it's difficult to deny its 'old school' charm struck a chord with millions of avid readers both young and old. Amongst the many effects of Harry Potter in our education system was the revival, or re-emergence, in the state sector at least, of that gloriously stereotypical mainstay of public education: houses. Having been fortunate enough to spend a career working across a rich variety of settings, centres and schools - both private and state-led - I have seen many examples of the house system; and many examples of both the best - and the most pointless - systems and what they do or don't achieve."

"Across very different cultures - Ghana and the United States - when parents acknowledge the perspectives of their adolescent children and encourage them to express themselves, the youths have a stronger sense of self-worth, intrinsic motivation, and engagement, and also have less depression. Yet having the latitude to make decisions appears to function differently in the two cultures, with positive outcomes for youths in the United States but not in Ghana."

"A new study from North Carolina State University finds that educating children about climate change increases their parents' concerns about climate change. "There's a robust body of work showing that kids can influence their parents' behavior and positions on environmental and social issues, but this is the first experimental study demonstrating that climate education for children promotes parental concern about climate change," says Danielle Lawson, lead author of a paper on the work and a Ph.D. student at NC State."

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new method for creating elastic conductors made of carbon nanotubes, which will contribute to large-scale production of the material for use in a new generation of elastic electronic devices.

These are the semester outlines used by one of the best schools in my city, Brisbane State High School, for all subjects.