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This post is for any student who, like Ali in the epigraph above, has a low GPA (and thus a low self-image), but a brilliant mind. It's also for teachers of those students who wish they could do their part to make that GPA more accurately reflect that student's abilities. Listen, in this YouTube interview from 1971, to this "sub-par" English student's brilliance with language*, and laugh at the limitations of assessing writing and spelling to measure verbal intelligence:

Convert measurements to objects that make sense.

The paper presents and questions the main claims made about digital natives and analyses the nature of the debate itself. We argue that rather than being empirically and theoretically informed, the debate can be likened to an academic form of a 'moral panic'. We propose that a more measured and disinterested approach is now required to investigate 'digital natives' and their implications for education.

they evaluated 390 Teach for America instructors before and after a year of teaching. Those who initially scored high for "grit"-defined as perseverance and a passion for long-term goals, and measured using a short multiple-choice test-were 31 percent more likely than their less gritty peers to spur academic growth in their students.

"Swimming pools can be dangerous for children. To protect them, one can install locks, put up fences, and deploy pool alarms. All of these measures are helpful, but by far the most important thing that one can do for one's children is to teach them to swim." - Youth Pornography and the Internet

An electronics kit in your computer! Build circuits with resistors, light bulbs, batteries, and switches. Take measurements with the realistic ammeter and voltmeter. View the circuit as a schematic diagram, or switch to a life-like view.

Article from "The Journal" about measuring learning and 21st Century Skills.

Says that disengagement or lack of intellectual flow is bad, and that 21st century tools can be used to help. Post based on assumption that lack of flow (anxiety, apathy, boredom) is caused by limited curriculum.

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?  

Excellent article from Karyn Romeis (hat tip Stephen Downes) about how grades just don't quite measure the ability of children.

The Citizendium (sit-ih-ZEN-dee-um), a "citizens' compendium of everything," is an open wiki project aimed at creating an enormous, free, and reliable encyclopedia. The project, started by a founder of Wikipedia, feels that we can achieve this crucial improvement over Wikipedia through measures such as adding "gentle expert oversight" and requiring contributors to use their real names. We already have over 11,208 articles and hundreds of contributors.

Take this intelligence test to determine your intelligences and realize that not all intelligence is measured on an iq test.

"Worried about your impact on the environment? The way we use the planet's resources makes up our ecological footprint. Measuring yours takes less than 5 minutes and could set you on a life-changing journey... "

Economist finds bonuses encourages test coaching and cheating. "education officials should separate the provision of incentives and the measurement of student and educator performance by using separate testing programs for these two tasks"

Transformational Leadership Coach and mother Elena Aguilar explains her version of evaluating a teacher's effectiveness. 

A report by the US Department of Education Technology from February 2013 (anyone know why this is still a draft?) that shares how we should measure and promote non cognitive factors like grit, tenacity and perseverance. This is one paper to share and discuss.

This term I have mostly been getting myself in a pickle about measuring student progress. I want to do it with integrity, reliability and validity but I wonder whether all three of these are possible. When considering student progress, I have been i…

"Ainsworth, Prain and Tyler  (2011) in a paper in Science argue that  drawing  can play a number of  important roles in learning:, namely: Drawing to enhance engagement - surveys have shown than when students draw to explain they are more motivated to learn compared to traditional teaching of science. Drawing to learn to represent in science - the process of producing visual representations  helps learners understand how scientific representations work. Drawing to reason in science - student learn to reason like scientists as they select specific features to focus on in their drawings, aligning it with observation, measurement and/or emerging ideas Drawing as a learning strategy - if learners read a text and then draw it, the process of making their understanding visible and explicit helps them to overcome limitations in presented material, organise and integrate their knowledge and ultimately can be transformative. Drawing to communicate - discussing their drawings with their students provides teachers with windows into students' thinking as well being a way that the peers can share knowledge, discovery and understanding."

All schools in England are being told to filter inappropriate content and teach pupils about staying safe including online harm. Plans unveiled by the Education Secretary Nicky Morgan will require all schools to put in place strengthened measures to protect children from harm online - including cyber bullying, pornography and the risk of radicalisation.