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Ron King

Why Malcolm Gladwell Matters (And Why That's Unfortunate) - 0 views

blog.chabris.com/...-gladwell-matters-and-why.html

shared by Ron King on 07 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Ron King on 07 Oct 13
     
    Malcolm Gladwell, the New Yorker writer and perennial bestselling author, has a new book out. It's called David and Goliath: Misfits, Underdogs, and the Art of Battling Giants. I reviewed it (PDF) in last weekend's edition of The Wall Street Journal. (Other reviews have appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Millions, to name a few.) Even though the WSJ editors kindly gave me about 2500 words to go into depth about the book, there were many things I did not have space to discuss or elaborate on. This post contains some additional thoughts about Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath, the general modus operandi of his writing, and how he and others conceive of what he is doing.
Ron King

Encouraging Students to Embrace Academic Challenges - 1 views

www.amle.org/...brace-Academic-Challenges.aspx

shared by Ron King on 11 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Ron King on 11 Sep 13
     
    As I introduced a new geometry topic to my sixth grade class, one of my students immediately reacted to my mention of a new skill-classification of solid figures-by blurting out, "Again? We know everything about that. We learned it years ago."
Ron King

In Common Core, Teachers See Interdisciplinary Opportunities - 0 views

www.edweek.org/...o_interdisciplinary_units.html

shared by Ron King on 20 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Ron King on 20 Mar 13
     
    Educators around the country are exploring innovative ways to teach the new common-core literacy standards, and some are calling attention to an approach they say is working well: interdisciplinary thematic units.
Troy Patterson

Principal: Why our new educator evaluation system is unethical - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...evaluation-system-is-unethical

msm245

shared by Troy Patterson on 30 May 13 - No Cached
  • A few years ago, a student at my high school was having a terrible time passing one of the exams needed to earn a Regents Diploma.
  • Mary has a learning disability that truly impacts her retention and analytical thinking.
  • Because she was a special education student, at the time there was an easier exam available, the RCT, which she could take and then use to earn a local high school diploma instead of the Regents Diploma.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • Regents Diploma serves as a motivator for our students while providing an objective (though imperfect) measure of accomplishment.
  • If they do not pass a test the first time, it is not awful if they take it again—we use it as a diagnostic, help them fill the learning gaps, and only the passing score goes on the transcript
  • in Mary’s case, to ask her to take that test yet once again would have been tantamount to child abuse.
  • Mary’s story, therefore, points to a key reason why evaluating teachers and principals by test scores is wrong.
  • It illustrates how the problems with value-added measures of performance go well beyond the technicalities of validity and reliability.
  • The basic rule is this: No measure of performance used for high-stakes purposes should put the best interests of students in conflict with the best interests of the adults who serve them.
  • I will just point out that under that system I may be penalized if future students like Mary do not achieve a 65 on the Regents exam.
  • Mary and I can still make the choice to say “enough”, but it may cost me a “point”, if a majority of students who had the same middle school scores on math and English tests that she did years before, pass the test.
  • But I can also be less concerned about the VAM-based evaluation system because it’s very likely to be biased in favor of those like me who lead schools that have only one or two students like Mary every year.
  • When we have an ELL (English language learner) student with interrupted education arrive at our school, we often consider a plan that includes an extra year of high school.
  • last few years “four year graduation rates” are of high importance
  • four-year graduation rate as a high-stakes measure has resulted in the proliferation of “credit recovery” programs of dubious quality, along with teacher complaints of being pressured to pass students with poor attendance and grades, especially in schools under threat of closure.
  • On the one hand, they had a clear incentive to “test prep” for the recent Common Core exams, but they also knew that test prep was not the instruction that their students needed and deserved.
  • in New York and in many other Race to the Top states, continue to favor “form over substance” and allow the unintended consequences of a rushed models to be put in place.
  • Creating bell curves of relative educator performance may look like progress and science, but these are measures without meaning, and they do not help schools improve.
  • We can raise every bar and continue to add high-stakes measures. Or we can acknowledge and respond to the reality that school improvement takes time, capacity building, professional development, and financial support at the district, state and national levels.
Ron King

Malcolm Gladwell: Albert O. Hirschman and the Power of Failure : The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...130624crbo_books_gladwell

shared by Ron King on 22 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Ron King on 22 Jun 13
     
    In the mid-nineteenth century, work began on a crucial section of the railway line connecting Boston to the Hudson River. The addition would run from Greenfield, Massachusetts, to Troy, New York, and it required tunnelling through Hoosac Mountain, a massive impediment, nearly five miles thick, that blocked passage between the Deerfield Valley and a tributary of the Hudson.
Ron King

Student Engagement More Complex, Changeable Than Thought | University of Pittsburgh News - 0 views

www.news.pitt.edu/...x-changeable-previously-though

shared by Ron King on 22 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Ron King on 22 Jun 13
     
    "Enhancing student engagement has been identified as the key to addressing problems of low achievement, high levels of student misbehavior, alienation, and high dropout rates." - Pitt professor Ming-Te Wang
Troy Patterson

Technology in Education | American Federation of Teachers - 1 views

www.aft.org/...ruyckere-kirschner-and-hulshof

msm328 technology education edtech

shared by Troy Patterson on 20 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • Myth 1: New technology is causing a revolution in education.
  • Myth 2: The Internet belongs in the classroom because it is part of the personal world 
experienced by children.
  • Myth 3: Today’s “digital natives” are a 
new generation who want a new style 
of education.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Myth 4: The Internet makes us dumber.
  • Myth 5: Young people don’t read anymore.
Troy Patterson

Two months in, Eli Broad's new foundation president still learning the ropes | Pass / F... - 0 views

www.scpr.org/...ead-of-philanthropic-education

msm270

shared by Troy Patterson on 08 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • “It would look like a national system,” said Broad, describing what he would see as a perfect education infrastructure. “Rather than having 14,000 school boards across America, it would get governors involved, big city mayors involved, and it would have a longer school day and a longer school year.”
  • It's been a direction fueled by lots of money. In the past 13 years Broad has donated $800 million to education initiatives. A lot of it has gone to charter schools. In 2012, the KIPP charter school group got more than $2 million and Green Dot received $775,000 to supplement public funding. The online tutoring group Khan Academy received $1 million that year, too.
  • Broad has known all along he needs allies in public office to carry out his vision. He's generously donated to elections — from school boards to the U.S. presidency. He leans Democrat in Washington but anti-union on school boards.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • After three decades in Washington, Reed says he was ready to leave the political gridlock and lead a results-driven effort such as the Broad Foundation.
  • Troy Patterson on 08 Mar 14
     
    Two months in, Eli Broad's new foundation president still learning the ropes
Troy Patterson

Homework: An unnecessary evil? … Surprising findings from new research - The ... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...ing-findings-from-new-research

msm286 homework

shared by Troy Patterson on 04 Oct 14 - No Cached
  •  A brand-new study on the academic effects of homework offers not only some intriguing results but also a lesson on how to read a study — and a reminder of the importance of doing just that:  reading studies (carefully) rather than relying on summaries by journalists or even by the researchers themselves.
  • First, no research has ever found a benefit to assigning homework (of any kind or in any amount) in elementary school.  In fact, there isn’t even a positive correlation between, on the one hand, having younger children do some homework (vs. none), or more (vs. less), and, on the other hand, any measure of achievement.  If we’re making 12-year-olds, much less five-year-olds, do homework, it’s either because we’re misinformed about what the evidence says or because we think kids ought to have to do homework despite what the evidence says.
  • Second, even at the high school level, the research supporting homework hasn’t been particularly persuasive.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • It’s easy to miss one interesting result in this study that appears in a one-sentence aside.  When kids in these two similar datasets were asked how much time they spent on math homework each day, those in the NELS study said 37 minutes, whereas those in the ELS study said 60 minutes. 
  • it was statistically significant but “very modest”:  Even assuming the existence of a causal relationship, which is by no means clear, one or two hours’ worth of homework every day buys you two or three points on a test.
  • There was no relationship whatsoever between time spent on homework and course grade, and “no substantive difference in grades between students who complete homework and those who do not.”
  • The better the research, the less likely one is to find any benefits from homework.
  • you’ll find that there’s not much to prop up the belief that students must be made to work a second shift after they get home from school.  The assumption that teachers are just assigning homework badly, that we’d start to see meaningful results if only it were improved, is harder and harder to justify with each study that’s published.
  • many people will respond to these results by repeating platitudes about the importance of practice[8], or by complaining that anyone who doesn’t think kids need homework is coddling them and failing to prepare them for the “real world” (read:  the pointless tasks they’ll be forced to do after they leave school).
Monte Tatom

FHU Blogs | Faculty Blog - 0 views

www.fhu.edu/mtatom

via:packrati.us

shared by Monte Tatom on 09 Jul 11 - No Cached
    • Monte Tatom
      Monte Tatom on 09 Jul 11
       
      iPad Training for Monday & Tuesday
  • From the Computer to the Classroom: Outstanding iPad Apps
  • Great iPad Apps for the Congregational & Personal setting
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • How to use the iPad in the Congregational & Personal setting
  • Monte Tatom on 09 Jul 11
Troy Patterson

A surprising new argument against using kids' test scores to grade their teachers - The... - 1 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...scores-to-grade-their-teachers

msm286 teacherevaluation

shared by Troy Patterson on 14 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • This dispute is just one example of the mathematical acrobatics required to isolate the effect of one teacher on their students' test scores, when so many other factors inside and outside the school's walls affect how students perform.
  • When a teacher whose students do well on tests moves to a school where test scores were improving the previous year, and average scores continue improving after that teacher arrives, it is hard to know how much of that continued improvement is due to the new teacher and how much to other factors.
ocalmy

Study examines Wallace Foundation's Wallace principal pipeline project - 0 views

hechingerreport.org/achievement-with-a-little-help

principal Leadership and Administration

shared by ocalmy on 17 Apr 19 - No Cached
  • I would think it would take years for a new principal to replace teachers and make curriculum changes that would eventually trickle down to students and grow over time. More research is needed to understand what things new principals are doing immediately that boost learning throughout the building.
    • ocalmy
      ocalmy on 17 Apr 19
       
      I would bet it's about an improvement in school culture and moral, which naturally leads to greater student achievement because teachers have their heads and hearts in the game.
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