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Jonathon Gordon

Smithsonian Teaching Sources - 2 views

  • Artifacts —the objects we make and use—give history its tangible form. They can be as important and useful as primary sources as are correspondence, pieces of legislation, and other documents. Studied together, artifacts and documents help students understand the complexity of any historical question.
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    This site provided by the Smithsonian provides teachers with lessons that help students understand how to use primary sources in historical research. It would be very useful for any upper secondary social studies teacher. 
jbdrury

Re-thinking Newsweek and U.S. News Rankings - 0 views

  • Re-thinking the Rankings
  • B-CC had been ranked as the nation’s 64th best high school on the 2008 Newsweek list, but it was missing from U.S. News’ top 100. One parent e-mailed: “Should I be worried?”
  • In the 2009 Newsweek rankings, released in June, four county schools (Richard Montgomery, B-CC, Thomas S. Wootton and Winston Churchill) were ranked among the nation’s top 100, with two others (Walt Whitman and Walter Johnson) narrowly missing
  • ...31 more annotations...
    • jbdrury
       
      Not to detract from MCPS, but I have often wondered if the fact that the designer of the index happens to live in the Bethesda is at all a coincidence?
  • Most years, Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) has more schools in the top 100 of both lists than any other school system in the country
  • rankings validate that the school system is “seeing the benefits of providing the academic support that allows our students to aim high and achieve at the highest levels.
  • But do the rankings really mean much?
  • I feel obliged to question the validity of the methods used to rank high schools.
    • jbdrury
       
      This is the basic explanation for how Newsweek ranks its schools; interesting to note that it is based almost solely on a sort of "preparation for college" mindset
  • for ignoring graduation rates and achievement gaps among socioeconomic and ethnic segments.
    • jbdrury
       
      The author speaks directly with the designer of Newsweek's index
  • Mathews’ goal is to improve students’ academic preparation, especially in lower-and middle-income neighborhood schools. His solution is to expose more students to challenging course work, and he unapologetically describes his purpose as “advocacy as well as evaluation.
  • He says the Challenge Index’s key attributes make it the singular best measure of a school’s quality: It can be easily understood; it points directly to implementing positive change through rigorous course offerings; and it can be applied meaningfully to all schools—unlike quality evaluations based on traditional measures such as test scores, which, he says, are inherently biased toward schools in wealthier, upper-middle-class neighborhoods.
    • jbdrury
       
      As a side note; this is my former social studies teacher and the person I credit most with making me want to become a teacher
  • Walter Johnson Principal Christopher Garran
  • Critics
  • have attacked the Challenge Index for not effectively capturing what it purports to measure (school quality), in part because it doesn’t gauge student achievement, only the number of rigorous course exams taken.
  • Newsweek ranks schools based on the Challenge Index, which was developed by Washington Post education reporter (and Bethesda resident) Jay Mathews. A school’s Challenge Index score is the number of Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB) and Cambridge tests taken by all students in a school year divided by the number of graduating seniors. (AP courses are well-known; IB and Cambridge also consist of rigorous courses for which students can receive college credit. Like AP, their standardized exams are graded by outside examiners.)
    • jbdrury
       
      U.S. News also uses its own "college prep" index, but includes standardized test results, and takes socio-economic and racial differences into account
  • U.S. News’ approach
  • far more computationally complex
  • a school must do significantly better on standardized state English and math tests than statistically expected given its economic makeup; be in the top half of its state (approximately) in the performance of its minority students
  • “College Readiness” formula combines two components: the percentage of 12th-graders who had taken an AP or IB exam during or before their senior year; and the percentage who passed at least one exam—equivalent to an AP test score of 3 and an IB score of 4.
    • jbdrury
       
      He also directly quotes the manager of the U.S. News' index
  • U.S. News project, cites three ways its methodology is superior: “We measure success [tests passed]—not just quantity of tests taken. We factor in how well schools do in serving economically disadvantaged students and minorities. And we recognize schools within their respective state.”
  • The U.S. News rankings have been attacked by education experts for intermixing highly selective “elite” schools, such as Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va.—currently their top-ranked school in the U.S.—with schools having open admissions
  • Unlike U.S. News, Mathews eliminates some academically elite schools, setting the cutoff at the level of the highest average SAT/ACT scores of any “normal enrollment” school in the country.
  • “It would be deceptive for us to put them [schools above this threshold] on this list [because] the Challenge Index has been designed to honor schools that have done the best job in persuading average students to take college-level courses and tests. It does not work for schools that have no, or almost no, average students.”
  • As of 2009, schools with AP exam pass rates lower than 10 percent (schools that would have made the list in previous years) have also been eliminated from the main Newsweek ranking. Most of these schools, which are typically located in low-income neighborhoods, have recently introduced their students to academically challenging courses as a form of “shock therapy.”
    • jbdrury
       
      A summary of the author's thoughts; pro's and con's of both methods
  • Just as the Challenge Index is too limited in its concept of best schools, the U.S. News procedures try to cover too much. The crux of the problem is combining three essentially different criteria (college readiness, overcoming economic disadvantage and minimizing ethnic group disparities) into one ranking. Schools that excel in one aren’t necessarily those that excel in the other(s). Some schools that do the greatest job of preparing their minority students might not have total-school achievement scores that are among the best. Other schools characterized by superlative overall college readiness might score only slightly above average relative to their economic profile. In trying to incorporate “economic disadvantage” and the reduction of ethnic group (minority) achievement gaps together with schoolwide high achievement, the U.S. News ranking risks confounding different educational objectives. Depth and breadth of performance, and exceeding expectations, should be reported separately, rather than conjoined. Separate rankings would be easier to understand, more informative and less disputable—although perhaps less likely to help sell magazines.
  • Several principals, including Whitman’s Goodwin, noted how nonacademic programs that help students succeed and are a huge part of some students’ lives (arts, music, sports, civic activities, etc.) are not examined.
  • comparing large and small schools can be misleading
  • eferring to the many qualitative features that go into making a great school, Doran says, “The rankings are measuring the brain of the school—not the heart of the school.”
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    Having grown up in Bethesda, I am well aware of the preoccupation with the ranking of U.S. schools. This article shares some insight into how two of the more popular (or circulated) ranking systems come up with their results.
Joellen Kriss

'Race to the Top' - we expected better - 0 views

    • Joellen Kriss
       
      Strong start, right out of the gate!
  • From the perspective of a classroom teacher, reform must be rooted in classroom practice and supported by research.
  • Public education faces complex problems and won't be fixed by simplistic solutions. Standardized tests can be a useful tool among others to assess student learning. But it is too narrow of a measure on which to base a student's grade, let alone gauge a teacher's performance.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • States must enact a laundry list of federally mandated "reforms" to qualify for the competition. Duncan and Obama call this initiative "Race to the Top."
    • Joellen Kriss
       
      Hittleman talks about how they'd looked forward to education law that helped, and race to the top doesn't look that much different from NCLB
  • funding mandates are controversial because they have never been shown to improve student learning.
    • Joellen Kriss
       
      Totally on target with the fact that there's so much more to education than tests and standards.
  • No Child Left Behind, an education law that focused on one-size-fits-all standardized testing.
  • A portfolio that includes multiple-choice tests but also essays, research projects, homework and classroom presentations gives a much more complete picture of student achievement.
    • Joellen Kriss
       
      A very well rounded argument, bringing in all of the factors outside of the classroom that affect learning.
  • Likewise, to judge teacher effectiveness solely on student test scores ignores a range of factors outside a teacher's control, including support (or lack of it) in the home, changes in the student's situation from year to year, or even whether the student happened to be sick on the day of the test.
    • Joellen Kriss
       
      At the end of the day, teachers want reforms that WORK, made by people who know about teaching from first hand experience.
  • We are for reforms that work, which include standards-based and common curricula that have multiple source assessments; student data available for classroom teacher use based on a comprehensive approach; smaller class sizes; new teacher mentoring; and peer assistance and review. What we oppose are reforms based on the latest bright idea that has caught the eye of a politician or pundit with no experience teaching.
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    Marty Hittelman offers one of the most comprehensive, well rounded opinions on the current policy reforms being enacted. It covers everything, which might be something I think because I agree with it all, but just read it. It's pretty good.
Maria Mahon

How Arlington National Cemetery Came to Be | History & Archaeology | Smithsonian Magazine - 2 views

  • In correspondence, her husband referred to the place as "our dear home," the spot "where my attachments are more strongly placed than at any other place in the world."
    • Maria Mahon
       
      Finding some direct quotes from figures like Robert E. Lee that shows his link to Arlington could be an interesting way to express the struggle between loyalties to nation, state, land, etc.
  • Orton Williams was not only Mary Lee's cousin and a suitor of her daughter Agnes but also private secretary to General in Chief Winfield Scott of the Union Army.
  • Orton Williams was not only Mary Lee's cousin and a suitor of her daughter Agnes but also private secretary to General in Chief Winfield Scott of the Union Army.
    • Maria Mahon
       
      Mary Lee received a warning from her cousin/a suitor of her daughter... who was also a private secretary to a general in the Union Army.... this underscores how complex relationships were at this time and how families were torn apart.
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  • A sprawling Freedmen's Village of 1,500 sprang to life on the estate, complete with new frame houses, schools, churches and farmlands on which former slaves grew food for the Union's war effort.
    • Maria Mahon
       
      The Freedmen's Village is also an important part of Arlington's history.... a rich cultural community sprung up here.
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    This article provides a great hisory of something in our own backyard here in DC - Arlington National Cemetery and its history in the Washington family and as the home of Robert E. Lee. Studying this could be a way to link the Civil War to the area.
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