Group items tagged

"The best kind of teacher evaluation The Los Angeles Times on Sunday published a massive story that rocked the education world by using student test scores to evaluate more than 6,000 teachers and then to declare which teachers are effective and who should be shown the door. Any regular reader of my blog will know that I take a dim view of any teacher evaluation scheme that uses test scores as a sole measure. Here is a piece on real teacher evaluation by Larry Ferlazzo, who teaches English at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, California. Ferlazzo writes a popular blog for teachers and is the author of two books, Building Parent Engagement In Schools and English Language Learners: Teaching Strategies That Work. He is also a member of the Teacher Leaders Network, a network of teacher leaders dedicated to student success and the transformation of teaching into a true profession. It is a national initiative of the Center for Teaching Quality."

Bridging the gap between teacher evaluation and student achievement After nearly five decades of study around effective teaching and learning practices, Dr. Robert Marzano expands his acclaimed work by releasing the Art and Science of Teaching Causal Teacher Evaluation Model. The first of its kind, this teacher evaluation model identifies the direct cause and effect relationship between teaching practices and student achievement to help teachers and leaders make the most informed decisions that yield the greatest benefits for their students. With the Marzano Model, districts can transform your teacher evaluation system from an exercise in compliance into an effective engine of incremental growth, one that reflects parallel gains between teacher assessment and student performance.

Researchers, policymakers, and parents tend to agree that effective teachers are the key to high-quality schools-and, by implication, to maintaining an educated and thriving citizenry. So why are teachers in the United States so undervalued and lately even disparaged? That's the question at the heart of "American Teacher," a new documentary produced by author Dave Eggers and Nínive Clements Calegari, a former teacher who helped Eggers create the 826 National tutoring centers. The film was shown last night at an advance screening in Washington attended by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and assorted other government officials and policy mavens. (Eggers, in brief remarks before the film, admitted that he "always gets nervous in D.C.")

Share My Lesson is a place where educators can come together to create and share their very best teaching resources. Developed by teachers for teachers, this free platform gives access to high-quality teaching resources and provides an online community where teachers can collaborate with, encourage and inspire each other. Share My Lesson has a significant resource bank for Common Core State Standards, covering all aspects of the standards, from advice and guides to help with dedicated resources that support the standards. Share My Lesson was developed by the American Federation of Teachers and TES Connect, the largest network of teachers in the world.

When people perceive themselves as similar to others, greater liking and closer relationships typically result. In the first randomized field experiment that leverages actual similarities to improve real-world relationships, we examined the affiliations between 315 ninth grade students and their 25 teachers. Students in the treatment condition received feedback on five similarities that they shared with their teachers; each teacher received parallel feedback regarding about half of his/her ninth grade students. Five weeks after our intervention, those in the treatment conditions perceived greater similarity with their counterparts. Furthermore, when teachers received feedback about their similarities with specific students, they perceived better relationships with those students, and those students earned higher course grades. Exploratory analyses suggest that these effects are concentrated within relationships between teachers and their "underserved" students. This brief intervention appears to close the achievement gap at this school by over 60%.

"The First Year is an emotional journey of five beginning teachers in the Los Angeles public school system. The camera goes inside the classroom and uncovers the passion, frustration, determination and triumphs of America's real heroes - our teachers. This site was developed to provide support, resources and guidance for aspiring teachers. The first year teachers featured in the film share insights about their journey in their own words. We invite you to connect with new and veteran teachers in our online forum."

"What Sets Strong Teachers Apart Regardless of their backgrounds, these teachers and other great teachers in challenging schools whom I've read about-including Esme Codell (2009), Salome Thomas-El (2003), Erin Gruell (1999), and celebrated author and former teacher Frank McCourt (2006)-all have a lot in common."

iObservation is an instructional and leadership improvement system. It collects, manages and reports longitudinal data from classroom walkthroughs, teacher evaluations and teacher observations. Teacher growth and leadership practices inform professional development differentiated to individual learning needs for every teacher and leader to increase his/her classroom effectiveness each year.

"The question that I seem to hear from teachers comes up when we discuss engagement vs on task behavior. Teachers want to know how can you see engagement. Paula Bevan tells us that engagement = brain sweat, but can we see a kiddo's brain sweating. What evidence can administrators and teachers collect that will show true engagement and not on task behavior?"

Tony Vincent's Learning in Hand - Blog - "Nowadays teachers and students have a variety of ways to show what they know and to express themselves. Take a look at some of the hottest online and mobile tools for showing, explaining, and retelling in my infographic, "Show What You Know Using Web & Mobile Apps." These tools can turn students into teachers and teachers into super-teachers! Furthermore, most of the apps listed in the infographic are free of charge."

"This 18-month Initiative celebrated the work of public school teachers across the country. By recording, sharing, and preserving these stories, we called attention to the invaluable contributions teachers have made to this nation, honored those who have embraced the profession as their calling, encouraged teaching as a career choice, and helped to unify the country behind its teachers."

"In a study published in the current issue of the peer-reviewed journal Teachers College Record, University of Pennsylvania researchers Claire Robertson-Kraft and Angela Duckworth found that, for novice teachers in high-poverty school districts, higher levels of  "perseverance and passion for long-term goals"  (aka "grit")  were associated with higher rates of effectiveness and retention. "

"Welcome to TeenTribune, TweenTribune,TTEspañol and TTJunior - the daily news sites for kids, tweens and teens - where you'll find the most compelling, relevant and interesting news for 55 million kids in K-12 and their 3.5 million teachers. Stories are selected by professional journalists working closely with teens, tweens and teachers. Teens and tweens can post comments, with all comments moderated by their teachers before they are published We allow teens and tweens to produce 99 percent of our content as a means of engaging them. More than 100,000 teachers have registered so far."

Key Findings "Teacher leaders can immediately boost student learning in their schools. Some 70 percent of participants achieved notable gains in student achievement across classrooms they supervised during their training year. Teacher leaders can quickly develop and apply critical leadership skills. Participants made significant, measureable gains on high-impact skills, such as using student data and coaching to improve instruction. Teacher leaders can fill gaps in the leadership pipeline. After one year of Emerging Leaders, 80 percent of participants who were accepted to a principal apprenticeship started that training having mastered key leadership skills. The report includes recommendations for steps stakeholders can take to unleash the potential of teacher leadership to support student success."

I'm Dan Meyer. I taught high school math between 2004 and 2010 and I am currently studying at Stanford University on a doctoral fellowship. My hobbies include graphic design, filmmaking, motion graphics, and infographics, most of which have found their way into my practice in some way or another. My specific interests include curriculum design (answering the question, "how we design the ideal learning experience for students?") and teacher education (answering the questions, "how do teachers learn?" and "how do we retain more teachers?" and "how do we teach teachers to teach?").

"Since the dawn of time, English teachers have been requiring their students to write and present persuasive speeches.  By integrating student use of a number of technology tools, we have not only enlivened our rather tired persuasive speech unit, but also enhanced critical thinking opportunities for students and teachers alike.  Our new unit, a partnership between English teachers and the teacher librarian, integrates activities that meet virtually all the ELA standards."

"It's a dramatic departure for the state from a culture of having virtually all teachers receiving a good rating almost by default and with little commentary. By next school year, each teacher will be rated based on students' academic growth, usually measured on standardized tests, and on how teachers do in the classroom observations"

An important step toward supporting teachers and ensuring that all students have access to high quality instruction is to develop fairer and more useful measures of teacher effectiveness. This is the goal of the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project, which will support independent education researchers-in partnership with school districts, principals, teachers, and unions-to develop objective and reliable measures of effective teaching. Rather than relying solely on how well a teacher's students do on assessments, the Measures of Effective Teaching project seeks to uncover and develop a set of measures that work together to form a more complete indicator of a teacher's impact on student achievement.

"Creighton Elementary School District (CSD) is located in central Phoenix with approximately 6,700 students, of whom 85% are Hispanic and 90% qualify for free and reduced-price lunch. In 2009, Dr. Maria C. Paredes (mparede@wested.org), then CSD's Director of Community Education, created an innovative new family engagement framework for teacher and parent collaboration focused on the improvement of student achievement: Academic Parent-Teacher Teams (APTT©)."

"Creighton School District is a small urban community in Arizona with approximately 7,200 students, of whom 85% are Hispanic and 90% qualify for free and reduced-price lunch. Children in the district are tested informally on a weekly basis and then formally every quarter with a district-developed standards-based assessment in the areas of reading and math. To help families better understand the results of these tests, educators in the Creighton School District have reorganized the structure of parent-teacher conferences to accommodate the shift to a more focused discussion around data."