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"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."

"As the new school year approaches (we go back in two more weeks), I've been thinking a bit on how I can be a little more intentional and strategic in using formative assessment."

Welcome to EduWikis This site aims to answer one question: With your help we aim to provide: 1. A list of articles and resources that describe how to use wikis in education 2. A comprehensive list of existing educational wikis that we can learn from 3. A place to post ideas and discuss them This is a collaborative effort so please, jump in, contribute, and let's all help each other bring the power of wikis to our schools

Column from a CH-UH teacher "I knew my class was the most challenging of my teaching career, and our success would be evident by growth, not a minimum score. "You've never let us down," my principal said. But I did. Only half of my students made the "proficient" score of 400 on the spring reading Ohio Achievement Assessment (OAA). In math, only 69 percent made it. These scores, used in this month's state report card, represent the lowest passage rates I've ever had. That they occurred during the year I was chosen Ohio Teacher of the Year is a sobering irony. "

"Nothing matters more to student learning than teacher quality. Not class size, not poverty, not family background, not even overall school quality. This was the key takeaway from a highly controversial Los Angeles Times analysis of teacher value-added scores for students in the L.A. Unified School District. The significance of this finding can't be understated. Many people still believe either that "these kids can't learn" or that "school can only do so much with kids like this until society fixes their families and communities.""

"School superintendents across Northeast Ohio are either crowing about their district's high grades or scrambling to explain the low ones to district residents following the annual release of state report cards Friday. "

EVAAS® Report Access * Educator Access - Login Required. Go * Public Access. Go"

The NUA's mission is to substantiate an irrefutable belief in the capacity of all public school children to achieve the high intellectual performances demanded by our ever changing global community. Our focus is teacher and administrator quality through professional development which incorporates current research from cognitive neuroscience on learning, teaching, and leading. We partner with school districts to support the building of their capacity to advocate community-wide responsibility for realizing the learning potential of its children.

"How PLCs Use Assessments Posted on October 19, 2010 By Rick DuFour We received a series of questions from a school grappling with developing common assessments. I summarized the questions and attempted to provide a brief response for each."

Issue Brief by Richard Rothstein from the Economic Policy Institute

"Education Week's Leadership Forum "Unleashing Technology to Personalize Learning," was an live, in-person forum, held October 5, 2010, in Washington, for district-level personnel charged with maximizing the effectiveness of technology in education."

On August 4-6, 2010, more than 150 invited education leaders convened in Boston around the need for the systemic redesign of our K-12 education system to one that is centered on the personalized learning needs of each student. Attendees identified the top 10 essential elements and policy enablers. Now available are a report of these findings as well as an archive of the presentations, including session summaries and videos, student videos, and attendee poll results.

" Like many major league teams, schools may be overlooking some important metrics or even using the wrong measures as they strive to recruit and retain the best teachers."

"In this new report, "How the world's most improved school systems keep getting better," we analyzed twenty systems from around the world, all with improving but differing levels of performance, examining how each has achieved significant, sustained, and widespread gains in student outcomes, as measured by international and national assessments. Based on over 200 interviews with system stakeholders and analysis of some 600 interventions carried out by these systems this report identifies the reform elements that are replicable for school systems elsewhere as they move from poor to fair to good to great to excellent performance."

"the learning organization Just what constitutes a 'learning organization is a matter of some debate. We explore some of the themes that have emerged in the literature and the contributions of key thinkers like Donald Schon and Peter Senge. Is it anything more than rhetoric? Can it be realized?"

"Peter Senge's vision of a learning organization as a group of people who are continually enhancing their capabilities to create what they want to create has been deeply influential. We discuss the five disciplines he sees as central to learning organizations and some issues and questions concerning the theory and practice of learning organizations. "

"The release of the 2009 PISA results this past week has created quite a stir and has provided ample fodder for public school bashers and doomsayers who further their own philosophical and profit-motivated agendas by painting all public schools as failing. For whatever reason, these so-called experts, many of whom have had little or no actual exposure to public schools, refuse to paint an accurate picture of the state of education. "

"Manual" on using Google forms and an iPhone for walkthroughs

" I listed a dozen videos that I thought would help spark educators' thinking about the changes that are occurring around us. None of these are videos that we already have used in the technology leadership training that we've done statewide for principals and superintendents. "

Bill Daggett site