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Mallorie Fagundes

Thomas: Stop focusing on SAT - Editorial Columns - TheState.com - 4 views

    • Benjamin Caulder
       
      A look at the SAT and why we shouldn't use it, hint: He argues against its credibility.
    • Stephanie Flores
       
      Interesting... I don't see how colleges will agree with this statement. From my understanding colleges want students with higher scores and GPAs since that makes their overall numbers appealing to the state and other students wanting to attend. I believe that the goal is contradicting, but I also think that colleges becoming SAT optional won't be passed.
    • Benjamin Caulder
       
      I agree, I don't think colleges will give up on SATs, especially after reading Shor today. It doesn't mean that they shouldn't though. The SAT isn't a reliable exam for all college bound students as is so heavily biased towards the middle to upper middle class students.
    • Stephanie Flores
       
      I don't agree with this at all. GPAs are subjective. Just like in one of the articles that we read in class, students learn how to "do school" and get grades that don't reflect their true understanding of the curriculum. I don't believe that the SAT should be banned because more students are encouraged to take it. Isn't that what we want to do for students, encourage them to their full potential even if they may not be NASA material? Also, poverty has and always will be an issue in the education system. This is not ground breaking news. Maybe if we encourage those with low SES to achieve higher standards they will in turn succeed in school.
    • Mallorie Fagundes
       
      Keep in mind that he is only suggesting that SC not have the SAT anymore...so what I am wondering is if a student from SC wants to go to an out-of-state school, wouldnt that students have to adhere to that particular school's standards?? It doesnt really make sense, unless each college starts to have their "own" SAT, kind of like an entrance exam? I agree that students can learn how to "do school" and get by, but honestly as a student who had over a 4.0 in high school as I am sure most others in our class did as well, it is pretty difficult to fake your way through four years with straight A's without picking up something.
    • Benjamin Caulder
       
      That is what I got from that as well. Overall, I thought the idea was interesting. I also think that it would have a lot of merit if classrooms were actually like what we have been reading about (as the ideal, where teachers don't have to read a script) since GPA would be a fairer indicator of academic achievement that a SES biased exam like the SAT.
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  • The pool of students taking the SAT 20 years ago, before we began to encourage more students to take the test, was a unique population that was more elite than the normal distribution of students.
    • Mallorie Fagundes
       
      I wonder why he considers students taking the test 20 years ago "elite"? If more students are encouraged to take the SATs today, wouldnt that make today's group more diverse??
    • Mallorie Fagundes
       
      What is "normal distribution"?
Linda Garcia

ASCD Infobrief:Examining Charter Schools:Examining Charter Schools - 1 views

  • By definition, the common link among these 5,000-plus schools is their acceptance of increased accountability in exchange for increased autonomy, but the schools themselves may have little in common
  • More than three-quarters of charter schools nationwide are freestanding, started by educators, parents, activists, and others
  • Although Americans' approval of charter schools has increased 15 percent in the last five years and reached a two-thirds favorable rating, half of the respondents to a recent Phi Delta Kappan poll mistakenly believe that charters are not public schools and are allowed to teach religion.
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  • saying that charter schools are vital to promoting innovation in American schools (Obama, 2009)
  • With so much variation among charter schools, however, significant questions exist regarding how well they are educating students, how they manage their financial responsibilities, and whether creating more charter schools will be better for the nation's schoolchildren.
  • In 2009, Secretary Duncan made lifting charter caps a key component of qualifying for education funding under the $4.35 billion Race to the Top (RTTT) program. Originally, to qualify for RTTT money, Duncan said states must eliminate any caps on charter schools. In November 2009, Duncan changed the requirement so that states with caps could still receive money if they had other kinds of innovative public schools and as long as the caps were generous enough (The Wall Street Journal, 2009).
  • Parents' demand for charter schools is outpacing their availability in many locations, with an estimated 365,000 students on waitlists—enough to fill more than 1,100 average-sized charter schools
  • In Montana, where there are no charter schools and where more than half of the state's school districts have enrollments of fewer than 100 students, Superintendent of Schools Denise Juneau objected to the RTTT focus on charter schools in a July 28 letter to Secretary Duncan. "Montana's rural context and economic status has made it challenging for many communities and the state to support the public schools we currently have," Juneau wrote in the letter, "much less encourage the duplication of infrastructure a charter school would mean in most communities" (McNeil, 2009).
  • "The charter movement is putting itself at risk by allowing too many second-rate and third-rate schools to exist," he said, in reference to a recent study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University that found that more than 80 percent of charter schools were performing the same as or worse than their local public schools (2009).
  • The comparison found that only 17 percent of charter schools were producing gains that were significantly better than their traditional public school counterparts, while 46 percent were similar to their local public schools and 37 percent performed significantly worse (Center for Research on Education Outcomes, 2009).
  • In contrast, another recent study by Stanford economics professor Caroline Hoxby found that students who entered lotteries and gained admission to New York City charter schools performed better on state assessments than students who entered the same lotteries and were not admitted to the charter schools.
  • The findings of both studies have been disputed. Critics of the Hoxby study point out that it relies on extrapolations of data, comparing statistical projections of student achievement as opposed to actual student achievement (Ravitch, 2009). Critics of the CREDO study raise doubts about its seemingly contradictory findings that charter schools provided gains for English language learners and poor students while having negative effects on Hispanic and black students (Anderson, 2009).
  • For middle and high school charters that did have baseline scores, that study found charter schools in five of the seven locations it examined were on average no better or worse than local traditional public schools (Zimmer et al., 2009).
  • Of the more than 5,250 charter schools that have ever opened, 657 have closed since 1992. Of those, 41 percent closed because of financial deficiencies caused by either low enrollment or inequitable funding; 27 percent for mismanagement; and only 14 percent for poor academic performance (Allen et al., 2009).
  • A 2005 analysis by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) found that 90 percent of authorizers were local school districts, and two-thirds lacked a dedicated office or staff to oversee the authorizing process (Vanourek, 2005). NAPCS, which has described quality authorizing as an intensive, data-driven process that requires dedicating substantial resources to the task, has called for stricter accountability for local school boards and other entities that authorize charter schools
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    An examination of charter schools
Evonne Villagomez

Are Students Coddled? Schools Get Rid of 'F's - ABC News - 5 views

    • Jennifer Flores
       
      Wow! This article blew my mind. I cannot believe that schools would actually go that low. How can they even think about getting rid of F's to help the kids. This is exactly the opposite of what kids really need. I truly believe students receive the grades that they deserve. With hard work comes good grades and with poor work comes poor grades.
  • At one Boston area middle school, a policy known as "Zeros Aren't Permitted" gives students who do not complete their homework on time an opportunity during school hours to finish so that they do not fail the assignment.
    • Evonne Villagomez
       
      This is absolutely irritating! Why should these kids, who didn't care to do the assignment in the first place be offered a second chance? I think this is just cause for enabling lazy students. Kids will just assume that 'eh who cares I'll still get the chance to make up the work so I don't have to do it tonight'. It's ridiculous and unfair for those students who are being model students.
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    This article is nothing but angering to me. More and more public schools are ditching the letter grade of "F" for a more friendly rejection grade, relying on an "I" for incomplete or an "H" for held.
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    This is just stupid. If a child earns and F then that is what they should get. I've heard about this before and I can't believe it. Let's just get rid of A's as well. We can go "credit/no credit" so everyone can feel good about themselves. I see the movie "Idocracy" looming in our future if we make these kind of decisions. That is scary.
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    The biggest problem with this, is it sets students up for failure later on in life. Part of education is also life application and readiness. If a student who performs badly never "fails" then said student will have a skewes perception of how life works, that will have devestating effects later on lin life.
anonymous

Literary classics shelved for writing - SignOnSanDiego.com - 1 views

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    Teach rhetoric and banish the classics from HS English classes? What do you think?
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    This is the Expository Reading and Writing Course that many of us are adopting. It actually doesn't have to be an either/or. Yes there is less literature and more expository writing; however, most of us also incorporate some literature. I teach Things Fall Apart in a Socratic Seminar format, Macbeth in a more traditional format, and some poetry. The modules from the Expository Reading and Writing Binder are open-ended and need some updating, but they give students an excellent variety of college-like readings and writing instruction. Students learn to critically read passages and interpret their own thinking in writing. The writing instruction is key and not as well defined as the reading instruction in the modules. Teachers need to creatively design the lessons to prepare students to write argument with ease.
Linda Garcia

The Answer Sheet - What 'Superman' got wrong, point by point - 6 views

  • Promise Academy is in many ways an excellent school, but it is dishonest for the filmmakers to say nothing about the funds it took to create it and the extensive social supports including free medical care and counseling provided by the zone
  • Two-thirds of Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone funding comes from private sources
  • In New Jersey, where court decisions mandated similar programs, such as high quality pre-kindergarten classes and extended school days and social services in the poorest urban districts, achievement and graduation rates increased while gaps started to close. But public funding for those programs is now being cut and progress is being eroded.
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  • Most test score differences stubbornly continue to reflect parental income and neighborhood/zip codes, not what schools do. As opportunity, health and family wealth increase, so do test scores.
  • they reduce teachers to test-prep clerks, ignore important subject areas and critical thinking skills
  • But schools and teachers take the blame for huge social inequities in housing, health care, and income.
  • Unions have historically played leading roles in improving public education, and most nations with strong public educational systems have strong teacher unions.
  • The movie touts the benefits of fast track and direct entry to teaching programs such as Teach for America, but the country with the highest achieving students, Finland, also has highly educated teachers.
  • Charters were first proposed by the teachers’ unions to allow committed parents and teachers to create schools that were free of administrative bureaucracy and open to experimentation and innovation, and some excellent charters have set examples. But thousands of hustlers and snake oil salesmen have also jumped in.
  • And the Education Report, "The Evaluation of Charter School Impacts, concludes, “On average, charter middle schools that hold lotteries are neither more nor less successful than traditional public schools in improving student achievement, behavior, and school progress.”
  • The Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University, concludes that only 17% of charter schools have better test scores than traditional public schools, 46% had gains that were no different than their public counterparts, and 37% were significantly worse. While a better measure of school success is needed
  • While a better measure of school success is needed
  • While a better measure of school success is needed
  • It is not a sustainable public policy to allow more and more public school funding to be diverted to privately subsidized charters while public schools become the schools of last resort for children with the greatest educational needs.
  • In spite of the many millions of dollars poured into expounding the theory of paying teachers for higher student test scores (sometimes mislabeled as ‘merit pay’), a new study by Vanderbilt University’s National Center on Performance Incentives found that the use of merit pay for teachers in the Nashville school district produced no difference even according to their measure, test outcomes for students.
  • approximately a third of America’s new teachers leave teaching sometime during their first three years of teaching; almost half leave during the first five years.
  • many of the top students have been lured to careers in finance and consulting.” It’s the market, and the disproportionately high salaries paid to finance specialists, that is misdirecting human resources, not schools.
  • They ignore the social construction of knowledge, the difference between deep learning and rote memorization.
  • This is a common theme of the so-called reformers: We are at war with India and China and we have to out-math them and crush them so that we can remain rich and they can stay in the sweatshops. But really, who declared this war? When did I as a teacher sign up as an officer in this war? And when did that 4th grade girl become a soldier in it? Instead of this new educational Cold War, perhaps we should be helping kids imagine a world of global cooperation, sustainable economies, and equity.
  • So the outcome of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top has been more funding for schools that are doing well and more discipline and narrow test-preparation for the poorest schools.
  • Waiting for Superman has ignored deep historical and systemic problems in education such as segregation, property-tax based funding formulas, centralized textbook production, lack of local autonomy and shared governance, de-professionalization, inadequate special education supports, differential discipline patterns, and the list goes on and on.
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    This post corrects the misinformation in Waiting for Superman.
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    This is a good read. I don't know if its only me but "documentary" somehow implicitly means "true story". There really ought to be some sort of rating system, like G-NC17, for the accuracy of a documentary so the public doesn't buy the misinformation.
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    This is article is particularly helpful for me since my essay is on charter schools. I found this read interesting because it hihglights the areas in education which charter schools seem to be disregarding.
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    I love the criticism if offers on the poster/ text alone. Many professors in the credential program are irate over the film and it's nice to see point-by-point what is wrong with the "documentary." I just love this article in general. It helps to be able to combat certain statistics in conversation too :)
Michelle Arce

Making Schools Work with Hedrick Smith . School-By-School Reform . Scripted Lessons | PBS - 4 views

  • proven methods
    • Ashley Muniz
       
      I wish the article was more specific about what the "proven methods" are
  • As an experienced teacher she found the process of adopting her district’s program “humiliating and demeaning.”
    • Michelle Arce
       
      I totally understand why experienced teachers may feel this way. HOWEVER, this is a way for our school system to make sure that teachers are at least addressing the correct material in class.
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    This article is about scripted lessons and teachers reactions to them
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    I can see how failing inner city schools, with students in the absolute worst conditions, might benefit from a scripted program. I don't agree that it's right, but I can see how one might justify the implementation of such a method when all else seems to have failed. I cringed at the end of the article when the teacher said that the scripted program "allowed for alittle bit of personality" on the teacher's part to show through... A LITTLE BIT?! Isn't the personality of the teacher that acts as an example for the students? isn't it the personality of the teacher that students "judge" right off the bat, sometimes effecting how much they choose to learn and participate in that particular class? I can't believe people actually believe our whole nation, which is SUPPOSED to be a diverse melting pot of people and experience, should adopt this rigid and inflexible curriculum method.
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    I agree that direct instruction may help some students but I feel like a scripted lesson denies the individuality of the students and the teacher. These types of lessons tell you how to conduct the lesson word for word as well as how to answer students' questions. I feel like this takes all creativity out of teaching and turns the teacher into a robot. These systems are also meant to "teacher-proof" the classroom so that even bad teacher can "teach" as long as they know how to read.
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    Wow and the scripted curriculum even tells the teacher how to answer questions?! If school, especially high school, is supposed to reflect a small scale-real world for students then what kind of message are we sending when we ("we" being teachers) are told how to do everything by a higher power; that we're all more successful if we do everything exactly the same all the time? So much for the development of critical literacy.
ameia sarkisian

ALA | Banned and/or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novel... - 3 views

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    This isn't really an article, but I thought the website might come in handy for people other than myself. Skim some of the reasons why these books are banned form their respective schools...
anonymous

Education Week: Schooling as a Knowledge Profession - 0 views

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    "At the cutting edge is New York City, which, under former Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, sought to disrupt the usual hierarchies and create "inquiry teams" within schools to investigate problems of practice. These inquiry teams, for example, identify struggling students within a school, use data to analyze why these students are struggling, and craft an intervention for them with the hope that this work can be a building block for schoolwide improvement. What's distinctive about this model is its emphasis on seeing schools less as implementers of programs from above, and more as coherent learning and problem-solving organizations that analyze and address problems of practice."
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    Important article about education reform.
anonymous

An Annotated Bibliography for Elizabeth Birr Moje - National Writing Project - 0 views

shared by anonymous on 07 Jun 10 - Cached
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    Expert on content area literacy
Benjamin Caulder

Culturally Relevant Teaching by James C Jupp - 0 views

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    I am reading this in my CI 151 class. An actual teacher who is concerned with student voice and making his class relevant to his students. Good description of his classroom and 'success' story.
anonymous

Voki Home - 0 views

shared by anonymous on 13 Sep 10 - Cached
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    An online service to record voice.
anonymous

Using VoiceThread to Give Students a Voice Outside the Classroom - ProfHacker - The Chr... - 0 views

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    Innovative ways to give students an online voice
Mallorie Fagundes

Effects of the California High School Exit Exam - 3 views

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    "Sean Reardon and Michal Kurlaender summarize the findings from a study investigating the impact of the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) on California's lowest performing students. [...] They found that the CAHSEE requirement has had no positive efects on students' academic skills" (quoted from the abstract).
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    Wow. This is an interesting read. I'm thinking about writing my research paper about the CAHSEE, so, thank you for this find!
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    It was very interesting. I am writing mine on CAHSEE as well; maybe you and I can get together and discuss what we find. I was expecting to find positive articles for the CAHSEE possibly explaining why it is necessary, but I mostly found articles that rebut the CAHSEE.
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    Yeah, same here. I just posted a website that shows the stats of the CAHSEE and how students have been doing on them since 2004. For every ethnicity, percentages have gone up every year since 04. Though it doesn't have anything to do with how effective the CAHSEE is in regard to literacy, it's still interesting to see. I'm sure there's a relationship with the improving scores and how the curriculum keeps changing in classrooms in order to focus on getting higher CAHSEE scores.
Mallorie Fagundes

Predicting Success, Preventing Failure: An Investigation of the CAHSEE - 1 views

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    Describes the pros and cons of the CAHSEE; explores the curriculum and how to teach students so that they have a better chance to pass.
Stephanie Flores

Tenure Protects Good Teachers, Too - 1 views

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    This article is a little older but I felt the experience was important. Dirk Koorstra explains his experience as an educator and how teacher tenure has protected him in difficult processes.
Shannon George

Teachers agree: Bad teachers with tenure too tough to fire - USATODAY.com - 6 views

    • Anthony Logan
       
      Are the lack of evaluations to blame for ineffective teachers getting tenured status?  If so, what can we do to fix it? 
    • Benjamin Caulder
       
      I don't have evidence to back this up as it was from the mouth of one of my credential program profs. but what he said was that for the first couple of years teachers have to play a political game to make sure they get tenure then once they have it, its a different game they play with the school and the union. Not all "bad" teachers are really "bad" teachers, but for those that really are my prof. argued that the system works if the admin is actually willing to follow through to the end, which can be as long as 2 years. Most admins aren't willing. Sorry I can't provide evidence to back that up.
    • ameia sarkisian
       
      Yeah, that's really sad that administrators aren't willing to go through the process, however long and arduous it may be, to make the learning environment a better place.
    • Michael Horder
       
      I have heard that as well, Ben. Admins rarely put in the effort to reprimand teachers. The teacher's union protects all teachers, good or bad. Admins are afraid to go up against the union because they have so much power. I think teacher's union might be the problem with the whole tenure thing. Another interesting note. If you look at the leadership of teacher's unions i.e. the reps. They are some of the "bad" teachers. I know this is true in Madera, and I have been told the same thing occurs in other districts. I find that fascinating. Bad teachers protecting bad teachers. Hhhmmm. Bad system maybe?
  • Tenure provides teachers with job security and generally is awarded a few years after educators enter the profession
    • Shannon George
       
      Sadly, tenure is being mis-used. The original intention of tenure was for teachers to have due-process if they were being fired; it was an effort to help. Now it has turned into a "job for life," and many districts have to treat it like that or they will have to pay big money to the Unions.
    • Ryan Williams
       
      yeah I have read this statement time and time again. I guess it would make a huge difference to students and the administrations if the tenure teachers were ineffective, but I just don't see a negative trend among teachers that have earned their tenure. I have had quite a few tenure teachers at Fresno State and they are not all old burned out senile geezers that need to be fired.
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    Tenured teachers are hard to get rid of, even other teachers acknowledge this.
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    There is a section towards the middle of this article where they talk about principals not wanting to "deal with" the ensuing process after they discover a less-than-effective tenure teacher... I find that to be kind of a scary thought... The PRINCIPALS, the administration in charge of ensuring the best for our students, don't want to deal with the problems that they were hired to face if necessary?! I think that evaluating the teachers and giving them feedback is important for the teachers (especially the "bad" ones) but what happens when the people in charge of evaluating them feel like it''s "pointless?"
Shannon George

A Brief History of Tenure - TIME - 1 views

  • The problem with tenure, Rhee and other critics say, is that it inadvertently protects incompetent teachers from being fired.
  • Each state has its own stories: A Connecticut teacher received a mere 30-day suspension for helping students cheat on a standardized test; one California school board spent $8,000 to fire an instructor who preferred using R-rated movies instead of books; a Florida teacher remained in the classroom for a year despite incidents in which she threw books at her students and demanded they referred to her as "Ms. God."
  • And despite more than a century of social progress, the need to protect teachers from the whims (or the tyranny) of the community remains as important as ever
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    The article includes the ways in which teacher tenure began, as well as a brief synopsis about the conversation it enters.
Michael Horder

Learning & Leading with Technology - 1 views

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    I have not fully explored this but it seems to be an online magazine devoted to using Tech in classrooms. It some sort of Magazine. Some really good articles in each issue.
ameia sarkisian

District Selection Policies - Recommended Literature (K-12) (CA Dept of Education) - 4 views

  • If a book is challenged, does the person who raises the issue have an opportunity to talk with the teacher or teacher librarian informally before any further steps are taken?
Ryan Williams

Predictive Validity of an English Language Arts Performance Assessment. CRESST Report 729 - 0 views

This article describes how the CAHSEE tests students too late and that there should be more CAHSEE like tests applied to students before they reach the 10th grade.

http:__www.ppic.org.login.hmlproxy.lib.csufresno.edu_content_pubs_report_R_608AZR.pdf

started by Ryan Williams on 15 Nov 10 no follow-up yet
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