Group items tagged

This article deals with the issue of Literature canons, and how they are formed. Its kind of scary to see how the simple process of deciding what "literature" is in or out can distort one's perception of literature, as well as history.

Bilingual Education proves successful for some schools

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.

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.

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.

This article argues that charter schools as a whole are not performing any better than traditional public schools. The auhtor gives a list of five recommendations as to how to improve charter schools.

Evonne, I think it is so cool that you are doing your research paper on charter schools. I am taking another class with Kathee and we had a teacher come and talk to us about teaching at University High. What I gained from her presentation that there a lot of pros versus cons. I was totally considering teaching at a charter school after the presentation. Things seem so much easier than public schools, but that can be a myth. Let me know what you come up with. : )

An interesting article that discusses how to use technologies students have at home

Article outlining several ways to use technology in the classroom.

"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."

Important article about education reform.

Article about using a new Word Press application: Anthologize.

Article addressing a form of assessing teacher effectiveness that is becoming more widespread, but that is problematic.

This article discusses texts taught in English classrooms.

Marc Bernstein opposes teacher tenure and describes how the quality and effectiveness of educators is how administrators should determine its staff.

This article is more positive about value added measures of teacher performance than many other sources I've seen.

I'm not sure if this link will work...but here is a great article that dives deep into the relationship between passing standardized tests such as the CAHSEE and school conditions and quality.

Okay, I think the link works. Yay!

That is really interesting. The methodology they used it kind of confusing; I didnt realize they used logarithms for this kind of data. Either way, I think I can use the data to investigate if their is a racial bias with the test.

Tenured teachers are hard to get rid of, even other teachers acknowledge this.

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?"

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.

Interesting article about online classes--and making knowledge available to anyone who has a computer.

Banning books in the high school classroom... What constitutes a banned book? Who gets to decide what books are banned?

I read your article and it amazes me how many known books are now considered inappropriate to be taught in the classroom. I guess my question is when a book is too inappropriate to be taught. I am of course assuming the lower the grade of the students the more controversial it is to break away from the set course of what they should be reading. It is strange how some books are now considered inappropriate when in the past they would be held as literature and how some banned books are now appropriate. Also, are children now unable to read books that might not be appropriate simply because the parents believe it to be? Should students be restricted in what they read? I guess eventually the banned books list will continue to grow until most people are happy or they will make different version of "The Hungry Caterpillar". Oh also did you see the new banned book that just recently came out, "The Pedophile s Guide To Love and Pleasure A Child Lover". What are you views on this new addition to the banned books pile? Honestly I don't see how this book could be taught in school unless in Criminology class.

I'm very hesitant to ever say that a book should be banned. It goes against our most basic constitutional beliefs of freedom of expression, and it prompts the questions "who get to decide the criteria for a banned book?" and "how far are we willing to go with nixing books off the list just to please some people?" HOWEVER if ever there were a book that I would recommend be nixed, it would definitely be a book for teaching pedophiles how to best prey on children. That's just ridiculous. I don't think a book like that would ever be able to make it into any sort of a classroom curriculum.