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Deron Durflinger

Niall Ferguson: How American Civilization Can Avoid Collapse - The Daily Beast - 0 views

www.thedailybeast.com/...zation-can-avoid-collapse.html

History collapse ferguson america US education skills pay vanmeter van meter

shared by Deron Durflinger on 03 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • The Work Ethic
    • Deron Durflinger
      Deron Durflinger on 03 Nov 11
       
      This is the one I feel has lost the most traction at many levels. For sure not just with our students either.
  • these killer apps were essentially monopolized by Europeans and their cousins who settled in North America and Australasia
  • the great divergence
  • ...23 more annotations...
  • They also grew more powerful
  • 20th century, just a dozen Western empires—-including the United States—controlled 58 percent of the world’s land surface and population, and a staggering 74 percent of the global economy.
  • tendency of Western societies to delete their own killer apps.
  • But there is a second, more insidious cause of the “great reconvergence,” which I do deplore—and that is the
  • Ask yourself: who’s got the work ethic now? The average South Korean works about 39 percent more hours per week than the average American. The school year in South Korea is 220 days long, compared with 180 days here. And you don’t have to spend too long at any major U.S. university to know which students really drive themselves: the Asians and Asian-Americans
  • Yet life expectancy in the U.S. has risen from 70 to 78 in the past 50 years, compared with leaps from 68 to 83 in Japan and from 43 to 73 in China.
  • On no fewer than 15 of 16 different issues relating to property rights and governance, the United States fares worse than Hong Kong. Indeed, the U.S. makes the global top 20 in only one area: investor protection
  • The future belongs not to them but to today’s teenagers
  • The latest data on “mathematical literacy” reveal that the gap between the world leaders—the students of Shanghai and Singapore—and their American counterparts is now as big as the gap between U.S. kids and teenagers in Albania and Tunisia.
  • Yet statistics from the World Intellectual Property Organization show that already more patents originate in Japan than in the U.S., that South Korea overtook Germany to take third place in 2005, and that China is poised to overtake Germany too
  • the United States’ average competitiveness score has fallen from 5.82 to 5.43, one of the steepest declines among developed economies. China’s score, meanwhile, has leapt up from 4.29 to 4.90.
  • Perhaps more disturbing is the decline of meaningful competition at home, as the social mobility of the postwar era has given way to an extraordinary social polarization. You don’t have to be an Occupy Wall Street leftist to believe that the American super-rich elite—the 1 percent that collects 20 percent of the income—has become dangerously divorced from the rest of society, especially from the underclass at the bottom of the income distribution.
  • Far more than in Europe, most Americans remain instinctively loyal to the killer applications of Western ascendancy, from competition all the way through to the work ethic. They know the country has the right software. They just can’t understand why it’s running so damn slowly.
  • What we need to do is to delete the viruses that have crept into our system: the anticompetitive quasi monopolies that blight everything from banking to public education; the politically correct pseudosciences and soft subjects that deflect good students away from hard science; the lobbyists who subvert the rule of law for the sake of the special interests they represent—to say nothing of our crazily dysfunctional system of health care, our overleveraged personal finances, and our newfound unemployment ethic
  • And finally we need to reboot our whole system.
  • If what we are risking is not decline but downright collapse, then the time frame may be even tighter than one election cycle
  • Western Civilization's Killer Apps
  • COMPETITION
  • THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
  • THE RULE OF LAW
  • MODERN MEDICINE
  • THE CONSUMER SOCIETY
  • THE WORK ETHIC
Deron Durflinger

Educational Insights From Shanghai - Top Performers - Education Week - 0 views

blogs.edweek.org/...what_we_saw_in_shanghai.html

insights shanghai performers meter van innovative effectiveness learning vanmeter transformation

shared by Deron Durflinger on 05 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • he schools were joyous places.  This, he said, seemed to be the foundation for everything else he observed
  • ecause the lessons were beautifully crafted, clearly designed to be as engaging as possible. 
  • were lined with other teachers who were collaborating in the design of these lessons.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • worked together over months to build the most effective lessons they could, critiquing each version, adding new ideas, testing them out, until the whole group was satisfied that the lesson was as good as it could be.
  • ratio between prep time and teaching time in the Shanghai schools we visited.  In the U.S., she said, teachers typically have one hour to prepare for five classes.  In the Shanghai schools, they have four hours to prepare for two hours of teaching. This, she said, makes all the difference.  Teachers can use this time to collaborate with other teachers to craft great lessons, to talk with other teachers about particular students' learning needs and how they might work together to address them, or to do the research needed to get ready to do another improvement project. 
  • All teachers are expected to do it, and getting good at is it one of the criteria for moving up the career ladder
  • hat fascinated our team was the way teachers were expected to write short papers about the research they had done and to publish these research papers in a range of juried journals, some published by universities.
  • Of course they did not do well this way.  How could they do well in language and mathematics without a balanced curriculum, without a faculty that showed that they loved them, without music, art and PE?
  • his whole enormous system was on pretty much the same page for the same reasons, not because they had been told to do something in particular, but because the discussions they had been involved in had led them to the same conclusions about the goals and the most effective ways to achieve the
  • One was the clarity of the system's curriculum expectations.  There is a core curriculum that accounts for about 70 percent of the available time that is required for all students. The courses are spelled out and the system approves the textbooks that will be used. 
  • hat it had clearly been honed and then honed again to remove everything that was not essential and to give the connections in the logic of the instruction an air of inevitability that seemed, as he put it, simply elegant.
  • he common thread, he said, was the way teachers were treated, in every way, as professionals.
  • The Shanghai Municipal Education Commission clearly views its teachers, not university researchers, as the main drivers of improvements in student performance. 
  • teachers talked about the importance of constantly getting better, which meant improving their own skills and improving the curriculum and instruction and therefore improving student performance.  Like doctors, engineers and attorneys in the United States, they saw keeping up with the latest developments in their field and changing their practice in the light of those advancements as a core part of their responsibility.  That is why professional development and school improvement are thought of as synonymous by Shanghai officials. 
  • hey accepted the idea that they were not functioning autonomously in their classrooms, but accountable to their peers and colleagues for the quality of their own work and for their contribution to the common enterprise.   These are all hallmarks of a true profession. 
Deron Durflinger

Education Week: Lectures Are Homework in Schools Following Khan Academy Lead - 0 views

www.edweek.org/...05khan_ep.h31.html

flipped khan academy education homework schools meter van vanmeter changes redesign

shared by Deron Durflinger on 28 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • It’s not just about the kids watching the same lecture the night before. For us, the big piece is having teachers use data to make instructional decisions about their students,
    • Deron Durflinger
      Deron Durflinger on 28 Sep 11
       
      The most important part of the article. It is about using the data to make quality instructional decisions.
  • Students worked through those initial units quickly, but she could see when they hit their “pain points”—sometimes on material covered several grades earlier. The Los Altos Pilot Administrators, teachers, and students in Los Altos School District share their experiences with Khan Academy. Source: The Khan Academy Administrators Teachers Students “In order for me to get that kind of understanding of a student, I would have had to sit down one-on-one and work through problems and see a pattern, which I’m happy to do, but it takes a lot of time,” Ms. Caldwell said. “This confirmed my suspicions and allowed me to remediate much more quickly.”
  • “I was able to identify those learning gaps in real time, whether it was from 3rd or 4th or 5th grade, and I was able to remediate and saw those learning gaps begin to disappear
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  • For example, in one small-scale experiment at Alhambra High School in Martinez, Calif., Mr. Smith found that students in a computer-aided-design class whose teacher incorporated digital lessons for use at home performed better on a post-test than did students using the standard textbook and lecture.
  • Dr. Kramer’s colleague John Willis, who teaches freshman physics at Gwinnett, a 705-student district-run charter school, had just started to experiment with requiring students, two or three times a week, to view his recorded lectures and other materials online before class. He used short automatic-response quizzes at the start of each class to make sure students had seen the material; he then used the class time to dig into demonstrations and experiments
  • Mr. Willis said that what used to be a two-class-period process to set the groundwork for a laboratory assignment has been moved online—mostly with student-made videos explaining the setup procedures and hypothesis planning.
  • “It allows me to improve the connections I’m making with students, because now I can get into the material in a deeper way,” Mr. Willis said.
  • For a recent experiment using microscopes, Dr. Kramer and another biology teacher posted YouTube videos of scientists discussing the equipment, photos of the school’s microscopes for the students to label, and their own videos explaining common problems in setting up the experiment.
  • It basically led us to a set of conclusions without him telling us the conclusions,” Ms. Doksansky said. “We had to test it out on this little applet and figure it out. It was a much better explanation than the really boring one in the book.
  • because the flipped-classroom format requires students to commit to doing a lot more work on their own
  • For Gwinnett’s Mr. Burmester, the proof will be in classroom practice. “The critical thing about all this [technology] is, what are you going to do differently, based on it?” he said. “Without a change, it’s just more stuff.
    • Deron Durflinger
      Deron Durflinger on 28 Sep 11
       
      Well said!
Deron Durflinger

Educational Leadership:Coaching: The New Leadership Skill:Every Teacher a Coach - 0 views

www.ascd.org/...Every-Teacher-a-Coach.aspx

leadership coaching teacher coach learning education meter van vanmeter

shared by Deron Durflinger on 21 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Great coaches ask young athletes to go to "great heights" to challenge themselves. They take care to prepare the athlete for each stage of development, but they cannot eradicate risk because it's inseparable from growth. They can, however, intervene to ensure that the risk isn't so great that it outweighs the reward of accomplishment
  • The best coaches encourage young people to work hard, keep going when it would be easier to stop, risk making potentially painful errors, try again when they stumble, and learn to love the sport. Not a bad analogy for a dynamic classroom.
  • passionate about their sport and understand it deeply
  • ...28 more annotations...
  • see their sport as more than a game
  • vehicle for developing human capacity and learning the skills of life
  • Great Coaches Know Their Sport
  • Great Coaches Develop Players' Skills
  • their capacity to teach others to play the game
  • transmit their own knowledge and skill to those not yet proficient
  • believe that each athlete can learn to play the game
  • individual and team skills, they continually attend to the growth patterns of each team member as well as the group
  • have their eye on every kid, not just a favored few
  • analyze what the athletes do and adjust both training and the game plan as a result of what they see
  • precise feedback along with individualized training that enables athletes to use this feedback productively
  • provide high-quality practice
  • Turns out he was teaching me to be a good citizen, a human being who cares
  • Great Coaches Are Great Motivators
  • set clear and demanding performance goals for their players
  • high expectations elicit maximum effort from team members and result in maximum growth.
  • understand and appreciate human variance
  • tailor practice drills to the individual, but they also know that individuals are motivated in different ways
  • study their players to figure out what will encourage each one to persevere
  • realize that sideline drills are less motivating than the game itself, so they ensure that players grasp the link between drills and the game and that everyone gets to play the game to test their developing skills
  • fun into hard work
  • culture of success is more motivating than a culture of winning
  • invest more heavily in celebrating the more attainable goal of individual growth
  • Great Coaches Are Team Builders
  • orient everyone to a common vision
  • care for one another and play to one another's strengths
  • respectfully toward each athlete, they inspire respect among team members
  • address interpersonal problems on a team as vigorously as problems with skills execution or a game pla
Deron Durflinger

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success - Anu Partanen - National -... - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...250564

finland Education edreform reform transformation van meter vanmeter jason glass learning

shared by Deron Durflinger on 30 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Instead, the public school system's teachers are trained to assess children in classrooms using independent tests they create themselves. All children receive a report card at the end of each semester, but these reports are based on individualized grading by each teacher.
  • There's no word for accountability in Finnish,"
  • "Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted."
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  • what matters is that in Finland all teachers and administrators are given prestige, decent pay, and a lot of responsibility.
  • If a teacher is bad, it is the principal's responsibility to notice and deal with it.
  • And while Americans love to talk about competition, Sahlberg points out that nothing makes Finns more uncomfortable
  • There are no lists of best schools or teachers in Finland. The main driver of education policy is not competition between teachers and between schools, but cooperation.
  • school choice is noticeably not a priority, nor is engaging the private sector at all.
  • In Finland parents can also choose. But the options are all the same."
  • It was equity
  • the main driver of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location. Education has been seen first and foremost not as a way to produce star performers, but as an instrument to even out social inequality.
  • schools should be healthy, safe environments for children. This starts with the basics. Finland offers all pupils free school meals, easy access to health care, psychological counseling, and individualized student guidance.
  • Educational policy, Abrams suggests, is probably more important to the success of a country's school system than the nation's size or ethnic makeup.
  • When Finnish policymakers decided to reform the country's education system in the 1970s, they did so because they realized that to be competitive, Finland couldn't rely on manufacturing or its scant natural resources and instead had to invest in a knowledge-based economy. 
  • is to preserve American competitiveness by doing the same thing. Finland's experience suggests that to win at that game, a country has to prepare not just some of its population well, but all of its population well, for the new economy. To possess some of the best schools in the world might still not be good enough if there are children being left behind
  • Finland's dream was that we want to have a good public education for every child regardless of where they go to school or what kind of families they come from, and many even in Finland said it couldn't be done."
  • Finland's experience shows that it is possible to achieve excellence by focusing not on competition, but on cooperation, and not on choice, but on equity.
  • The problem facing education in America isn't the ethnic diversity of the population but the economic inequality of society, and this is precisely the problem that Finnish education reform addressed. More equity at home might just be what America needs to be more competitive abroad.
Deron Durflinger

Education Week: Building the Digital District - 0 views

www.edweek.org/...01conversion.h05.html

redesign learning education learn vanmeter meter van 1:1 one to transformation technology

shared by Deron Durflinger on 19 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • I think a lot of his decisions are based on leadership,” Smith says of Edwards and his management. “You’ve got to have the right people on the bus, but not only that, they’ve got to be on the right seats on the bus.
  • instead, it tells teachers to seek their own content and align it to the subject curriculum
  • Teachers are expected to share lessons with colleagues electronically via ANGEL, the district’s content-management software, created by Washington-based Blackboard Inc., and all four schools in the district’s 1-to-1 program each employs a technology facilitator to aid that process. The district’s three elementary schools only began distributing laptops to its third graders this year.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • I would say the biggest challenge teachers have is the lack of time
  • It’s a constant challenge for teachers to go out and to find new innovative resources and what actually matches the new curriculum they need
  • going back is not really an option.”
  • acknowledge that the district’s modest size was a key factor in helping it change its culture and improve its achievement so quickly
  • saying the digital-conversion model “may be the one last great hope for our nation.”
  • Colleagues insist any such effort in other districts must be led by a superintendent in the same mold. “He just doesn’t allow anybody around him to make excuses or build obstacles,” Principal Wirt of Mooresville High says of Edwards. “That’s not his ride at all.”
  • e did so bent on changing what he recalls as a “complacent” attitude among teachers and other staff members in a school where achievement data were average. As he walks the halls nearly four years later, he takes perhaps his greatest pride in seeing most of the same faces standing in classroom doorways
  • by all accounts Mooresville’s teachers were given little choice but to join a new culture where 6,000 district-issued laptops to students and staff served as the centerpiece of Superintendent Edwards’ educational improvement strategy
  • Similar compliance was also expected in accompanying changes to curriculum, teacher collaboration expectations, and even staff conduct, all of which began to be implemented in the fall of 2008
  • I think ‘expectation’ is the right word,
  • ‘Here is your laptop, and you will learn how to use it. You will make it an integral part of your classroom, and you will incorporate it into 21st-century teaching.’ ”
Deron Durflinger

The Internet will not ruin college - Salon.com - 0 views

www.salon.com/...internet_will_not_ruin_college

mooc education learning transformation reform meter van paradigm shift online learning online online education

shared by Deron Durflinger on 12 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • What happens to the people who make their livings from teaching, when their jobs are replaced by online courses available for free? All we need is one superb remedial algebra course that can be effectively delivered online and, theoretically, the demand for a zillion remedial algebra courses taught at a zillion community colleges suddenly drops off a cliff. Ask the music business what happens when you can get good stuff for free instead of paying for crap. Daily newspaper journalists learned a similar lesson all too well over the past two decades. The Associated Press business model — licensing the same story to multiple outlets, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense once a single news outlet puts that AP story online for free.
  • My own daughter is a freshman at a U.C. campus, and has already experienced lectures attended by more than 500 students with sections led by teaching assistants who are utterly uninterested in doing their job. For dollar paid, the value received is questionable, and whenever that kind of situation exists, the status quo is ripe for disruption. (It’s also worth noting, perhaps, that over 60,000 students applied for spots in a freshman class that ended up enrolling only 4,500 applicants, a sign, I think, that the brick-and-mortar university is in no imminent danger of going the way of the dinosaur.)
  • Education, I’d argue, has always been the most likely sector of society to get transformed by the Internet, because the thing the Internet does better than anything else is distribute information.
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  • ut how could anyone argue against the premise that our ability to educate ourselves, on just about any topic, has vastly expanded in tune with the maturation of a global network of computers?
  • kind of amazing that it’s taken this long to start figuring out how to offer truly high-quality college level courses over the Web — isn’t this exactly what the damn thing is for?
  • browsing some of the various course offerings available at edX and Udacity and Coursera, I had to restrain myself from suddenly diving into The Ancient Greek Hero, Professor Gregory Nagy’s spring 2013 edX offering that promises “to use the latest technology to help students engage with poetry, songs, and stories first composed more than two millennia ago.” It strikes me as a profound realization of the fundamental goal of the university — any university — that a course taught by an icon at one of the most elite institutions in the world would be accessible to me for just the cost of a few clicks.
  • But what’s absolutely clear is that a vast number of people can’t afford a good education, and many of those who are paying through the nose aren’t getting a good education, and that kind of situation provides a clear opportunity for the Internet to do what it does best: spread knowledge at low cost.
  • For years we’ve just been scratching at the surface of what the Net can deliver. Now we’re beginning to dig deep.
  • I barged into my son’s room on Wednesday afternoon to ask him when he wanted dinner, and discovered him watching a Khan Academy video to help with his chemistry homework. And I thought: that story I’ve been working on about the backlash against MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses)? Why am I even bothering? The war is already over. Debating the value of online education at the current moment in history makes about as much sense as questioning the tactics of the losing Roman generals in the great third century B.C. battle of Cannae. Perhaps of some interest to academics, but moot. Hannibal kicked ass. End of story.
  • he tidal wave is already here
  • utting their teeth on Khan Academy videos for help with their chemistry and calculus homework will grow up correctly assuming that there will always be low-cost or free educational opportunities available to them online in virtually any field of inquiry.
    • Deron Durflinger
      Deron Durflinger on 12 Feb 13
       
      How do these changes in how the internet is being used impact K-12?
Deron Durflinger

What Does It Mean to Be a "Change Leader" in Education? - 0 views

getideas.org/...e-a-change-leader-in-education

change leader 21stcenturylearning transformation vanmeter learning education van meter #edchat Competency-Based blended

shared by Deron Durflinger on 16 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • First, successful change leaders clearly articulate the need for change to a variety of audiences in ways that are intellectually coherent and emotionally compelling. The ability to do this requires that change leaders immerse themselves into radically different worlds
  • nderstand deeply is the world for which they are preparing their students
  • what skills, what habits of mind, and what dispositions
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • ommoditization of knowledg
  • how much students know, but rather what they can do with what they know
  • second world effective change leaders understand is the world of students
  • the importance of students’ intrinsic motivation for learning and achievement. Finally, they seek out and listen carefully to students to better understand their classroom and school experiences.
  • They engage them in adult learning about a changing world and how students learn best
  • adults in the community also deeply understand the need for change, and so these leaders sponsor readings, talks by local experts, and discussions
  • The best change leaders I know bring their understanding of these two worlds into the classroom every single day
  • know what good teaching looks like, and they are relentless in their expectations. They understand that their job is, first and foremost, to be an instructional leader and coach.
  • “isolation is the enemy of improvement,”
  • Teachers must be given the working conditions that will enable them to improve and to be successful. They need time to learn and to collaborate
  • Finland, which has the highest-performing education system in the world, teachers spend an average of only 600 hours a year in the classroom teaching lessons; in the US, the number is closer to eleven hundred hours.
  • Finally, the most effective change leaders I know take calculated risks
  • Managers do not take risks. Leaders do
  • They model the behaviors of learning, collaboration, effective teaching, and risk taking that they expect of their teachers.
    • Deron Durflinger
      Deron Durflinger on 16 Jan 13
       
      What can I do to improve my leadership skills?
Deron Durflinger

Iowa universities adjust to burst of interest in online learning | The Des Moines Regis... - 0 views

www.desmoinesregister.com/...burst-interest-online-learning

online online learning Competency-Based individual education 1:1 learning meter van

shared by Deron Durflinger on 30 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • “I work almost full time while getting my master’s degree,” he said. “As an undergraduate, it allowed me a better balance between school, my work and my social life.”
  • online courses are a cost-effective way for universities to meet increased demand while coping with steep reductions in state funding in recent years, administrators say.
  • The number of online courses offered at Iowa’s three public universities has grown by nearly 25 percent from 2005-06 to 2010-11, data from the Iowa state Board of Regents show.
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  • Last year, Iowa’s universities launched an effort to share language courses online. The first was in classic Greek, which an ISU student took from a U of I professor in Iowa City. This year, three ISU students enrolled in classic Greek. The universities may expand to Arabic or Chinese, officials said.
  • “the octopus room.” The classroom’s brain is a motion-sensing camera that follows an instructor around the room. Microphones triangulate the location of a voice so that the camera can focus on the person speaking. Six black arms with video monitors are attached to the “brain” in the center. This allows students in the class and those taking it online to see and hear each other.
  • They do a very good job of simulating the classroom experience,” he said. “But you have to have the discipline to stay up with it. If you get a week or so behind, it’s hard to catch up
  • blend of in-person and online instruction. Students taking finals at the U of I’s secure testing rooms, for example, might be enrolled in a daily Spanish language course where two days of class every week are completed online. That allows the instructor to focus classroom time on refining conversation and reading skills, faculty said.
  • “Part of that land-grant mission is educating the masses, and the masses have changed.”
  • Offering experienced faculty teachers and classroom space filled with well-equipped laboratories is a key way for Iowa’s universities to differentiate themselves from online-only colleges, officials said.
  • However, disciplines that don’t require physical space may one day be based mostly or entirely online, said Marcus Haack, a U of I professor who teaches future principals and superintendents in an education leadership program that many participants take online.
  • In 40 years in this business, I’ve learned we will never put the brakes on technology. It’s always going to expand our opportunities, our thinking and creativity
    • Deron Durflinger
      Deron Durflinger on 30 Apr 12
       
      How can we channel the power of this learning/teaching style at Van Meter?
Deron Durflinger

The Five Dimensions of Learning-Agile Leaders - Forbes - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...ions-of-learning-agile-leaders

cpchat leadership learning flipping classroom transformation Competency-Based pd professional development student centered competency based

shared by Deron Durflinger on 10 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • At the same time, we need to have the confidence to make decisions on the spot, even in the absence of compelling, complete data.  The qualities needed at the top—openness, authentic listening, adaptability—also indicate that leaders need to be comfortable with and able to embrace the “grayness” that comes from other people’s ideas or situations that arise.
  • Learning Agility is a reliable indicator of leadership potential because learning agile people “excel at absorbing information from their experience and then extrapolating from those to navigate unfamiliar situations.
  • In short, Learning Agility is the ability to learn, adapt, and apply ourselves in constantly morphing conditions.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Problem Solvers; Thought Leaders; Trailblazers; Champions; Pillars; Diplomats; and Energizers. The researchers wrote: “People who are learning agile: Seek out experiences to learn from; enjoy complex problems and challenges associated with new experiences because they have an interest in making sense of them; perform better because they incorporate new skills into their repertoire. A person who is learning agile has more lessons, more tools, and more solutions to draw on when faced with new business challenges.” (Hallenbeck, Swisher, and Orr, July 2011)
  • Mental Agility
  • People Agility
  • Change Agility
  • Results Agility:
  • Self-Awareness
  • The world of leadership belongs to the most learning agile
  • To succeed in our volatile, complex, ambiguous world, we have no choice but to master our ability to adapt and learn.
Deron Durflinger

Are You Ready for Common Core Math? | District Administration Magazine - 0 views

www.districtadministration.com/...are-you-ready-common-core-math

administration district math sbar common core vanmeter

shared by Deron Durflinger on 02 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Sovde, a former mathematics teacher and principal in the Bellevue (Wash.) Public Schools, says one of the tests PARCC is developing is a diagnostic assessment for the start of the year. He declares about the optional test, “If I were a district administrator, I would be jumping all over it, because it’s going to give you a good handle right up front about where your kids are.” All the new assessments will measure the abilities of students to solve problems, think conceptually, reason mathematically, and demonstrate more skills than rote memorization. “That’s going to be a shift, a different way of doing business,” says Sovde. The final, end-of-year summative assessment will require students to use computers or handheld devices to solve problems or think about mathematical issues. “It won’t be just a paper-and-pencil test put on a screen,” Sovde explains.
  • SBAC will ask students tailored questions based on their previous answers. It will continue to use one end-of-year test for accountability purposes but will create a series of interim tests to inform students, parents and teachers about whether students are on track.
  • more deeply than assessments do now into what students are learning in math and how they are learning it. “I think we’ll see some questions that apply to real-world settings, and I wouldn’t be surprised if students have to describe in writing how they got an answer rather than just filling in a blank with it
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • questions students are asked will be delivered online and answered online instead of on paper.
  • The assessments will test students on practices such as making sense of problems, reasoning abstractly and quantitatively, constructing viable arguments and critiquing the reasoning of others, modeling with mathematics, using appropriate tools strategically, communicating precisely, and looking for and making use of structure.
  • “Students will be assessed on extended problem-solving and performance tasks and will need to show their reasoning
  • “need to help teachers implement the Standards for Mathematical Practice and connect them to math content. That is a big change for them.”
Deron Durflinger

MOOCs, Large Courses Open to All, Topple Campus Walls - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...o-all-topple-campus-walls.html

shared by Deron Durflinger on 06 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • “In a classroom, when you ask a question, one student answers and the others don’t get a chance,” Mr. Thrun said. “Online, with embedded quizzes, everyone has to try to answer the questions. And if they don’t understand, they can go back and listen over and over until they do.” Just as a child who falls while learning to ride a bike is not told “You get a D,” but is encouraged to keep trying, he said, online classes, where students can work at their own pace, can help students keep practicing until they master the content. “The goal should be to get everybody to A+ level,” he said
    • Deron Durflinger
      Deron Durflinger on 06 Mar 12
       
      Why is the concept of everyone learning at their own pace so difficult for people to understand? I like the learning how to ride a bike analogy!
  • “I wish that the always-available, always-replayable and free nature of this style of learning can help to elevate education/knowledge for all of human kind.”
    • Deron Durflinger
      Deron Durflinger on 06 Mar 12
       
      Learning for all...for free!
Deron Durflinger

Education Week: Measuring Teaching Effectiveness - 0 views

www.edweek.org/...19tyler.h29.html

evaluation education van meter

shared by Deron Durflinger on 26 Jan 10 - Cached
  • ects to identify valid indicators of excellent teaching. These projects are examining the technical quality of several existing assessment instruments, and piloting early versions of new tools, from classroom evaluation tools, to pedagogical content-knowledge tests, to surveys of student perceptions. The data gathered on these tools will be compared with evidence of student outcomes, and combinations of measures will be simulated to determine which “multiple measures” might work best.
  • ruments themselves or the means of collecting evidence. The quality must pervade how the measures are implemented, not just what measures are implemented.
  • ns that classroom observation will require a substantial effort to provide adequate training for those who will evaluate, rigorous requirements to show that evaluators are applying scoring criteria consistently, and monitoring or quality-checking of scorers to make sure those judgments stay on track over time and in different classrooms.
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  • The bottom line is that we must do the work needed to ensure that measures of effectiveness are fair, rigorous, valid, and defensible, and that they result in feedback that teachers can apply to their professional growth. We owe this to teachers, and we owe it to students. The issues are complex, but not unsolvable. This won’t take a decade, but will take two or three years.
Deron Durflinger

Barriers to competency-based innovation aren't just coming from above | Christensen Ins... - 0 views

www.christenseninstitute.org/n-arent-just-coming-from-above

barriers innovation coming institute cbg competency-based learning cbe vanmeter transformation van meter change

shared by Deron Durflinger on 08 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Districts’ and schools’ organizational structures and long standing policies built around traditional seat-time metrics may be inhibiting their ability to move toward competency-based models. For example, bell schedules, grading policies, academic department structures, fixed sense of course scope and sequence, and familiarity with whole-group instruction may all be exerting the tug of status quo bias. As such, transforming districts and schools to competency-based systems is not a simply policy change: it’s a fundamental reconfiguration of teams and structures inside schools, that allows for students to progress at their own pace and demonstrate mastery in a variety of ways. In New Hampshire’s example, for those schools that have yet to move to fully competency-based systems, getting unstuck from the organizational structures and processes that guide them appears just as potent a barrier to innovation in some schools as the state’s policies are a gateway to innovation.
    • Deron Durflinger
      Deron Durflinger on 08 Nov 13
       
      Sound familiar:)?
Deron Durflinger

Schools: The Disaster Movie - 0 views

nymag.com/print

learning transformation teaching teacher-pay finland vanmeter van meter

shared by Deron Durflinger on 06 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • Whereas the best public-school systems in the world—Finland, Singapore, South Korea—recruit all of their teachers from the top third or better of their college graduates, in America the majority come from the bottom two-thirds, with just 14 percent of those entering teaching each year in high-needs schools coming from the upper third. And the numbers may be getting worse. According to a recent survey conducted by McKinsey, a meager 9 percent of top-third graduates have any interest in teaching whatsoever.
    • Deron Durflinger
      Deron Durflinger on 06 Sep 10
       
      What needs to change to get more of the top-level college students interested in teaching?
  • teacher quality is a national priority: Educators are paid competitively; education schools are highly selective; jobs are guaranteed for those credentialed; and professional development is ample and subsidized.
    • Deron Durflinger
      Deron Durflinger on 06 Sep 10
       
      What are we doing at Van Meter to make these characteristics part of the culture?
  • “If you want to change public education, you have to do something that feels like a threat to the status quo,” says Canada. “If we don’t fight about this, if we can shake and be friends, we ain’t going to change. And if we don’t change, huge numbers of kids ain’t going to make it. There is no Superman coming to save them. All they have is us.”
Deron Durflinger

12 ways to keep your employees motivated, engaged and unified | SmartBlog on Leadership - 0 views

smartblogs.com/...-motivated-engaged-and-unified

leadership leader skills Vanmeter Meter Van

shared by Deron Durflinger on 19 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Clearly define your vision
  • when it’s clear and concise, post it in the places where employees can see important stuff like this.
  • Give employees what they want and need.
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • o check personally
  • Communicate often and well
  • ll of these should be used to convey the vision of the organization. Spend time personally asking your employees what they know and think
  • Get everyone engaged
  • empowerment, but that’s so yesterday
  • lots of ways to get employees at all levels engaged in planning and decision making
  • Stay the course
  • you have to adjust to and update for changing times,
  • Practice random acts of kindness
  • ust make whatever you do personal and from the heart
  • Coach for success
  • giving them clear feedback and showing them how to be better when needed is very motivating
  • daily, in real time, is always better.
  • Act fairly
  • when they’re not, you should use your wisdom, experience and good sense to do what’s right
  • and then do what’s right
  • Inspect what you expect
  • paying attention to them, discussing what you see, and letting them know what you think
  • Good bosses pay attention to everything and manage effectively
  • Give respect and create trust
  • Don’t be a jerk
  • You’ll be surprised how much employees appreciate the fact that you recognize your own mistakes
  • Make work fun
  • lighten up
Deron Durflinger

What if Finland's great teachers taught in U.S. schools? - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...u-s-schools-not-what-you-think

finland education teaching teacher evaluation edreform teachers teacher learning transformation reform vanmeter van meter

shared by Deron Durflinger on 22 May 13 - No Cached
  • The role of an individual teacher in a school is like a player on a football team: all teachers are vital, but the culture of the school is even more important for the quality of the school
  • If  a teacher was the most important single factor in improving quality of education, then the power of a school would indeed be stronger than children’s family background or peer influences in explaining student achievement in school.
  • Most scholars agree that effective leadership is among the most important characteristics of effective schools, equally important to effective teaching. Effective leadership includes leader qualities, such as being firm and purposeful, having shared vision and goals, promoting teamwork and collegiality and frequent personal monitoring and feedback. Several other characteristics of more effective schools include features that are also linked to the culture of the school and leadership: Maintaining focus on learning, producing a positive school climate, setting high expectations for all, developing staff skills, and involving parents. In other words, school leadership matters as much as teacher quality.
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  • It insists that schools should get rid of low-performing teachers and then only hire great ones. This fallacy has the most practical difficulties. The first one is about what it means to be a great teacher. Even if this were clear, it would be difficult to know exactly who is a great teacher at the time of recruitment. The second one is, that becoming a great teacher normally takes five to ten years of systematic practice. And determining the reliably of ‘effectiveness’ of any teacher would require at least five years of reliable data. This would be practically impossible.
  • But just having better teachers in schools will not automatically improve students’ learning outcomes.
  • First, standardization should focus more on teacher education and less on teaching and learning in schools
  • the toxic use of accountability for schools should be abandoned. Current practices in many countries that judge the quality of teachers by counting their students’ measured achievement only is in many ways inaccurate and unfair.
  • In Finland, half of surveyed teachers responded that they would consider leaving their job if their performance would be determined by their student’s standardized test results
  • Third, other school policies must be changed before teaching becomes attractive to more young talents. In many countries where teachers fight for their rights, their main demand is not more money but better working conditions in schools.
  • I argue that if there were any gains in student achievement they would be marginal. Why? Education policies in Indiana and many other states in the United States create a context for teaching that limits (Finnish) teachers to use their skills, wisdom and shared knowledge for the good of their students’ learning.
  • onversely, the teachers from Indiana working in Finland—assuming they showed up fluent in Finnish—stand to flourish on account of the freedom to teach without the constraints of standardized curricula and the pressure of standardized testing; strong leadership from principals who know the classroom from years of experience as teachers; a professional culture of collaboration; and support from homes unchallenged by poverty.
Deron Durflinger

Recipe for high-school success: be curious, work late, ignore the textbooks - The Globe... - 0 views

www.theglobeandmail.com/...article10781804

persistence transformation van meter vanmeter competency based global Education citizenship

shared by Deron Durflinger on 10 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • High-school textbooks are devices that regurgitate the universally accepted and least debated ideas from the field of science and technology, almost placing us in an isolated prism where we learn to accept knowledge.
  • our second biggest obstacle lies in the method of evaluation we have accepted to assess all students. I feel that much of our attention is channelized towards evaluating the amount of knowledge a student possesses. This focus would be better shifted if we start to question what the individual is able to do with their knowledge and to what extent they can they apply their learning toward writing textbooks of their own.
  • ack on the assembly line, our society didnʼt need innovators and thinkers shaping a shared vision for the field of their expertise. Now that weʼre getting trained for jobs which potentially donʼt exist today, itʼs crucial for educators to turn their attention to building the right aptitude just as much as they focus on instilling the informational aspects.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The important moral is to simply keep trying until you find a passion worth working long hours even over rough nights.
  • best goal a young high-school student can set is to gain a balance between a wide range of skill sets; any and all of the skills can help them succeed when they eventually find their niche.
Deron Durflinger

Cheating Students: How Our Schools Fail the Humanistic Vision of Education | The Humanist - 0 views

thehumanist.org/...humanistic-vision-of-education

sbg standards-based grading cbg learning competency-based cheating students schools vision education transformation

shared by Deron Durflinger on 01 May 13 - No Cached
  • agreed with him, and emphasized that my condemnation was not of cheating as an isolated problem, but rather as one of many symptoms of a system that throws learning under the bus and turns testing into a kind of religion. Instead of proving academic worth, grades too often just tell us who’s willing to hustle, who’s willing to cheat, who’s willing to pull an all-nighter in order to memorize atomized facts that are quickly forgotten. And what does this do for our moral education, our character?
  • ndeed, it’s essentially common knowledge that school isn’t fun. So why do we make kids attend? If it’s for the sake of learning, then the school mandate isn’t working. Learning is an organic, thought-provoking, individual and collaborative process that requires more than copying off of a classmate during a fill-in-the-blank assessment.
  • “If you can make a lot of money, do whatever you can to get it” and “It’s okay to cheat on your tax forms or induce a subprime mortgage meltdown if you can get rich and get away with it.” Look how much cheating has brought our economy to near ruin. To bring about a real change in the way we approach work and economic life, the nature of schooling must be drastically altered so as to make true learning the number one priority.
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  • he rampant cheating in high schools across the United States not only threatens intellectual honesty and integrity, but also the legitimacy of our economy and politics. The cheating epidemic reflects a bizarre and unhealthy obsession with testing and the obsolete industrial-era authoritarianism that takes the joy out of learning. But, ironically, so much group cheating shows us a way out by giving us a glimpse, although in a deformed version, of the cooperative modes of learning that could take over if we ever get beyond the prevalent use of standardized testing and competition-based grading.
Deron Durflinger

Seth's Blog: Back to (the wrong) school - 0 views

sethgodin.typepad.com/...back-to-the-wrong-school.html

K-12 education vanmeter van meter redesign transformation Godin schools edreform changes

shared by Deron Durflinger on 06 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • As we get ready for the 93rd year of universal public education, here’s the question every parent and taxpayer needs to wrestle with: Are we going to applaud, push or even permit our schools (including most of the private ones) to continue the safe but ultimately doomed strategy of churning out predictable, testable and mediocre factory-workers?
    • Deron Durflinger
      Deron Durflinger on 06 Sep 11
       
      What are you doing in your class today to get kids to think on their own?
    • Deron Durflinger
      Deron Durflinger on 06 Sep 11
       
      What are you doing in your class today to get kids to think on their own?
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