John Oliver Explains Everything That's Wrong With Standardized Testing. There's one issue that has united parents, teachers and students alike in anger and outrage: standardized testing.
Living Behind the Gates. 'Colbert Report' Explains MOOCs. The Faulty Logic of the 'Math Wars' Common Core. Common Core - For. Common Core - Against. California to Give Web Courses a Big Trial. Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System. A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind.
It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success - Anu Partanen - National. The Scandinavian country is an education superpower because it values equality more than excellence.
Sergey Ivanov/Flickr Everyone agrees the United States needs to improve its education system dramatically, but how? What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success. Physicists Seek To Lose The Lecture As Teaching Tool : NPR. Free Online Education For All. Ed Dispatch: A Former TFA Teacher. Peg with Pen: A New Year's Resolution. Opt Out of State Testing. January 7th. United Opt Out National has declared January 7th to be National Opt Out Day. It is our goal that students, teachers and community members will express their dislike for corporate education reform and will use various means to demonstrate how they plan to OPT OUT.
M.I.T. Game-Changer: Free Online Education For All. When an adult took standardized tests forced on kids - The Answer Sheet. Update 12/12: QUIZ: Take part of the test that the local school board member took in the story below: Reading Quiz | Math Quiz.
Questions come from the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) for 10th grade. Update 12/6: Revealed: The school board member who took standardized test. Alma mater’s improvements knock me sideways. Among the cliques in our national education debate, I am considered part of the no-excuses crowd.
We are defined by our fondness for charter schools and the Teach for America organization, our belief that poor kids can learn as much as rich ones and our support for Obama administration policies that encourage rating teachers, at least in part, on student test scores. On the other side, as we see it, are the besieged leaders of the establishment: education schools, teachers unions, superintendents and school boards who think Obama has forgotten the need to educate the whole child and is going with anything that might raise proficiency rates. Will Arne Duncan's Education Reforms Get Left Behind? CLEVELAND -- On a recent Wednesday afternoon in the auditorium of Eastern Technical High School, where 1,000 people had come to hear him speak, Arne Duncan was stumped.
"What will the plan be in three years when the Race to the Top funding runs out? " Deontae Gresham, a high school senior, asked the usually well-prepared United States Secretary of Education. "Will there be a separate program or will it go back to the way it was? Meaning, will a young black male student like me ... with dysfunctional parents be left to make it on his own with no support? " he wondered, through a moderator. Where Does Disruption Begin? With Teachers Who Teach Teachers. Digital Tools Teaching Strategies Getty Disrupting the entrenched education system is daunting.
There are 7.2 million teachers in the U.S., 76 million students, and more than 98,000 public schools, according to a government census (as of 2008). It should be about the children. Today is August 6.
On the Christian calendar followed by Catholics and Orthodox and many Episcopalians, it is the Feast of the Transfiguration. Diane Ravitch: Standardized Testing Undermines Teaching. The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education By Diane RavitchHardcover, 296 pagesBasic BooksList price: $26.95 In the fall of 2007, I reluctantly decided to have my office repainted.
We must fire bad doctors - Topeka K-12. All the talk lately about health care warrants stepping out of topic briefly to discuss a national public health epidemic: obesity.
According to the Center for Disease Control, one third of American’s are obese. Furthermore, obesity is not an equal-opportunity affliction. Obesity is 21% more prevalent among Hispanics, and 51% more prevalent among Blacks. The surgeon general’s office indicates that people living in poverty are 50% more likely to be obese. Obesity is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, certain types of cancers, and type 2 diabetes. Fire doctors to cure obesity? Absurd! - Topeka K-12. By now you’ve read part one about America’s obesity epidemic, and how blame falls squarely on the shoulders of our nation’s incompetent, lazy doctors. If we fire them and start over, the health and vigor of our citizens will rise to Olympic proportions. Fire bad doctors, part 3: shooting the messenger - Topeka K-12. (Continued from part 2) In their relentless drive to prove how incompetent our teachers really are, Thomas and Wingert resort to the ubiquitous comparison of the United States to other countries.
They point out that the achievement gap in the United States is far larger than in other countries – a “scandal of monumental proportions”. They never mention that “achievement” means “how well the kids do in school”; and that many so-called high achieving countries – Japan, China, Germany, India and others - don’t have compulsory education through high school. India, for example, is recognized as a mecca of great mathematical and scientific minds. Fire bad doctors, part 4: time to ante up - Topeka K-12. (Continued from part 3). In Shrub, Molly Ivins wrote “whenever you hear a politician carry on about what a mess the schools are, be aware that you are looking at the culprit.” This past year, states across the country have slashed hundreds of millions of dollars from public school funding. Kansas cut $300 million and is proposing cuts of nearly $200 million more. Diane Ravitch Answers Critics, Including Jonathan Alter and Arne Duncan… « educationclearinghouse.
Diane Ravitch wrote an excellent piece in Education Week which answers critics, including Jonathan Alter and his recent disingenuous article. Waiting for a School Miracle. Don’t Believe Critics, Education Reform Works: Jonathan Alter. An Interesting Few Days - Bridging Differences. Dear Deborah,