The Answer Sheet: August, 2012
Posted at 05:00 AM ET, 08/02/2012
By Valerie Strauss
The responses to a guest post I published critiquing the Khan Academy included this e-mail from Salman Khan, founder of the academy. Now the author of the critique answers back.
By Valerie Strauss |
05:00 AM ET, 08/02/2012 |
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Posted at 06:00 AM ET, 07/31/2012
By Valerie Strauss
From the you-can’t-make-up-this-stuff department: Louisiana officials are pushing an “accountability” plan for private schools in the state's voucher program that doesn’t hold most of the schools accountable for anything.
By Valerie Strauss |
06:00 AM ET, 07/31/2012 |
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Posted at 04:00 AM ET, 07/31/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Here’s how parents and teachers can teach young children how to use technology safely.
By Valerie Strauss |
04:00 AM ET, 07/31/2012 |
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Posted at 11:29 AM ET, 07/30/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Researchers say they have found a design flaw in the assessments that Texas uses to evaluate student achievement that it makes the exams essentially useless for the purpose it was supposed to be designed for.
By Valerie Strauss |
11:29 AM ET, 07/30/2012 |
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Posted at 11:00 AM ET, 07/30/2012
By Valerie Strauss
“When I first saw yesterday’s New York Times op-ed I mistook it for a joke,” writes Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham. “The title, ‘Is algebra necessary’ had the ring of Thurber’s classic essay, ‘Is sex necessary?’ a send-up of psychological sex manuals of the 1920s.
By Valerie Strauss |
11:00 AM ET, 07/30/2012 |
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Posted at 07:57 AM ET, 07/30/2012
By Valerie Strauss
A star professor explains why he is rejecting pleas — including from reinstated President Teresa Sullivan.
By Valerie Strauss |
07:57 AM ET, 07/30/2012 |
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Posted at 08:09 PM ET, 07/29/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Traditional instruction in U.S. schools is dumping poorly organized information on the young, and they can’t process it. The problem isn’t the amount of information — the brain isn’t a bucket that can overflow. The problem is the information’s incoherence — and the consequences are important. Call it education’s big design flaw.
By Valerie Strauss |
08:09 PM ET, 07/29/2012 |
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Posted at 10:00 AM ET, 07/29/2012
By Valerie Strauss
A major study on school leadership finds that districts need to do a lot more to recruit and train principals to ensure better leadership at public schools.
By Valerie Strauss |
10:00 AM ET, 07/29/2012 |
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Posted at 10:00 AM ET, 07/28/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Michelle Rhee went to England recently and spoke of her great success
in improving the D.C. public schools.
By Valerie Strauss |
10:00 AM ET, 07/28/2012 |
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Posted at 11:44 AM ET, 07/27/2012
By Valerie Strauss
American Federation of Teachers Randi Weingarten says it is time to accept political realities and forge a new approach to unionism in the face of attacks.
By Valerie Strauss |
11:44 AM ET, 07/27/2012 |
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Posted at 10:50 AM ET, 07/27/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Here is a critique of the Khan Academy by two mathematicians who question whether the people who created some of the math videos available on the academy website understood how to teach.
By Valerie Strauss |
10:50 AM ET, 07/27/2012 |
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Posted at 12:00 PM ET, 07/26/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Check out some of the training being offered to students in a new two-year graduate teaching training program, which is
subsidized by charter schools and venture philanthropies. It involves Chuck Norris. Yes, Chuck Norris.
By Valerie Strauss |
12:00 PM ET, 07/26/2012 |
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Posted at 12:30 PM ET, 07/25/2012
By Valerie Strauss
At first glance, the assessments now being developed to accompany the Common Core State Standards do not appear to be much more than we already have, at least in terms of subject-matter covered and grade level. But that is only an illusion.
By Valerie Strauss |
12:30 PM ET, 07/25/2012 |
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Posted at 02:46 PM ET, 07/24/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Parent trigger advocates say it gives parents more power in their children’s education. Opponents say the movement is led by people who want to expand charter schools.
By Valerie Strauss |
02:46 PM ET, 07/24/2012 |
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Posted at 06:00 AM ET, 07/24/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Congressional hearings are supposed to provide lawmakers wth information they need to make policy and legislative decisions. But sometimes when you look at the witness lists, it is hard to figure out why legislators bother to hold them. Take Tuesday’s hearing about teacher certification.
By Valerie Strauss |
06:00 AM ET, 07/24/2012 |
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Posted at 03:00 PM ET, 07/23/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Uh oh, educators, hold onto your hats! It appears that a new catchphrase is coming to school reform, and it's called "loss aversion."
By Valerie Strauss |
03:00 PM ET, 07/23/2012 |
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Posted at 01:24 PM ET, 07/23/2012
By Valerie Strauss
The state of Florida, which led the movement that uses standardized test scores to “grade” individual schools, miscalculated the grades for hundreds of schools and is changing them.
By Valerie Strauss |
01:24 PM ET, 07/23/2012 |
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Posted at 11:20 AM ET, 07/23/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Khan Academy boasts almost 3,300 videos that have been viewed over 160 million times. That’s a heroic achievement.
By Valerie Strauss |
11:20 AM ET, 07/23/2012 |
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Posted at 09:20 AM ET, 07/21/2012
By Valerie Strauss
“Guns have no place in schools,” Arizona State University’s president said
earlier this year.
By Valerie Strauss |
09:20 AM ET, 07/21/2012 |
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Posted at 11:00 AM ET, 07/20/2012
By Valerie Strauss
The idea of summer learning loss — the implication being that it’s risky to give kids a three-month vacation from school because they’ll forget everything they were taught — has become the media’s favorite seasonally specific education topic. Alfie Kohn answers this question: Is summer learning loss real?
By Valerie Strauss |
11:00 AM ET, 07/20/2012 |
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Posted at 04:00 AM ET, 07/20/2012
By Valerie Strauss
The discussion about why women still can’t have it all — as detailed in an Atlantic article by Anne-Marie Slaughter — should be broadened to include children, who are encouraged to “multi-task” and “buckle down,” to set their sights on college admissions and perfect test scores, and to grind through busy work and Scantron sheets at the expense of creative and imaginary play, family time, and just plain downtime.
By Valerie Strauss |
04:00 AM ET, 07/20/2012 |
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Posted at 06:00 AM ET, 07/19/2012
By Valerie Strauss
I thought I’d heard enough about the Texas Republican Party’s platform that rejects the teaching of critical thinking skills until I heard Stephen Colbert’s take on it: “For too long we have blindly accepted the idea of not blindly accepting ideas.” And a lot more.
By Valerie Strauss |
06:00 AM ET, 07/19/2012 |
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Posted at 04:00 AM ET, 07/19/2012
By Valerie Strauss
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, America is fast becoming a majority-minority nation, one where the very classification of “minority” soon will become outmoded.
By Valerie Strauss |
04:00 AM ET, 07/19/2012 |
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Posted at 11:56 AM ET, 07/18/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Here’s a hilarious point-counterpoint on Teach for America for by the satirical newspaper The Onion.
By Valerie Strauss |
11:56 AM ET, 07/18/2012 |
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Posted at 06:00 AM ET, 07/18/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Left-leaning people everywhere recently got a hoot when the Texas Republican Party
declared its opposition to the teaching of “Higher Order Thinking Skills,” including “critical thinking skills,” in public schools. Here’s an argument that when it comes to the subject of education, there’s little evidence that critical thinking is widespread among Democrats.
By Valerie Strauss |
06:00 AM ET, 07/18/2012 |
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Posted at 05:00 AM ET, 07/18/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Should someone with five weeks of teacher training be considered a highly qualified teacher?
By Valerie Strauss |
05:00 AM ET, 07/18/2012 |
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Posted at 04:00 AM ET, 07/18/2012
By Valerie Strauss
By Valerie Strauss |
04:00 AM ET, 07/18/2012 |
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Posted at 01:50 PM ET, 07/17/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Closing the achievement gap between rich and poor, a teacher writes, will first require Americans to recognize a far more uncomfortable reality: The policies employed to purportedly address the struggles of low-income children have ushered in a new era of
school segregation. Claiming that poverty is no excuse for student failure trivializes the damage caused by years of actions and inactions that have widened the gaps between rich and poor communities.
By Valerie Strauss |
01:50 PM ET, 07/17/2012 |
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Posted at 06:32 PM ET, 07/16/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Statement talks about their commitment to work together — as if recent drama never happened.
By Valerie Strauss |
06:32 PM ET, 07/16/2012 |
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Posted at 02:38 PM ET, 07/16/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Education historian Diane Ravitch calls out New Jersey’s education chief, Chris Cerf, for an article he wrote about charter schools and explains how the movement can be fixed. She also shows how Cerf misquotes the late union leader Albert Shanker.
By Valerie Strauss |
02:38 PM ET, 07/16/2012 |
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Posted at 05:00 AM ET, 07/16/2012
By Valerie Strauss
The superintendent of Pittsburgh public schools writes about a new approach to summer school that is far different from the traditional.
By Valerie Strauss |
05:00 AM ET, 07/16/2012 |
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Posted at 10:55 AM ET, 07/15/2012
By Valerie Strauss
There’s a charade playing out right now at the University of Virginia — and it’s not a game.
By Valerie Strauss |
10:55 AM ET, 07/15/2012 |
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Posted at 11:00 AM ET, 07/14/2012
By Valerie Strauss
The consequence of underfunding schools are more than just a lack of books and chalk. It is easy to see how the resource gap is directly related to the achievement gap.
By Valerie Strauss |
11:00 AM ET, 07/14/2012 |
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Posted at 05:00 AM ET, 07/13/2012
By Valerie Strauss
The state of Louisiana offered some 450,000 publicly funded vouchers for students to use to pay for private school tuition. But no more than 2 percent of students applied for the vouchers. Why did this happen?
By Valerie Strauss |
05:00 AM ET, 07/13/2012 |
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Posted at 04:45 PM ET, 07/12/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Penn State’s board commissioned a report which blasted its mishandling of the Sandusky child abuse matter. The U-Va. Board of Visitors should probably do some similar introspection.
By Valerie Strauss |
04:45 PM ET, 07/12/2012 |
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Posted at 05:00 AM ET, 07/12/2012
By Valerie Strauss
The Khan Academy has been in the education news though it’s not the kind of publicity that its founder, Salman Khan, would have chosen if given the choice. Here’s an examination of whether the academy is really a solution to education’s most intractable problems as many claim.
By Valerie Strauss |
05:00 AM ET, 07/12/2012 |
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Posted at 01:00 PM ET, 07/11/2012
By Valerie Strauss
By Valerie Strauss |
01:00 PM ET, 07/11/2012 |
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Posted at 05:00 AM ET, 07/11/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who until now hadn’t seen a test he didn’t like, seems to have come to some sort of epiphany: The state that has been a national model for test-based school reform just may be testing school children too much.
By Valerie Strauss |
05:00 AM ET, 07/11/2012 |
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Posted at 06:00 AM ET, 07/10/2012
By Valerie Strauss
If you have finished reading (or never would touch) the erotic “Fifty Shades of Grey” and looking for something a little, well, different to pick up this summer, here are some book lists that you might not have come across: Bestsellers from the past. Way in the past.
By Valerie Strauss |
06:00 AM ET, 07/10/2012 |
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Posted at 05:00 AM ET, 07/10/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Professors from colleges and universities in Georgia have written an
open letter to the governor, Nathan Deal, and other officials involved with education policy to express opposition to a new teacher evaluation system that depends largely on student standardized test scores.
By Valerie Strauss |
05:00 AM ET, 07/10/2012 |
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Posted at 10:02 AM ET, 07/09/2012
By Valerie Strauss
An educator writes: “The three words to best describe an effective classroom are
engagement, engagement, engagement. Those who make policy would disagree, it seems, since policy promulgated at the national and state level has less to do with engagement and more to do with obedience.”
By Valerie Strauss |
10:02 AM ET, 07/09/2012 |
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Posted at 06:00 AM ET, 07/09/2012
By Valerie Strauss
In the you-can’t-make-up-this-stuff department, the Republican Party of Texas wrote in its 2012 platform that itopposes the teaching of “higher order thinking skills” because it believes the purpose is to challenge a student’s “fixed beliefs” and undermine “parental authority.”
By Valerie Strauss |
06:00 AM ET, 07/09/2012 |
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Posted at 04:00 AM ET, 07/09/2012
By Valerie Strauss
American Library Association President Maureen Sullivan was not amused by a Forbes article identifying the library and information science degree as the worst master’s for a student to pursue.
By Valerie Strauss |
04:00 AM ET, 07/09/2012 |
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Posted at 11:22 PM ET, 07/07/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Reformers who think that students should be studying subjects that will help them fill empty jobs should be pushing for more vocational education in the skilled trades.
By Valerie Strauss |
11:22 PM ET, 07/07/2012 |
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Posted at 12:30 PM ET, 07/07/2012
By Valerie Strauss
When I first started reading the piece below, I wasn’t sure if it was real or if it was parody. I was relieved to find that it was the latter, though in these crazy days of education reform, it could have been the work of a real education department.
By Valerie Strauss |
12:30 PM ET, 07/07/2012 |
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Posted at 10:23 AM ET, 07/06/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Here’s a set of exercises that builds the critical reading and writing skills that students develop in school by encouraging them to write for themselves
By Valerie Strauss |
10:23 AM ET, 07/06/2012 |
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Posted at 06:00 AM ET, 07/06/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Three times the voters in Washington have rejected charter schools in their state — in 1996, 2000 and 2004 — but a new bid to win approval has big money behind it.
By Valerie Strauss |
06:00 AM ET, 07/06/2012 |
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Posted at 05:00 AM ET, 07/06/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Education historian Diane Ravitch writes about the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has poured billions of dollars into questionable education reforms, is so puzzling.
By Valerie Strauss |
05:00 AM ET, 07/06/2012 |
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Posted at 04:00 AM ET, 07/06/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Little attention is given to the affective domain of learning.
By Valerie Strauss |
04:00 AM ET, 07/06/2012 |
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Posted at 04:00 AM ET, 07/05/2012
By Valerie Strauss
At the Relay Graduate School of Education, teacher education that balances research, theory and practice has been replaced by ‘filling the pail’ training. Designed to serve the needs of three charter school chains — KIPP, Achievement First and Uncommon Schools— RGSE has no university affiliation,
yet awards masters degrees in New York State.
By Valerie Strauss |
04:00 AM ET, 07/05/2012 |
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Posted at 12:19 PM ET, 07/04/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Thanks to Thomas Jefferson, perhaps the country’s first real weatherman, we know.
By Valerie Strauss |
12:19 PM ET, 07/04/2012 |
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Posted at 04:00 AM ET, 07/04/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Test yourself with this Fourth of July quiz and see how much you really know about the birth of the United States.
By Valerie Strauss |
04:00 AM ET, 07/04/2012 |
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Posted at 04:00 AM ET, 07/03/2012
By Valerie Strauss
If you are at all curious about what country manufactures American flags and the fireworks we light on July 4th, and where your Independence Day BBQ food comes from, read this.
By Valerie Strauss |
04:00 AM ET, 07/03/2012 |
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Posted at 11:13 AM ET, 07/02/2012
By Valerie Strauss
John Adams wrote: “the Second of July, 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America...”
By Valerie Strauss |
11:13 AM ET, 07/02/2012 |
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Posted at 09:37 AM ET, 07/02/2012
By Valerie Strauss
The idea that the United States once was a world leader in elementary and secondary education, while a compelling part of our belief system, is false. We never ranked #1. We can’t get back to the head of the class because we never were the head of the class.
By Valerie Strauss |
09:37 AM ET, 07/02/2012 |
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Posted at 11:37 AM ET, 06/30/2012
By Valerie Strauss
Here’s a cost-benefit analysis of the accountability movement now being administered in public education, primarily in the form of testing mandates. It flunks.
By Valerie Strauss |
11:37 AM ET, 06/30/2012 |
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