February 22, 2014

My latest Diigo links (weekly)

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February 15, 2014

My latest Diigo links (weekly)

  • An alternate take on the "close reading" standard - @fisher1000 SmartBlogs

    • Consider this: the anchor standard is the ONLY place that the phrase “reading closely” is mentioned; it is not used again in any grade-specific reading standards.
    • The skill of reading closely is great, but that is not the objective. Reading comprehension is the objective.
    • Metacognition is where it’s at. The important words in the standard are not necessarily “read closely,” but rather “what the text says explicitly.” The grade0level standards are pretty clear about what students need to know and be able to do. At the lower grade levels, they must be able to ask and answer questions about specific details in the text and then in sixth grade, the verb changes. In sixth grade, the students have to “cite evidence” that supports their thinking, which becomes sophisticated over time depending on the best evidence to support their thinking and evidence across multiple texts.
    • Close reading at home turned into disruptive fluency; we overused it.
    • hat we’ve shifted to at home lately has more of an emphasis on text-dependent questions that are developed in the moment and focus on important details rather than overall main idea
    • We get better at the things we do with regularity and in their totality, not because we learn sets of isolated skills and expect those skills to magically connect when it’s time to perform. Those skills always have to feed the overarching idea, which, in this case, is becoming a fluent reader, not just a close reader.
    • reading voluminously

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February 1, 2014

My latest Diigo links (weekly)

  • Everything you need to know about Common Core — Ravitch

    • I will begin by setting the context for the development of the standards.
    • George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind and Barack Obama’s Race to the Top have combined to impose a punitive regime of standardized testing on the schools.
    • Then along came the Obama administration, with its signature program called Race to the Top. In response to the economic crisis of 2008, Congress gave the U.S. Department of Education $5 billion to promote “reform.” Secretary Duncan launched a competition for states called “Race to the Top.” If states wanted any part of that money, they had to agree to certain conditions.

    • The Pearson Corporation has become the ultimate arbiter of the fate of students, teachers, and schools.

       

    • The agenda of both Republicans and Democrats converged around the traditional Republican agenda of standards, choice, and accountability. In my view, this convergence has nothing to do with improving education or creating equality of opportunity but everything to do with cutting costs, standardizing education, shifting the delivery of education from high-cost teachers to low-cost technology, reducing the number of teachers, and eliminating unions and pensions.
    • From the outset, the Common Core standards were marked by the absence of public participation, transparency, or educator participation. In a democracy, transparency is crucial, because transparency and openness builds trust. Those crucial ingredients were lacking.
    • Integral to the Common Core was the expectation that they would be tested on computers using online standardized exams. As Secretary Duncan’s chief of staff wrote at the time, the Common Core was intended to create a national market for book publishers, technology companies, testing corporations, and other vendors.
    • In my latest book, I demonstrated, using data on the U.S. Department of Education website that the current sense of crisis about our nation’s public schools was exaggerated; that test scores were the highest they had ever been in our history for whites, African Americans, Latinos, and Asians; that graduation rates for all groups were the highest in our history; and that the dropout rate was the lowest ever in our history.
      • Manufactured crisis
    • My fears were confirmed by the Common Core tests. Wherever they have been implemented, they have caused a dramatic collapse of test scores. In state after state, the passing rates dropped by about 30%. This was not happenstance. This was failure by design. Let me explain.
    • New York state
    • By the time the results were reported in August, the students did not have the same teachers; the teachers saw the scores, but did not get any item analysis. They could not use the test results for diagnostic purposes, to help students. Their only value was to rank stud
    • The financial cost of implementing Common Core has barely been mentioned in the national debates. All Common Core testing will be done online. This is a bonanza for the tech industry and other vendors
    • arly childhood educators are nearly unanimous in saying that no one who wrote the standards had any expertise in the education of very young childre
    • Where did the writers of the standards get these percentages? They relied on the federal NAEP—the National Assessment of Educational Progress-which uses these percentages as instructions to test developers. NAEP never intended that these numbers would be converted into instructional mandates for teachers. This idea that informational text should take up half the students’ reading time in the early grades and 70% in high school led to outlandish claims that teachers would no longer be allowed to teach whole novels
    • The standards contain no such demands.
    • The fact is that the Common Core standards should never have set forth any percentages at all. If they really did not mean to impose numerical mandates on English teachers, they set off a firestorm of criticism for no good reason.
    • there is no one in charge of fixing them
    • what happens to the children who fail?
    • teachers say that the lessons are scripted and deprive them of their professional autonomy, the autonomy they need to tailor their lessons to the needs of the students in front of them
    • There is something about the Common Core standards and testing, about their demand for uniformity and standardization, that reeks of early twentieth century factory-line thinking.

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January 25, 2014

My latest Diigo links (weekly)

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January 11, 2014

My latest Diigo links (weekly)

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January 4, 2014

My latest Diigo links (weekly)

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November 30, 2013

My latest Diigo links (weekly)

  • The Myth of 'I'm Bad at Math' [by Miles Kimball & Noah Smith for The Atlantic]

    According to Kimball and Smith, the notion of genetically predestined math ability is the "mental bogeyman of an unconfident America." The authors assert that debunking this myth is a social justice imperative. They provide common sense solutions based on growth mindset research that emphasize hard work and practice, plus "one American-style idea for making kids smarter: treat people who work hard at learning as heroes and role models. We already venerate sports heroes who make up for lack of talent through persistence and grit; why should our educational culture be any different?"

    tags: mindset STEM

  • Giving Good Praise to Girls: What Messages Stick | MindShift

    A discussion of the growth mindset philosophy and Carol Dweck's research, as it relates specifically to the gender gap in STEM learning: "Dweck’s research, which focuses on what makes people seek challenging tasks, persist through difficulty and do well over time, has shown that many girls believe their abilities are fixed, that individuals are born with gifts and can’t change. Her research finds that when girls think this way, they often give up, rather than persisting through difficulties. They don’t think they possess the ability to improve, and nowhere is the phenomenon stronger than in math."

    tags: mindset STEM girls

  • Promoting a growth mindset for all students [from SmartBlogs]

    Allowing failure, easing up on time frames, encouraging practice, and praising hard work are all things that teachers can do to promote the "growth mindset." However, more substantive -- and radical -- change is needed, beginning with questioning our national obsession with achievement tests: "Effective teachers don’t need standardized test results to teach individual students. They have easier and more direct ways of determining what a student knows or doesn’t know. Observing and talking to students is the best way of knowing why they are not learning. Student learning improves as teachers discover more effective ways of teaching through their daily interactions with students."

    tags: mindset teachers

  • Do You have the Personality To Be an Inquiry-Based Teacher? [from MindShift]

    Can credentialing programs teach how to be "the guide on the side"? This post suggests that is coming, but what is more important is attracting teacher-learners with a distinct set of personality traits. This is not an issue of training: "Whether students engage, persevere, and open their mind to novel solutions depends on their resiliency, grit, curiosity, creativity, and empathy. Psychologists refer to these as 'personal assets,' but they’re far more mysterious than a bank account, and they don’t originate in a textbook, so how do we teach them?"

    tags: teacherlearner professionalDevelopment teachers

  • Dreaming of Data: Why K–12 Needs More Analytics [from EdTech Magazine]

    The lead is buried in the final paragraph: "'To individualize learning is really to customize learning for each child so he or she has a unique experience that [suits his or her precise] learning needs,' said Valerie Truesdale, chief information and transformation officer for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina. 'Technology increases the possibilities for customization.'" Schools don't need big data "dashboards" and development of software. Schools need to development of the evaluation experts -- the teachers.

    tags: technology data teachers

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