The Big Ideas in education: What’s on your list?
Scholastic sent out this list of the decade’s 10 big ideas in education. I thought it was a pretty good list.
(Since this is a list from a children’s publishing, education and media company, the big ideas have a lot to do with reading. )
Take a look and see what you think is missing. An emerging idea that is not on the list is overlapping high school and college by offering more joint enrollment programs and creating new opportunities for kids to get college credits.
1. Alternate Paths to Teaching—from Teach for America to Troops to Teachers to urban Teaching Fellows programs, schools of education are no longer the only place that teachers begin their careers.
2. Transformative Technology— From whiteboards to online education, 1-to-1 computing to eReaders, for the first time in the history of American education, classrooms are increasingly plugged in – and so are the students.
3. Accountability— No matter where you stood in the debate on No Child Left Behind, it’s impossible to deny that this decade marked a new era with a shift toward reporting the results for every child in every school.
4. Data-Driven Instruction—Once we have data on every student, it’s easier to reach them quickly and to teach them better. Data is the new currency of 21st century schools.
5. Charter Schools—While the jury remains out on their effectiveness, there is no doubt that charter schools are incubators of innovation in education and harbingers of parent involvement in schools.
6. The Rise of Digital Content—By 2020, 95 percent of all knowledge will be a search term away—marking a game-changing move from static pages to dynamic, digitized content.
7. A Focus on Adolescent Literacy— With 65 percent of American eighth graders reading below grade level, teaching reading is no longer a job just for elementary school teachers. Our middle and high schools are taking dramatic steps to tackle the job of teaching reading to older, struggling students—ensuring that every child learns to read in an era of global competitiveness.
8. Books Are the New Black — In the decade that gave us “Harry Potter,” “Twilight” and “The DaVinci Code,” the hottest accessory is definitely the book. And it’s impossible to deny the power that a single book can have on children’s feelings about reading. ”
9. It Takes A Village—More than ever, education is reaching beyond the walls of our schools to build strong communities that support learning both in and out-of-school. From the universal pre-K movement and burgeoning after-school programs, to summer reading initiatives and in-school community centers, we’re learning that it takes a combination of home, school and community to prepare kids for their futures.
10. The American Recovery & Reinvestment Act —Although it is the hallmark of only the last year of the decade, with its more than $100 billion dollar investment in America’s schools, ARRA represents an historic moment in American Education. While we cannot predict its impact, we can say with certainty that ARRA will leave an indelible mark on this decade of ideas in education.
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80 comments Add your comment
dbow
December 18th, 2009
1:14 pm
Bring back principals that cared to discipline instead of running away from parents for fear of lawsuits. At my school it’s no grades lower than a 60 and retest until they pass. Threaten a teacher, no problem, it was probably the teachers fault anyway. Student didn’t do the homework, no problem, we’re not allowed to count it against him anyway. Beat up another kid and you’re SPED, no problem, it’s a manifestion of your disability even if it’s not. No problems here, everything’s fine and dandy.
high school teacher
December 18th, 2009
1:18 pm
Old School, the 7 period day stinks. Teaching 6 classes is just about enough to kill a person.
dbow
December 18th, 2009
1:19 pm
I teach 8 periods a day. I’m ready to kill myself.
dbow
December 18th, 2009
1:20 pm
8 periods per day. Reduced class time and now I have 30 plus kids in a class. Principal wonders why scores went down. HAHAHAHA
Happy Teacher
December 18th, 2009
2:33 pm
Cat Lady- Lots of good things on the list, but #13? C’mon. Experience isn’t everything in life.
Gwinnett Parent
December 18th, 2009
2:47 pm
Cobb Parent-Amen!!! Just discovered yesterday that they mainstream the learning disabled in with the rest of the class. Also, my child’s class has quite a few kids just learning English. Let’s bring back the LD(learning disabled) class. It is not fair that the average and above average, but not gifted have to waste their leaning time waiting on someone that is 2-3 standard deviations below the norm. In my days we had a class for the severely mentally retarded, learning disabled(dyslexia & ADHD), and regular class. We still need gifted classes. Perhaps we could pay the LD teacher an added bonus.
Gwinnett Parent
December 18th, 2009
2:57 pm
Would also like to see foreign language offered at the lower grades. If our future leaders have to compete in a global society, they must be able to communicate.
high school teacher
December 18th, 2009
3:06 pm
dbow, wow! 8 classes would kill me!
Echo
December 18th, 2009
4:24 pm
SPED kids are mainstreamed because of NCLB mandates that every teacher be “highly qualified”. That means a teacher certified to teach special ed. can’t teach self contained classes unless he/she is also certified in the content area too. So the solution was to stick kids with learning and/or behavior problems in regular education classes with teachers certified in the content area (but not in special education). And people wonder why teachers think politicians suck!
ScienceTeacher671
December 18th, 2009
6:15 pm
Gwinnett Parent, it’s also not fair to the kid who wants to learn but needs extra support and assistance to stick him or her in a classroom with 30 other kids and think the assistance will be available. It’s not fair to a kid with ADHD or behavior disorders, who would be fine in a small classroom with fewer distractions, to be stuck in a large class with 30 other kids. There’s a huge shortage of “qualified” special education teachers since the NCLB mandates Echo mentioned.
catlady
December 18th, 2009
6:47 pm
Experience isn’t everything in LIFE, but to lead teachers and students you need real world experience. Significant experience. On the level that you are planning to lead. I stand by the minimum of 15 years of active classroom experience. Until you do, you should not be admissible to a master’s leadership program. There are too many APs and principals with 5 years or less teaching experience who do not have any idea what they are doing. On top of that, many have gotten their degrees from diploma mills.
RTI is the newest attempt to deny services to children who need them, and show continued disrespect to the teachers. It requires endless individual and small group efforts to teach (drill) simple information to a child, who is then evaluated after weeks of this. If they have successfully learned, for example, the twos table for multiplication, then they are deemed successful, and no further testing is given. Regardless of the fact that the child is a 5th grader, and the child is two to three years behind in everything.
Class Keys is one of the newer outrages perpetrated on Georgia teachers. It adds hours of paperwork to “prove” that the teacher is doing what they are required to do and show evidence of every single thing, including daily evaluation of instruction. My point: ask me why I am doing something with a student. I can tell you. Treat teachers as professionals, absent evidence that they are not.
Another thing I would add to the 18: Trash the scripted texts. They are appropriate to a very small percentage of students and teachers, not every student in every grade.
Number 20: quit buying everything with the words “research based” on it. Some of it is just dog doo with the words stamped on it. And “research based” doesn’t mean GOOD, VALID research. Quite a bit of it is self-serving nonsense conducted to sell the product!
Number 21: Require every central office administrator to go back into the classroom for 3 years after every 5 in the central office.
ScienceTeacher671
December 18th, 2009
10:29 pm
@Catlady, if I may add…the problem with much of the “research-based” stuff that is being foisted on teachers and students is that even if the research is valid, it’s usually misapplied. For instance, a cure de jour that has been shown to work with one type of student is given as an inservice to teachers of a totally different type of student, or another method that research shows may work if teachers are given sufficient time and resources to implement it is presented as a half-day workshop with no followup and no extra time or resources provided.
In another example, research shows that RTI is effective – IF, and ONLY if, it’s used properly with children in early primary grades. Attempting to use RTI in other grades is a gross misapplication of all the research I have read, and as you have said, wastes the time of teachers and keeps children from getting the assistance they need.
catlady
December 19th, 2009
8:01 am
Science teacher: I am with you on this. When a child is unsuccessful in mastering first grade skills, the time is ripe to intervene and evaluate. After a child is in 4th or 5th grade and is still on first or second grade, only an idiot would think to put more barriers in the way of the child getting help. That a child might have an ineffective or inexperienced teacher one year is believeable; that they might have the same for 5 years in a row is an insult. Our county jumped into RTI prematurely, never established proper or appropriate procedures, and thus we have children who have been in school 7 years (prek-5) who have amassed only 3 years of accomplishments. They have no chance of being caught up and their 2-3 year or more deficit is evidence that something is lacking. Our county also has implemented it in the most restrictive way possible. We have kids on whom we’ve been doing 3 week plans for 3 years! I should be able to refer a child for help without the psychologist, who has never been in a classroom, expecting me to continue to prove the deficit.
Secondly, the research based lie: We built (and continue!) Reading First based on research lies! When I asked for the research showing the basic assumptions RF is built on are appropriate for the subgroup (ELLs) with whom I work, I was told RESEARCH WAS NOT DONE WITH THAT SUBGROUP! My county will buy anything with the words research based on it, and much of what they buy (via grants that require the county officials to take many junkets to conferences, I might add, and add many “coaches”) is a huge waste of money.
d
December 19th, 2009
11:00 am
Thank you for pointing that out ScienceTeacher. I teach seniors and the process as was described to us for RTI is a joke. By the time we can do anything for someone who somehow made it this far but needs help, they’re weeks away from graduating. I almost have to ask why bother? Something is going on in the lower grades though when the most common reason I’m collecting cell phones is because “I was checking the time and can’t read the clock on your wall,” or “I can’t read when you write in cursive,” or “I don’t know how to make a line graph” are comments I hear in the classroom.
That being said, I had a student come in who graduated 2 years ago to thank me because he aced his final in one of his classes based a lot upon the instruction I gave him when he was in my class. He told me many of his classmates this past semester struggled with the material, but he remembered what I taught him and succeeded. Makes me feel all warm and cozy inside — and better than any material gift I could have received from any student.
ScienceTeacher671
December 19th, 2009
5:53 pm
We have high school students who are working at a 3rd or 4th grade level, but we’re told they can’t be tested without first going through the RTI process, and even if there is a boatload of data showing that the student is several years behind and not successful at the high school level, they won’t test anyone because the school psychologist says that the teachers aren’t doing progress monitoring correctly and need more training.
ScienceTeacher671
December 19th, 2009
5:55 pm
I’m almost relieved to hear that people in other districts are having the same problem; we teachers thought it was simply incompetence at our central office.
Ole Guy
December 19th, 2009
11:35 pm
Science Teach, I guess the days of building fires under kids’ rear ends are no longer fashionable. Oh well…as long as they feel good about themselves…
d
December 20th, 2009
5:23 am
Rumor was these came from Bill Gates, I think Snopes said they didn’t. Nevertheless, these are the things that need to be taught in school. I personally keep a copy on my wall for the students to view:
RULE 1
Life is not fair – get used to it.
RULE 2
The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
RULE 3
You will NOT make 40 thousand dollars a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice president with car phone, until you earn both.
RULE 4
If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. He doesn’t have tenure.
RULE 5
Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping they called it Opportunity.
RULE 6
If you mess up,it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
RULE 7
Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
RULE 8
Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
RULE 9
Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.
RULE 10
Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
RULE 11
Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.
Gwinnett Parent
December 20th, 2009
9:26 am
Mainstreaming issue- Last year there was a child in my daughter’s Kindergarten class that could not count to 5 by the end of the year. I tried to help him, but he would continuously forget what number he was on. Even the teacher more or less told me that it was useless. This child is in a normal class again this year. I volunteered the other day and tried to help him with a task. He has not progressed. Granted, he is pulled out for a special class each day. That still leaves the rest of the day. How can a teacher manage a class with students on this level mixed in with the average and above average students? Throw a few ESOL students into the mix and voila, you have a classroom where no one is learning. I don’t care whether or not the teacher has a wall full of advanced degrees or decades of experience, learning is almost impossible in this scenario. Highschool teachers-This is why the students are not ready. The average and above average are being robbed.
We want to prepare our children for the future. However, we are catering to the ones that will not get it and leaving the ones with true potential behind.
We need to bring back the full time LD class. These classes should be smaller and the teachers should receive a special bonus for teaching these special kids. This is how it was in the 70’s and 80’s. Why did we get away from this? I would like to see classes for the severely disabled, LD, average, and gifted.
ScienceTeacher671
December 20th, 2009
10:23 am
Gwinnett Parent, as far as I can tell, we got away from the specialized classes for a combination of reasons. Some people didn’t like their children “segregated” into little rooms; plus there is a shortage of special education teachers, and NCLB has exacerbated the shortage by saying that the special education teachers had to be qualified to deal with the particular disability and “highly qualified” in each particular subject, at least in upper grades.
On the other hand, some students have mobility issues, and need braces, crutches, and/or wheelchairs to get around. We wouldn’t think of trying to force those students to walk or run like other students do, unless and until their problem can be cured and they are able to do so — yet we refuse to diagnose our children who need academic “crutches” and refuse to provide them with those crutches even when it is totally obvious that they are needed.
We also wouldn’t forbid the children who are able to do so from walking or running simply because their peers are unable to do so, and we would recognize that it’s incredibly difficult for the teacher to supervise the children who are running ahead and the students who are lagging behind at the same time.
I suppose if I could implement just one really big idea in education, it would be a change in our apparent belief that all children must and should progress at the same rate academically. We don’t expect them all to have the same artistic or athletic talents, and we don’t expect them all to wear the same sizes. Babies don’t all learn to talk or sit up or walk at exactly the same ages. Why do we expect all our children to learn at the same rate, and get upset when they don’t?
Joy
December 20th, 2009
10:35 am
I tend to agree with “Gwinnett Parent’s” comments. In our desire to be “all inclusive”– to have our LD students and other, more severly challenged kids mainstreamed– we do a huge injustice to the entire student body. Most teachers are ill prepared (and already overworked) to teach at the ‘range’ of abilities found in a single classroom. Pararo’s, however diligent, do not replace the teacher. Frequently the more talented students are bored or ignored, while the LD students go nowhere fast and the teacher is frustrated through no fault of her/his own.
Additionally, the media reminds us daily of enormous increased numbers of children diagnosed with ADD, autism spectrum disorders, and other learning challenges. It’s ridiculous to think our public schools (already struggling against barebones budgets and population growth) can handle even more LD students with any success!
All parents of all students, and all public school administrators, need reconsider their priorities when ‘mainstreaming’ challenged students. They should first consciously think, “What would I want for MY child?” If public schools are ill prepared to provide special education beyond just budgeting for an office with that “name,” they need be more willing to transfer students where special ed services ARE being provided, purposefully and caringly, to that special population! Spending months on prerequisite testing, IEP meetings, and duplicative documentation serves only to keep the School Board and a select few attorneys busy. There ARE wonderful opportunities for learning challenged students of all ages in Atlanta. If the counties pooled their “special education” budgets, para pro salaries, and attorney fees, those dollars alone would surely fund the beginnings of decent Special Edcation classes for a number of challenged children.
Last but not least, there are State tax laws in place that now enable Georgia residents to DESIGNATE THEIR STATE TAX MONIES FOR PRIVATE SCHOOL EDUCATION! Instead of simply “paying State tax,” you can say, “I want my State taxes to go to (for example) Aurora Day School,” or whatever. The private schools can then provide SCHOLARSHIPS with YOUR tax money for the students who are going NOWHERE fast in public school!
It’s really real, and a great beginning that citizens can provide on their own! You can do this NOW or at tax time. And it does NOT COST anything, since you define how and where your Georgia Tax (for private education)is spent. Check it out!
Echo
December 20th, 2009
11:18 am
Gwinnett parent, read my post above about NCLB…that is why we have the kind of situation you are seeing in your school. Teachers HAVE been complianing about this for years, no one cares.
catlady
December 20th, 2009
3:24 pm
There ARE school systems where RTI works and is just another bump in the road to getting a child help (I hear it works in Hall County?) In our county it actively discourages any teacher from trying. Now, it doesn’t mean that the teacher isn’t working hard to provide appropriate instruction, remediation, and needs-based for the child–far from it! (We have kids who are on their 4th or 5th year of extra instruction through EIP, needs-based, or specialized plans (that pyramid!) but still get farther and farther behind.) But we know it will never result in the child being tested, that our CO will find yet another hurdle to put in front of us (like the kids who have been RTId for 3 years or more! because they keep moving the bar around) so most teachers just give up and don’t even refer. It’s just more work, more paperwork, for what you are already doing that won’t change a thing for the particular child. Meanwhile you are doing this for 4-5 kids out of a clas of 28 and the other kids are not getting what they need, either. On top of this you have your ELLS, BDs, and other children fortunate enough to have been identified before RTI. So the 12-15 average kids really do not get a FAPE.
In our county about the only way a kid will get sped designation is if they are obviously terribly, terribly handicapped or if they move in with an IEP in place.
I work in a system with 4000 students and I would doubt that 20 have been initially tested for sp ed in the last 3 years, and virtually none of them “made it” according to our psych. Looks like the state would be asking questions, doesn’t it? But RTI does as it is intended: it makes it very hard to get a child placed (because then the child would have to be served!), and just delays things until the child drops out. Sounds harsh, doesn’t it? Sounds downright illegal and immoral, doesn’t it? If not for the unidentified sp ed kid, for the others in the class who could better profit from the teacher’s time and efforts to meet their needs?Teachers can do nothing about this. Parents complaining loud and long are the only hope of getting classrooms back into shape so that the average kid has a chance. But the average parent doesn’t know, and the unidentified sp ed kids frequently have parents who don’t/can’t advocate for them. So the state gets by with it.
NCLB is not the root of all evil, but it might be the stem.
ScienceTeacher671
December 20th, 2009
7:35 pm
Enter your comments here
d
December 21st, 2009
11:52 am
A letter in today’s education letters says the Department of Education has ranked Georgia’s standards as the third worst in the nation. Anyone know where this study is?
Ole Guy
December 21st, 2009
5:40 pm
Shuffleboard, anyone?
ScienceTeacher671
December 21st, 2009
6:56 pm
My post from yesterday got eaten and still hasn’t shown up.
Also, I think we need an “edit” button here, so that when we do stupid stuff like where I mistyped Maureen’s name as “Marlene”, we can go back and fix it. Sorry, Mo! *blush*
jim d
December 24th, 2009
9:53 am
671,
an edit would destroy the blog—allowing people to change their lies is a bad idea. I like being able to document what they have said.
ScienceTeacher671
December 24th, 2009
10:35 am
jim d, that’s an excellent point. It would be nice to be able to fix typos, although I suppose more diligent proofreading would also be a good idea. Many websites allow you to “preview” what you are posting before it gets submitted; maybe that would suffice? Then, once you hit “submit”, whatever you’ve said, you’ve said for good….
jim d
December 24th, 2009
10:48 am
Tpyos
are part of blogging.