Archive for the ‘Classroom styles’ Category

I am always surprised when parents tell me their kids have three to four hours of homework a night given the lack of evidence that homework enhances student achievement

Here is a piece about homework from Kenneth Goldberg,  a clinical psychologist and author of “The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers.”

By Kenneth Goldberg

As the world engages in a global homework debate, there are many parents whose major concern is not public policy, but what will happen at home tonight. They are not Tiger Moms, but ordinary parents who simply want the best for their children. These parents start out with the full intention of supporting the teachers and their children’s schools. Yet, something goes wrong along the way as they and their children fall into a homework trap.

The problem starts in elementary school. The notes come home, and the parents get “the call.” They meet with the teacher and make plans to make sure everyone is on the same page. …

Continue reading Plotting an escape from the homework trap »

NBC brought its “Education Nation” project to Atlanta today with a two-hour town hall meeting with teachers at the Georgia Aquarium.

The web-streamed event revisited the usual education topics, teacher effectiveness, career and college readiness, the global workplace, charter schools and the role of technology.

While each of the four panels had a theme, panelists often strayed, so the discussions traveled far and wide. The teachers on the panel and those in the audience were articulate and committed; they certainly put forth Georgia’s best face in education. Many were National Board Certified teachers or county Teachers of the Year.

One of the panelists was a Georgia Teacher of the Year, Jadun McCarthy, a Bibb County high school teacher. (I have quoted the outspoken and eloquent Mr. McCarthy frequently on the blog in the past; he was more constrained under this format than when simply loosed at a microphone.)

McCarthy credited Georgia with applying for and winning a waiver …

Continue reading NBC’s Education Nation: In Atlanta today with teacher town hall »

Here is a guest column by Jonathan R. Herman, director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Religious Studies at Georgia State University.

By Jonathan R. Herman

The astonishing reach of the CRCT cheating scandal may be opening lots of eyes, but many of us in the academia have already been noticing a fundamental, and unhealthy, change in how many people understand the purpose of education and what is meant by “learning.”

A case in point. Last semester, I taught a seminar on the infamous Scopes “monkey trial,” which addressed the question of whether public school curricula should follow the consensus of the community or the expertise of instructors. I asked my students to think about who should determine what is taught in the classroom and how exactly that determination should be made.

As the conversation developed, one young woman seemed especially impatient, punctuating her irregular eye-rolls with exasperated sighs. “Why don’t teachers just teach what …

Continue reading “Why don’t teachers just teach what is going to be on the test?” »

If you have time this weekend, read this daily diary of an inner city high school teacher from the Parenting web site. It is an anonymous account of a single day at a big city high school but well worth your time.

After reading about the writer’s abrasive students, indifferent parents and ill-equipped building, I have to ask: Would any of us encourage our children to take her job?

The teacher’s diary opens with a 6:45 a.m. text from a student, “hey do we hv skool 2day?” and ends with a late-night text from another student, “Wassup miss can I get my code thingy so I can chek my grades?”

Here are two short entries from what went on in between those texts:

9:30am
My second class begins to arrive and immediately lets me know I’ll be working hard for the next 50 minutes. They make their entrance pushing and shoving each other, taking each other’s bags, running around the room, ignoring me. They used to be one of the best groups in this grade, but now we commonly …

Continue reading A great teacher diary: “hey do we hv skool 2day?” »

In every district, in every school, in every grade, there is that great teacher who all parents want for their children. So, parents cross their fingers that their child is among the lucky ones to end up on that teacher’s roster.

What if that terrific teacher could reach two, three or even five times as many students?

That is one of the promises of online learning, said Bryan Hassel, co-director of Public Impact and a speaker at today’s webcasted Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s panel on Education Reform for a Digital Era.

Hassel said that only about 25 percent of classes have one of these top-tier teachers at a given time. That means the other 75 percent don’t.

Education can enlarge the classroom of the teachers achieving the best results with their students and pay them more for doing so by multiplying their reach through technology, said Hassel.

Relieve those great teachers of non-instructional tasks and use video to reach more students and smart software to personalize …

Continue reading Should schools walk or run into the digital era? »

Trayvon Martin (Special)

I noticed that a thread on a recent Get Schooled blog wandered over to the issue of social justice and whether schools ought to be teaching it.

Let’s take a more direct route to the topic today. Last week, my twins and many of their middle school classmates wore black clothing to school to memorialize Trayvon Martin.

Trayvon is the unarmed Florida teen shot to death while walking home from buying Skittles and an iced tea. Trayvon was spotted, trailed and confronted by a neighborhood watch volunteer now alleging self defense in the shooting.

The young man’s death and the failure to arrest the neighborhood watch volunteer has shocked and galvanized hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, so it should be no surprise that the controversy has reached schools in Georgia.

As a reporter, I believe in civic engagement and wish there was more of it. I have covered far too many city council, school board, zoning, planning, county commission and library board …

Continue reading How should schools respond to the Trayvon Martin controversy and student activism around it? »

A teenage neighbor told me that he intended to be among the first in line for the new iPad that made its debut a few weeks ago. Since he already owned an iPad, I asked if the new model offered some innovation that he needed.

“I don’t know,” he told me, “but I know it’s better than what I’ve got.”

That seems to be the attitude of policymakers toward online learning, including some in the Georgia Legislature, which approved a new law pushing cyber high school courses:

Senate Bill 289 states: The State Board of Education shall establish rules and regulations to maximize the number of students, beginning with students entering ninth grade in the 2014-2015 school year, who complete prior to graduation at least one course containing online learning….A local school system shall not prohibit any student from taking a course through the Georgia Virtual School, regardless of whether the school in which the student is enrolled offers the same course.

Cybereducation is …

Continue reading Legislature endorses more cyber classes: They’re shiny and new but are they effective with k-12 students? »

Here is a great essay by Georgia classroom teacher Beth Pittard, who is also a grad student at the University of Georgia College of Education:

By Beth Pittard

While many people around the country complete brackets for basketball, teachers everywhere gear up for their own version of March Madness. To prepare for the Criterion Referenced Competency Test to be taken sometime between April 4- May 6, elementary school teachers will actually have to convince students to forget what they have learned about reading.

The high-stakes testing situation leads, literally, to madness.

Let me explain. Teachers are required to teach the Georgia Performance Standards with fidelity. We are expected to “prove” we are doing this by posting the standard in a “highly visible” place in our classrooms along with an essential question (EQ) for each lesson of each day and for each subject area (forget integrating the curriculum, but that’s another story).

Each standard has a code …

Continue reading Testing season revs up: March madness leads to April angst »

Pelham City school chief Jim Arnold is one of my favorite guest posters because he doesn’t pull any punches. If you haven’t read his stuff before, I think you will enjoy his essay on this year’s damage tally to education from the Georgia Legislature.

This is a long piece, so I am pulling out the key passage here for those of you with only seconds to spare: I think this paragraph by Dr. Arnold says it all:

It’s becoming harder and harder for educators – especially teachers – to provide damage control from what amounts to friendly fire, and I believe that is part and parcel of what these initiatives are all about. Sooner or later, even legislators must see it’s not about race, it’s about poverty; it’s not about a test score, it’s about student achievement; it’s not about a standardized curriculum, it’s about good teaching; it’s not about the business model, it’s about personalization; it’s not about competition, it’s about cooperation. Until …

Continue reading The Hunger Games for Georgia schools: Less money, more mandates and micromanagement from Legislature »

I have been researching online/distance/virtual learning because our General Assembly was attempting to mandate it as part of the high school graduation requirements.

Last week, the bill was changed so online high school courses are not mandated, but encouraged.

And that was a good thing, given what I have been finding in talking to researchers and reading the research about online education.

I fear that uninformed investments in expanded online learning will lead Georgia down the same dead end that technology spending did 20 years ago. As a state, we wasted millions of dollars on impractical and unworkable technology because we allowed the vendors to tell us what schools needed.

School systems had computers they couldn’t operate. Stuff sat in boxes. Nothing connected. Lacking staff expertise, systems trusted the vendors, forgetting that their first allegiance was to profit margins.

Now, Georgia is at risk of wasting millions  on online learning because the well-funded and …

Continue reading Online learning: Before we rush down that path, make sure we know where we are going »