Archive for the ‘Standards’ Category

Today’s AJC.com has a long piece on the new Common Core Standards and what they will mean to Georgia classrooms.

We began this discussion lat week on the blog with a piece by a high school English teacher on the amount of writing expected under the new standards.

Here is the view of another English teacher on the new standards and their implications for the classroom:

I am an English teacher and department chair at one of the better suburban high schools, and I think I am ahead of the teacher who wrote you in response to the English/Language Arts Common Core Performance Standards. I have watched, on my personal time, the four long hours of “webinars” from the state DOE on how the Common Core will change our English curriculum, and, other than the structure of my units and the quantity and quality of reading assignments my students will now have to master, the work load I will manage under the Common Core is not much different from the workload I already …

Continue reading New Common Core Standards: No more meaningless questions. More “why” and “how.” »

Still waiting for DOE to respond to this note a high school English teacher sent me last week:

I was just given a copy of the GaDOE’s Curriculum Maps for ELA 9-12th grades. I need some help from you before I quit my job and lead the charge for every other high school English teacher to do the same. I have taught for many years, am am good at my job, am an asset to the school at which I teach, and love teaching.

I have rolled with the punches of increased class size, decreased paycheck size and all the other gripe-worthy problems in education. I am not a whiner, a crier (literally or figuratively) or a complainer, but after today, having seen a document that reduced me to tears, I am inspired to leave teaching in the state of Georgia.

Today I saw the CCGPS Curriculum Map. I have provided the link for the 9th Grade ELA CCGPS Map for you.

If I am reading this document correctly, I have four nine- week sections. Fair enough. In each nine-week section I have to tackle one …

Continue reading An English teacher looks at the new student writing expectations and shrieks in horror. I would, too. »

In tandem with my earlier blog on the Fordham panel on digital learning, I want to direct you to a blog from Will Richardson, a former public school educator and author of several books on learning and technology.

Richardson writes in response to this week’s Education Innovation Summit at Arizona State University and begins with a series of tweets from educator and blogger Chris Lehmann about the Gates Foundation sponsored event. Lehmann is principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia and co-chair of EduCon.

Among Lehmann’s tweets about the summit: Educators – if you don’t see that there is a billion dollar industry wanting to take over schools using tech as the Trojan Horse, wake up…Jeb Bush has said: a) he does not read edu research. b) he does not care about anything that is not a test score. Problematic…This is what scares me – those who do not believe in schools will use edu-tech-speak to dismantle the things we hold most dear.

In his blog, Richardson …

Continue reading The business of education: Is the trend troubling you? »

I am at the annual daylong media symposium on education sponsored at the start of each legislative session by the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education.

It is always a great event as it brings education newsmakers into a room with reporters from across the state — including lots of young, bright journalists from suburban and rural papers. I am always impressed with the caliber of news writers from small-town papers here in Georgia.

On the agenda to speak today are state employees, John Barge, Bobby Cagle, Matt Cardoza, Erin Hames, Teresa MacCartney and elected lawmakers Brooks Coleman and Stacey Abrams. Also, Herb Garrett of the Georgia School Superintendents Association will speak. A highlight was Jadun McCarthy, 2012 Georgia Teacher of the Year, who is a fantastic speaker.

“We are being told you need to do more with less,” he said. “That sounds like a great philosophy. But it presupposes you weren’t doing the most that you could with what you had in the first …

Continue reading Blogging live today from ed event: New teacher evals and challenges »

The “Quality Counts” report issued each year by Education Week is considered a fair and comprehensive assessment of state efforts in education, so we have to applaud Georgia’s 7th place ranking.

Georgia earned a grade of B- or 79.7.

It is a nice change to view a color-coded map of the United States and see Georgia sharing a hue with Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey — three states known for their commitment to and their investment in education.

Georgia earns its highest marks for its standards — which I have to note were put in place under Kathy Cox, who often takes the rap for the math program. Georgia gets an A- for both its standards and school accountability. Under a category called “Transitions and Alignment,” it earns a bona fide A for early childhood education and economy and workforce.

However, Georgia gets an F in its most public of duties — status of k-12 achievement. The state also gets a D- for its spending.

The disparity in our grades raises questions: We …

Continue reading Georgia earns a 7th place ranking. Nice to see us up there with New York and Massachusetts for a change »

Our resident statistician, truth teller and blogger Jerry Eads suggested we start off the New Year and the new session of the Georgia General Assembly with this golden “oldie” about education myths from late researcher Jerry Bracey.

A nationally known debunker of education blather, Bracey often took me to task about something I wrote but was always willing to spend an hour on the phone showing me the error of my ways. In our last long phone conversation before he died at the age of 69, Bracey told me that Georgia didn’t really know what high scores on the CRCT — or any scores on the CRCT — meant in the long run to student performance.

From “our” own Jerry about the fabled Jerry Bracey:

Those of you who have been around me for more than five or ten minutes know that one of my favorite people in the world was Jerry Bracey, who I knew for nigh on 30 years. For those of you unfamiliar with his work, he was the outspoken critic of poorly done educational research and the endless …

Continue reading The top nine education myths by a much missed debunker »

A reader sent me a note, to which I sent a long reply. Concerned after reading in the AJC about all the problems in education lately, she asked a perfectly sane question: Is all hope lost?

I am sharing both her note and my reply as I thought this was a topic that could lead to some fruitful discussion.

Her note first:

I have been following the AJC’s articles about the APS scandal, then the FAMU tragedy, and there are always reports about charter schools in the news. I do not have children yet, but I clearly remember my elementary public school days (I transferred to a private school in sixth grade and graduated from there as well). While I’m quite sure I was unaware of the politics of education back then, I fail to understand now why public school education is so complicated to figure out.

My question, Maureen, is why is educating our children so difficult?

I’m the first to admit that my grasp of politics is tenuous at best. But I fail to understand why dozens and …

Continue reading Reading education news, a reader asks, “Is all hope lost?” »

I moderated an AJC panel tonight on education with terrific panelists; Fulton school chief Robert Avossa, City Schools of Decatur associate superintendent Thomas Van Soelen, Milken Educators Greg Ott of Fulton, Kelly Stopp of Gwinnett and Rachel Willis of APS and the Georgia Teacher of the Year Jadun McCarthy of Bibb, who is working with the state Department of Education during his reign.

Thanks to all of them for coming out on this rainy night, and thanks, too, to the audience members, including some Get Schooled readers and posters. Special thanks to the area school board members who attended.

I admired the candor of the teachers and the school administrators. This was my first exposure to Avossa, and I found him honest and sincere.  I also thought that he reacted well to Fulton teacher Ott’s comments that he feared teachers were no longer being told just what to teach but how to teach, and that the drive for sameness in every classroom was leading to mediocrity. Avossa was …

Continue reading AJC panel on education tonight: Candid and compelling. You should have been there. »

Georgia math classes will now be following the Common Core Georgia Performance Standards, but it is not the traditional path of old.

A math teacher sent me this informative e-mail, which I am sharing with the author’s permission. In essence, the teacher reports that state school chief John Barge has been telling groups that Georgia will follow “traditional” math in its Common Core Georgia Performance Standards — the merger of our state curriculum with the new Common Core State Standards.

But the teacher cautions that the “traditional” math path should not be viewed as  “going back to” how math was taught in the past, and that integration remains.

And the teacher says the same problems with math remain.

(Here is an earlier Get Schooled blog on this issue.)

Here is the teacher’s note:

Dr. Barge has announced to various groups over the past two days that Georgia will follow the “traditional” path for the Common Core Georgia Performance Standards in High School Math. I am sure …

Continue reading Math teacher: Whatever math is called, too much content, too little review. »

Will the GOP plan to gut the accountability provisions of No Child Left Behind improve education? (Dean Rohrer/AJC file)

Depending on where you stand — outside a school or inside — No Child Left Behind either pushed public education to new heights or kicked it to the curb.

Used by President George W. Bush as a cattle prod for greater student achievement, the 2001 law ramped up the federal role in schools and spawned a new lexicon of education acronyms, from AYP (adequate yearly progress) to NI (needs improvement).

The landmark legislation had standardized testing as its engine, causing critics to charge that the law reduced U.S. classrooms into “drill-and-kill” labs where worksheets and practice exams edged out science fairs and hands-on learning.  The unrelenting pressure to raise test scores caused educators in some schools, including many in Atlanta, to resort to cheating to mask disappointing AYP results.

Despite its Republican pedigree, a group of GOP senators, …

Continue reading No Child no more? Are GOP proposals to dump AYP a step forward or back? »