Attendance is to school what rebounding is to basketball—it is hard work, requires effort and persistence, and it often goes unrewarded and unrecognized, but schools can’t be successful without it.
Archive for the ‘Accountability’ Category
No Educational Gifts under This Tree
May 14th, 2012
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In what other endeavor would an individual’s job and reputation be measured by the performance of people who had no vested interest in the outcome?
No more Xmas-treeing tests?
May 6th, 2012
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Unless everyone—students, teachers, administrators, schools, and school districts– is held accountable for student performance, there is not true accountability.
Value Added, Super Bowls and Education
April 14th, 2012
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By Stuart Singer, author of The Algebra Miracle A recent post discussed the controversial firing of a highly praised second year teacher in Washington DC who was the victim of that system’s value-added evaluation process. Sarah Wysocki, the teacher featured in the story, was terminated after her second year because her students did not reach [...]
When Value-Added Does Not Add Value
March 20th, 2012
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The details of Wysocki’s truncated career at a D.C. elementary school presents a road map of the missteps possible when districts incorporate student standardized test scores in teacher evaluations.
Will the Common Core State Standards really improve student achievement?
February 19th, 2012
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Standards don’t improve student achievement. Schools and teachers teaching more rigorous standards improve student performance.
Great Teaching Techniques Are Not Enough: Pt. 1
February 12th, 2012
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Teachers, particularly math teachers, who know their subjects better, improve student achievement more than teachers who have less expertise in their content areas. In other words, teachers have to know math before they can teach math, and the better they know it, the better they teach it.
The Wrong Message
January 25th, 2012
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Raising the age to 18 sent the right message to our students. Education is critically important!
Miss School and Miss Out
January 11th, 2012
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Tech Reality Check
January 10th, 2012
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School reform leaders say that they want the best school leaders and teachers working with the neediest students.
