Entries Tagged 'Media Reviews' ↓

Education Week (online, January 6, 2012):

Popular Frameworks Found to Identify Effective Teachers

Descriptor:

For this study, the researchers broadened the list of outcomes slightly to include a measure of student effort and emotional engagement. Students taught by the teachers studied reported, for instance, on whether they pushed themselves to understand lessons in the class, and whether they felt happy in class.

Who doesn’t already know that teachers whose students “pushed themselves to understand lessons,” and “felt happy in class” will get better results than teachers with students who did not push themselves to understand lessons and who were not happy in class?

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Scholarly Crap:

Here is another recommendation for what we should teach in public schools, complete with complicated qualifications:

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/10/26/09rumberger_ep.h31.html?tkn=OLYFtreV4voT%2FW7RAccRvXg87EF1JSnhFISv&cmp=ENL-EU-VIEWS1

From the article:

So, instead of defining high school success solely in terms of mastering a common, college-preparatory curriculum, we should develop a broader and more individualized measure of high school success where students achieve a sense of competency by demonstrating mastery in an area that most interests them—whether it is math, physics, cooking, mechanics, or sports—while achieving acceptable proficiency in core academic areas.

Educators should teach young people “math, physics, cooking, mechanics, or sports” and core academics.  Is this a new idea?  How many of these do we pump out each year?  How is that working?

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Psychology Crap

Several years ago I read Howard Gardner’s The Disciplined Mind; and I thought, “Truth, beauty and goodness are ideals, not virtues.  This is an incredibly ironic book title.”

Those thoughts returned when I read Gardner’s recent response to critics:

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/09/21/04gardner_ep.h31.html?tkn=VQNF5hjTxvm0j2RhMQNzLtXPUG2ElOSgmJN2&cmp=ENL-EU-VIEWS1

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I am troubled by Ron Suskind’s description of the Obama White House during the economic crisis of 2009:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/15/tim-geithner-ignored-obama-order_n_965404.html

He paints a not-so-pretty picture of the White House discussion.  We were confronting an economic disaster, and getting elected president does not make one expert in everything Americans care about.  Every president has to rely on the advice of experts.

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The Washington Post headline reads, “Evaluation of DC Teachers is a Delicate Conversation:”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/evaluating-teachers-is-a-delicate-conversation/2011/03/09/ABpPILn_story.html

The article is about a teacher who wanted to know why a “master educator” evaluator gave him a low grade on his math lesson:

Master Educator:  This does not measure your effort . . . But I do see your effort . . .

Math Teacher: So — what is this measuring?

Master Educator: It’s measuring the effectiveness of that effort . . .

Really?

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Thomas Friedman (The World is Flat, 2005) quotes Bill Gates as saying this about “open-sourcing” and innovation:

You need capitalism [to drive innovation.] To have [a movement] that says innovation does not deserve an economic reward is contrary to where the world is going.  When I talk to the Chinese, they dream of starting a company.  They are not thinking, ‘I will be a barber during the day and do free software at night.’ . . . When you have a security crisis in your software system, you don’t want to say, ‘Where is the guy at the barbershop?’ (p. 101)

Are these the words of a visionary?  Do they assume and promote the best about human nature, or the worst?

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Bill Gates Metaphor Crap

In his interview with the Wall Street Journal, Bill Gates presents three metaphors for teaching.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703858404576214593545938506.html?mod=dist_smartbrief

Q: Do you think it is possible for school districts to build great teachers?

A: Absolutely. But the amount of research into what great teachers do has been so slow that you can’t make huge improvements in the average….Even professions like long-jump or tackling people on a football field or hitting a baseball, the average ability is so much higher today because there’s this great feedback system, measurement system.

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For every question about improving education, my answer is the same – bring understanding, imagination strong character, courage, humility and generosity to the situation.  This is always my answer because this is an inspiring, useful definition of what it means to be educated.  It inspires and challenges teachers and students as it tells them what to do in every situation —  bring understanding, imagination strong character, courage, humility and generosity.

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This headline recently caught my eye: “Using Research to Predict Great Teachers.”  Here is the link:  http://www.hepg.org/hel/article/501

It reminded me of the 1990s, when school districts used the Teacher- and Administrator-Perceiver Instruments to hire teachers and principals.  According to the developers, research found that “effective” teachers and principals used certain words more frequently than “ineffective” ones.

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The May issue of Principal Leadership published by NASSP (the National Association of Secondary School Principals) describes the award winners of the “MetLife Foundation — NASSP Breakthrough School Project.”  Ten schools were honored for meeting “academic requirements despite high poverty and other challenges” (Umphrey, p. 4).

None of the school turnaround stories mentioned either the word “virtue,” or any of the six virtues of the educated person.  As I read the accounts, however, it was clear that, in every case the adults and students in those schools brought to bear understanding, imagination, strong character, courage, humility and generosity.

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