Marketplace (8/5) reports on the current debate over student data, noting that educators are “grappling” with what data to collect, how to utilize it, and how to protect it. The article reports that student data “has never played a greater role in education, particularly as schools move to models of ‘personalized learning,’” but notes that this comes with concerns about privacy and marketing firms using such data. The piece notes that ED has issued guidance on student data responsibilities, and notes that Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA) and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) have introduced legislation to protect student data.
Education Author Touts Book About Improving Teacher Training
USA Today (8/4, Toppo) interviews journalist Elizabeth Green whose new book Building a Better Teacher is out this week. During the interview Green answers questions related to what got her interested in reporting on education, her thoughts on improving teacher quality, and her beliefs about what makes a good teacher.
New Book Calls For Better Prepared Teachers
In a book review on Inside Higher Ed (8/1), Charlie Typson writes that a new book by Elisabeth Green “Building a Better Teacher: How Teaching Works (and How to Teach It to Everyone)” is being published this month. Green criticizes what the calls the “myth of the natural-born teacher” and argues that our “education schools” are not doing enough to prepare teachers for the classroom. She says teachers must develop specific skills, including “the ability to understand why students make the mistakes they do; the ability to assess the merits of a textbook or a curriculum for a particular class; the ability to communicate with parents and guardians; and more expertise in their subjects.” Green also calls for more “practice-oriented approach to teacher education,” which she says has been “too divorced from what goes on in real classrooms.”
NPR Explores New Concepts In Elementary Common Core Math
NPR’s All Things Considered (7/31) broadcast a segment in its series on the Common Core Standards focusing on how “the standards work in a second-grade math class.” The reporter discusses her own daughter’s use of “partial sums” for addition, explaining that though she herself found the concept to be alien, the Common Core requires that her daughter not only master it, but also be able to explain it. A transcript of this segment can be seen here (7/30, Alvarez).
Schools Use iPads For Professional Development
THE Journal (7/30) reports on how three school districts across America are using iPads in their districts to benefit professional development of their teachers. For example, Charleston County School District in South Carolina uses the iPads to provide flipped PD to its teachers to deliver blended learning for recertification courses. The article also looks at how a Colorado School district is using the technology to provide teacher support, and how a California school district is using it for webinar-based training and student instruction
Polls Across Past Few Decades Show General Support For National Standards, Curriculum
Catherine Gewertz writes at the Education Week (7/31) “Rules for Engagement” blog about an Education Week article published in 1989 about a Gallup poll indicating that most Americans “would welcome the establishment of national achievement standards and a national curriculum for public schools.” Gewertz notes that this contrasts with the current state of “stories piling up about common-core backlash and states withdrawing from the shared standards.” However, she writes that two national polls released earlier this year “found substantial support for shared standards across states
Analysis: States’ Move Away From Common Core Likely Superficial
Education Week (7/30, Ujifusa) explores the impact of actions in a number of states in recent weeks in which they are either reexamining their participation in the Common Core Standards, or in which governors have “distanced themselves from the standards,” noting that despite this apparent softening of support, it is unclear “what exactly those opponents have won.” The piece suggests that changes to the standards in such states may be superficial or cosmetic, noting that there is little evidence “that the states backing away from the common core, or considering doing so, will ultimately produce anything that is truly different from those standards.”
Special Education Administrators Submit Amicus Briefs Challenging “Stay Put” Brief
The Education Week (7/30, Samuels) reports the National Association of State Directors of Special Education and the National School Boards Association filed an amicus brief on July 28 in the M.R. et al v. Ridley School District urging the Supreme Court to review the “stay Put” ruling. The current case challenges the law, which says that students in special education disputes can stay in private school at the cost of the school district while their cases move through the judicial system. The amicus brief argues that the stay put law puts a significant financial burden on school districts and provides incentives for parents to draw out cases as long as possible.
Survey Shows Disparities In Harassment Between High School Males And Females
The Washington Post (7/29, Rich) reports that information from the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights shows that “disparities between bullying and harassment on the basis of sex increase between boys and girls” as they grow older. The report shows that harassment is almost 56 percent higher for girls in traditional high schools than it is for males of the same age. The self-reported data “likely understates the problem” since the question is new on the Office of Civil Rights’ survey.
Salon (7/29, Kutner) reports that while the report shows that girls receive higher rates of harassment than males at all ages, the data “makes huge jumps from elementary to middle to high school.” The article writes that the data shows that the data and the accompanying chart show that “school bullying disparity isn’t just a gender problem in education. It’s.. how boys and girls learn sexual harassment in the classroom.
Special Education Students’ Ability To Meet Common Core Standards Debated
A Hechinger Report (7/30) article describes the EngageNY curriculum developed by the New York State Education Department to coordinate with the Common Core Standards, and profiles a special-needs teacher who initially opposed the Common Core because she worried that her fourth-grade students, “whose reading is two to three levels below others their age, would be unable to handle the increased rigor along with a scripted approach to teaching and learning.” The piece describes how teachers have had to “modify” the materials to “meet the diverse needs” of their students. The article says that it is uncertain “whether students with disabilities can meet these new, more rigorous standards.”
Common Core Supporters Say They Must Up Public Outreach Efforts
Politico (7/29, Simon) reports that, after a “firestorm of opposition...took them by surprise,” supporters of the Common Core Standards have spent a lot of money to convince state legislators to keep the new guidelines. However, the standards’ top promoters admit “they’re losing the broader public debate.” Part of the reason is that schoolwork produced by well-educated kids isn’t interesting, while “a nonsensical math problem” could go viral, even if it has nothing to do with the common core. Similarly, “parents can — and do — blame” the Common Core for confusing material, bad grades, and kids’ stress, even if the new standards aren’t involved. While many “opponents’ claims are misleading or outright false,” they tap “a populist anger” and leave an impression, while supporters have tended to rely on dry facts in promoting the standards and focused on wooing state legislators, not parents. Common Core supporters are planning “a major reboot” of their efforts in which they seek to create anger over the current state of public education and excitement over prospects for change.
California To Verify Students Are Receiving Required Amount Of Physical Education
The Los Angeles Times (7/28, Hayden) reports that Los Angeles Unified School District is asking teachers to show that they are providing Kindergarten through sixth grade students with the state-required 200 minutes of physical education for every 10 days of class. The teaches are being required to show the minutes in their lesson plans in response to a lawsuit filed earlier this year that alleges school districts throughout the state have been ignoring the law. The records will be compared to information that school administrators have already submitted to the California Department of Education verifying the number of PE hours students receive.
New York Groups File Lawsuit Challenging Teacher Tenure Laws
NPR (7/29, Hogan) reports in its “Ed” blog that on Monday a group parents and advocates in New York City filed a law suit challenging the state’s teacher tenure laws. The law suits look to build off the Vergara v. California ruling that challenged similar laws and found them unconstitutional. Critics of the laws argue that teachers receive tenure too quickly, that the “last-in, first-out” seniority rules dismisses younger teachers before older teachers without considering a teacher’s effectiveness, and firing low-performing teachers involves too much red tape.
The Washington Post (7/28, Layton) reports that former television journalist Campbell Brown is leading one of the advocacy groups that is challenging the tenure laws. Brown was a former CNN anchor, and “contends that job protections for teachers are archaic” and inhibit school systems. The lawsuit claims that the laws are especially inhibiting poor, minority
Money Means Students May Have Vastly Different Summer Experiences, Futures
The San Jose (CA) Mercury News (7/28, Noguchisnoguchi) examines “the stark contrast” between what affluent kids can do in the summer with what “have-not children” do, finding that money makes a difference and pointing out that “a 2013 Rand Corp. study found wealthier students often gain ground in the summer while low-income students fall back, and that this summer slide is cumulative.” In other words, according to the study, “It may be that efforts to close the achievement gap during the school year alone will be unsuccessful.” The report contrasts the experiences of students such as Christopher Leon-Sanchez of San Jose who “has never traveled out of state or even attended a summer camp” with “some affluent kids” who “shoot hoops at a $69 two-hour basketball session with the Harlem Globetrotters, ride Arabian horses for $525 a week or visit Costa Rica for a $3,500 two-week study of sea turtles.”
Some Teachers, States Won’t Give Up On Cursive Writing
USA Today (7/27, Creno) carries an Arizona Republic report on the determination of some teachers – and states – to teach cursive writing, “one of the most controversial topics in American education.” At Lowell Elementary School in Mesa, teacher Brittney Chapman’s class of third graders are among “the poorest in Mesa Public Schools, and many do not have access to computers outside of school.” Arizona doesn’t require that cursive writing be taught, but Chapman “often makes her students write in cursive, and she writes assignments in cursive on the board to help the third graders learn how to read the script.” The report says some states are also rethinking the Common Core position that cursive writing isn’t mandatory, and “seven states – California, Idaho, Kansas, Massachusetts, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee – are either debating or have recently mandated that cursive be brought back to the classroom.”
Administration Holds Gathering Focused On Improving High School Counseling
Inside Higher Ed (7/29, Stratford) reports that the Administration held a gathering of higher education experts at the Harvard Graduate School of Education on Monday focused on “digging into the trenches on school counseling: best practices in college counseling, how to better-train counselors, and how to harness new technology to help students.” The article notes that experts cited increasingly overworked counselors--notably at high schools in low-income areas--and called for more investment.
Berkeley Middle School For Boys Lets Them Grow Into Self-Reliance
In the special “All Things Considered” series “Men in America,” NPR (7/27, Westervelt) reports on its website with embedded audio on the East Bay School for Boys in Berkeley, California, “a private, non-profit middle school” that “is trying to reimagine what it means to build confident young men.” In some cases, that means that “the sparks of inspiration result in, well, actual sparks,” because “the school’s different approach starts with directing, not stifling, boys’ frenetic energy.” School director Jason Baeten describes the school’s goal as one in which boys “can make mistakes, be vulnerable and learn to be self-reliant,” according to NPR, and that approach results in this such as “trying to upend tradition is by re-inventing shop class for the 21st century.” The school calls it simply “work.”
Nocera: New Book On Teacher Training Is A Must-Read
Columnist Joe Nocera writes in the New York Times (7/29, Nocera, Subscription Publication) that having teachers learn on the job “just shouldn’t cut it anymore.” Nocera spends the bulk of his article quoting excerpts from Elizabeth Green’s forthcoming book “Building a Better Teacher: How Teaching Works (and How to Teach It to Everyone).” The book addresses ways to improve the teaching of teaching, and he advocates that it ought to make the New York Times best-seller list. Nocera calls some of the recent steps in teacher training “small-scale successes” and ends by encouraging the use of those successes to reach every kid and train every teacher.
AFT, NEA United In Opposition To Duncan, Concerns About Common Core
Education Week (7/25, Sawchuk, Heitin) reports that the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers could be embarking on a new era of collaboration, noting that the unions are being driven by “a remarkable policy convergence.” The piece notes that both unions have recently “passed resolutions targeting US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan,” both have fought using standardized testing as a major component of teacher evaluations, and concerns about the implementation of the Common Core Standards. The piece concedes that there are “stark and many” differences between the two unions.
US Teachers See Limited Success In Overhauling Math Instruction
In a piece for the New York Times (7/24, Subscription Publication), author Elizabeth Green profiles Akihiko Takahashi, a leading Japanese math teacher who derived his pedagogical ideas from such American reformers as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, “which published manifestoes throughout the 1980s, prescribing radical changes in the teaching of math.” When Takahashi “got the opportunity to take a new job in America, teaching at a school run by the Japanese Education Ministry for expats in Chicago,” he was dismayed to find that classrooms in the US typically use old-fashioned techniques based on repetition and drills. The article suggests that this “wasn’t the first time that Americans had dreamed up a better way to teach math and then failed to implement it,” noting that often teachers are told to implement innovations without sufficient training or support.
