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Showing posts with the label instructional materials

Important Reading on Teaching and Outcomes

The first comes from an interview in the American Psychological Association with psychologist Daniel Willingham, PhD who has a new book coming out called, "Raising Readers in the Age of Distraction." The interview, though, was about education and teachers and what works.  I do not think that anything he says will come as ANY surprise to teachers. I find it all basic, reasonable and, as he says, common sense.  The truth is that most teachers in my experience really have a lot of common sense. There are ideas that are peddled to them that are wrong, but most teachers are pretty skeptical of them. They're in the classroom every day, so they have a sense of what works and what doesn't work with kids. On evidence-based techniques for the classroom: One reason is that what works in the lab doesn't always work in the classroom. In the laboratory, we're typically looking at one or two variables at a time, whereas in the classroom, there are lots of variab...

Seattle Schools This Week

Monday, August 12 Curriculum and Instruction Policy Committee Mtg , 4-6 pm.  Agenda A lot of BARs for various partnerships with outside entities for services.  One, for Special Ed services via the Northwest School of Innovative Learning, caught my eye because I know they were being sued in 2011while a student in the Puyallup School District was in their school.  The student's family alleged physical mistreatment.  Might be good if the Directors know the outcome of that lawsuit. Also, some discussion scheduled for Policy 313, Student Assignment, Policy 2015, Selection/Adoption of Instructional Materials and Policy 2415, High School Graduation Requirements.   Wednesday, August 14th Executive Committee Meeting - 8:30-10 am.  Agenda Review of the upcoming Board meetings for August 21st and September 4th. Discussion around amending Policy 1400 and Policy 6114, and the next Board Retreat. Policy 1400 is "Meeting Conduct, Order of Business and Quorum....

Common Core Roundup

The fight is still on in many states over Common Core.  New wrinkles have emerged like all kinds of products "aligned" to Common Core and being pushed to states. First (and thanks to Dan Dempsy) is a YouTube video from Ben Swann on the issues around Common Core.   This is the best, most distilled down information on CC I have ever heard.  Recommended. Think CC isn't linked to DOE money?  I'll let Diane Ravitch tell you what happened to Georgia: A few days ago, Georgia announced that it was dropping out of PARCC, the Common Core testing consortium funded by the U.S. Department of Education. State officials said the state could not afford the technology or the cost. The U.S. Department of Education was swift to respond. It wrote Georgia to warn that it is withholding $10 million from the state’s Race to the Top funding . Maybe the timing was a coincidence. Maybe not.  The state says it needs more time to fix its educator evaluation system befo...