Comments on: Into crowded field of school data comes a user-friendly report

By: Diana Senechal

Diana Senechal — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 12:07:00 +0000

I didn’t take Hemphill’s comment as malicious or insulting. Her point was that when teachers are faced with an impossible workload, they have to cut corners somewhere. Theodore Sizer makes a similar point, at length, in Horace’s Compromise. Now, teachers may differ in how and where they cut corners. Some may give frequent assignments but focus only on one aspect of them when grading. Some may give detailed comments on select assignments and mainly spot-check the others. Some may give frequent assignments, grade and comment on them thoroughly, and give up their personal lives and hours of sleep. None of these solutions is optimal.

By: Guest

Guest — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 00:20:00 +0000

I resent this statement:

Class size on its own might not indicate school quality, Hemphill said, but large classes mean teachers are less likely to assign rigorous work that is challenging to grade.I had 34 kids in each class (170 kids total) and I gave rigorous work continuously (which took hours and hours to grade). Most teachers do. This is just another slap in the face.

By: NYCparent

NYCparent — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 23:42:00 +0000

“I don’t get that many questions about curriculum. I think there are a lot of assumptions. I don’t think [parents] realize how much curriculum is in the hands of individual teachers and individual principals,”
Nor do they realize how much curriculum can be ELIMINATED by the DOE’s capricious budget cuts. My son and many of his peers could not take calculus this year after a $1,000,000 cut to his high school’s budget. ”Let’s improve STEM?” Idiotic ads from Exon exhorting America to support science and math education? Please. Here were kids ready, willing and able to take higher math, cut out for no reason at all, except that the DOE wants to shut down public education.

My son is taking it online so he doesn’t get behind, just as Shael Suransky suggested students could do in recent City Council hearings. For me, online education is a major cop-out on the part of the Ed Reformers. Meanwhile, to whom do I send the bill?

By: Diana Senechal

Diana Senechal — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 23:35:00 +0000

Great panel discussion this morning. An interesting and inspiring event.

By: Mary Conway-Spiegel

Mary Conway-Spiegel — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 23:02:00 +0000

In my experience, especially when talking to High School students, they tend to highlight the negative. For example, most students complain about scanners in schools, but off the record they admit enjoying the safety they feel as a result of scanners screening each incoming student.

By: science teacher

science teacher — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 21:27:00 +0000

Very impressive statistics. They seem much more helpful, or easier to understand than the statistics one can see via DOE school stats.

a teacher at the HS for Math, Science and Engineering at CCNY