Bill Gates: It’s better to take longer to create new teacher evals than create bad ones. (Get Schooled)
Years into data-driven instruction, a study will examine whether it works. (Inside School Research)
A group making a set of Common Core tests wants help defining “college-ready.” (Curriculum Matters)
The head of a national private school consortium explains the sector’s position on data. (Class Struggle)
Stephen Lazar: Before extending the school day, let’s use the time we already have better. (SchoolBook)
A mother whose son fell short on a Regents exam says she’s just glad he didn’t cheat. (Insideschools)
Two teachers at a Bronx charter school say they were fired after getting pregnant. (El Diario/Voices of NY)
In Virginia, a reporter covering the city schools was also a paid consultant for them. Oops. (Romenesko)
A Congressional hearing delved into discipline in schools and alternatives to tough forms. (HuffPo)
Just because states have gotten NCLB waivers doesn’t mean won’t have to crunch data. (Politics K-12)
Teaching for the first time in two weeks, a teacher says summer brings new ideas. (Shoulders of Giants)
Anonymous
What Bill Gates is doing is what you do when you don’t know what you are doing. It’s okay to survey and observe if you’re preparing to interview someone or you’re doing research for a role. It’s not okay to blindly and inappropriately tinker where serious work must be done. And then to give speeches about it — granted he admits to having no models, essentially starting from scratch — that is not okay. We are not managers in some creative / technical division trying to come up with a product or enhance our software package. We aren’t making a product; this isn’t a game. We’re talking about human development, psychology, urban issues, social issues, educational convictions, philosophies, large-scale and local school issues and policies, curricula, styles, and on and on and on. We can certainly start from scratch though, those of us who actually have some sense of what we are doing and what we are up against.
Thank you, Bill, go home.
http://nyceducator.com/ NYC Educator
If Bill thinks we should take longer with teacher evaluations, he should not have encouraged the nonsense that’s sweeping the country, including VAM and Common Core. VAM appears to be little more accurate than eeney, meeney, miney, moe, and the Common Core Bill is imposing on the country has not been tested at all.
No wonder Windows is such a crappy operating system.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.