Education policy takes u-turn exposing next-steps for educators to put into classroom practice.

It’s ok; I was just . . .

Howard Pitler on how teachers can become Instructional Coaches and what to expect.

I recently saw this meme online and my immediate reaction was one of sadness. Channeling my best Jerry Seinfeld, what’s the deal with letter grades anyway? For too many students the main goal in school is to get that perfect 4.0 grade point average (GPA). That is of course unless your school uses some version of a weighted GPA and then the target might be a 4.5 or a 5.0. Still, the traditional 4.0 has meaning. Right? Wrong! If that were true, then a 4.0 earned by a child in school A would be essentially the same as a 4.0 in school B, even if they were in different towns or even different states. The reality is there is almost no inter-rater reliability between teachers, schools, and districts in how they assign grades. I think we can all remember picking classes in high school or college because Ms. Jones was …

Last week I wrote that educational goals without plans are just wishes. Toward the end of that article I wrote:

There is much discussion on Twitter and LinkedIn about Carol Dweck’s great work on mindsets. Schools are putting up posters touting ways to develop a growth mindset. I have created a few graphics myself on building a growth mindset in students and teachers and the educator’s mindset.

In the 2009 animated movie “UP” by Pixar, the dogs in the movie are easily distracted by the presence of squirrels. Right in the middle of the action, while the dogs are keenly focused on a task or objective, we hear the word “squirrel”, the action freezes, and the dogs all look in the direction of the squirrel. Technology is sometimes the “squirrel” in education. I believe technology has the potential to dramatically improve the learning experience for students. All too often that potential isn’t been reached. Why is that? Here is one scenario. An app or product hits the market and teachers immediately ask, “how can I use this with my class?” 3D printing is a good example. The price point is now reasonable for many schools to purchase 3D printers and I am seeing more and more media centers and classrooms equipped with 3D printers. I also see …

School districts are under pressure from the federal government, foundations, and states to include value-added assessment as a part of a teacher’s evaluation to meet the widely supported policy goal of identifying the most effective and the least effective teachers in a school system. On its face, the argument for value-added models (VAM) seems to make sense. How well a student does after a year with a teacher should serve as an indicator of how effective that teacher was. But by what measures? How valid are those measures? If the student measure is a score on a standardized test, what evidence do we have to indicate the standardized test accurately measures teacher effectiveness? Which students are being compared?