Hot Topics – controversial

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?

By Greg Botelho
(CNN) The United States’ two biggest school districts get the same threat.
One — in Los Angeles — decides to call off school, with the superintendent saying students won’t go back until he’s absolutely sure everything is safe.
The other — in New York — decides just the opposite, dismissing the threat as an apparent “hoax.”

The Great Recession may be officially over, but state spending on K-12 education hasn’t recovered.

With his signature Thursday, President Barack Obama is setting the nation’s public schools on a sweeping new course of accountability that will change the way teachers are evaluated and how the poorest performing schools are pushed to improve.

Dr. Megan Nickels is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics Education in the College of Education and Human Performance at the University of Central Florida. Nickels researches how children with critical and terminal illnesses (cancer, HIV/AIDS, sickle-cell disease, etc.) learn mathematics through the use of educational robotics, conducting her research using Wonder Workshop’s Dash and Dot robots and the Lego Mindstorms EV3 robotics kits.

By Enmarie Huetteman and Motoko Rich

By Bill Bush If the state of Ohio’s transition to new proficiency tests didn’t kill the “parent trigger,” it’s put it on life support. The GOP-backed law that created the …

By Claire McInerny  A generation ago, a high school diploma could open doors, especially to well-paying manufacturing jobs. But today, with technology radically reshaping the U.S. economy, many of those …

Donna Krache talks to educators who are using STEM-focused skills to teach social studies in the hopes of preparing the next generation to be informed citizens.