John King is trying to repair the Obama administration’s frayed relationship with teachers
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/john-king-is-trying-to-repair-the-obama-administrations-frayed-relationship-with-teachers/2016/02/19/a28b88de-d666-11e5-9823-02b905009f99_story.html
Emma Brown February 20
In one of his first major speeches as acting U.S. secretary of education, John King apologized to teachers for the role that the federal government has played in creating a climate in which teachers feel “attacked and unfairly blamed.”
Race to the Top, abbreviated R2T, RTTT or RTT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_Top
More on NCLB in this blog:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/?s=no+child+left+behind&submit=Search
New Education Law Passes, With A Power Shift Back To The States
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/12/09/459067407/the-new-education-law-passes-with-a-power-shift-back-to-the-states
The new version — called the Every Student Succeeds Act — returns much government oversight of schools to the states and curtails or eliminates the federal role in many areas. Critics of NCLB are celebrating its demise.
Critics say there’s no guarantee that states will succeed where the old law failed in two crucial areas: closing the achievement gap and raising the performance of the absolute worst schools.
“The real test is going to be whether there is the political will to take data and turn it into action versus just reporting what they’ve been reporting for the last 15 years,” Wise says.
Austin Ouellette
For heavens sake, there are countries that are getting education right. Why can’t we just look at what they are doing and tailor those methods to suit our needs? Japan, Australia, Norway, Finland, France, Germany are all countries that have some very impressive education systems that WORK!
Americans really need to wake up!
OPINION: Arne Duncan, the fallible narrator
OPINION: Arne Duncan, the fallible narrator
Aaron Pallas weighs in on Arne Duncan’s “How Schools Work: An Inside Account of Failure and Success from One of the Nation’s Longest-Serving Secretaries of Education”
The 53-year-old Duncan has been, in my view, the most influential of the 11 Secretaries of Education since the founding of the U.S. Department of Education in 1980.
That’s not necessarily a compliment. Mr. Chips was influential. So was Walter White of Breaking Bad.
the essential contradiction of Arne Duncan: He claims to be driven by data, but he prefers a good story.
Duncan devotes three of the 10 chapters in his book to the Race to the Top competition, the basis for my claim that he has been the most influential Secretary of Education in American history. This competition propelled many states to alter their education laws and policies to bolster their chances of feeding at a $4.4 billion federal trough in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Even states that ultimately were not awarded Race to the Top funds bent their policies toward the competition’s priorities. What a brilliant stroke! Even the chance of a carrot had the desired effect! (A federally funded evaluation concluded that, because academic performance in the states that won awards was already trending upward at the time of the awards, the effect of Race to the Top on students’ academic learning was unclear.)
It’s a small leap to conclude that a great teacher is defined by the ability to raise test scores.
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more on RTTT and NCLB in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=nclb
A Former Education Secretary’s Advice For Betsy DeVos
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more on NCLB
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=no+child+left
It is on its way out. But not exactly. Can it get more confusing as it is… Apparently, it can…
Obama Administration Calls for Limits on Testing in Schools
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/us/obama-administration-calls-for-limits-on-testing-in-schools.html
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/10/24/obama-announces-end-of-no-child-left-behind-era-education-is-more-than-tests/
why did this administration had to continue the insanity called NCLB from the previous one [for two presidential mandates]?
Reforming No Child Left Behind
https://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/education/k-12/reforming-no-child-left-behind
One Step Closer to Life After No Child Left Behind
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/07/one-step-closer-to-life-after-no-child-left-behind/398801/
The new law—the Every Child Achieves Act—would give much of that decision-making power back to states. Instead of the feds, state-level officials would determine how to assess academic performance, what counts as a struggling school, and which mechanisms to use to hold educators accountable for achievement. No more top-down reforms. No more mandatory interventions. No more Washington, D.C., bureaucrats stepping on the toes of local policymakers and educators who are much more in tune with their communities’ needs.
Right? Of course not. There’s plenty of important nuance here, and the legislative tug-of-war is just getting started.
Eight problems with Common Core Standards By Valerie Strauss August 21, 2012
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/eight-problems-with-common-core-standards/2012/08/21/821b300a-e4e7-11e1-8f62-58260e3940a0_blog.html
Could Rubric-Based Grading Be the Assessment of the Future?
http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/10/14/could-rubric-based-grading-be-the-assessment-of-the-future/
I use rubrics and see the positive sides as well as appreciate the structure they bring in assessment. But this article makes me see also the danger of rubrics being applied as a harness, another debacle no different from NCLB and testings scores, which plague this nation’s education in the last two decades. The same “standardizing” as in Quality Matter, which can bring some clarity and structure, but also can stifle any creativity, which steers “out of the norm.” A walk on such path opens the door to another educational assembly line, where adjunct and hourly for-hire instructors will teach pre-done content and assess with the rubrics in a fast-food manner.
a consortium of 59 universities and community colleges in nine states is working to develop a rubric-based assessment system that would allow them to measure these crucial skills within ongoing coursework that students produce.
written communication, critical thinking and quantitative literacy. The faculty worked together to write rubrics (called Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education or VALUE rubrics) that laid out what a progression of these skills looks like.
“These rubrics are designed to be cross-disciplinary,” explained Bonnie Orcutt
Parents and teachers are pushing back against blunt assessment instruments like standardized tests, and are looking for a way to hold schools accountable that doesn’t mean taking time away from class work.