Principals slam 2014 NY Common Core tests as badly designed

Effective Writing Instruction 

(Originally titled “What Writing Is and Isn’t”)

“Let’s keep this in perspective,” says writer Jeff Anderson in an article in Educational Leadership. “The Common Core State Standards are a guiding document. Educators must look beyond the artificial boundaries assumed in such a document and dive into pedagogy, process, content knowledge, and research that reveals best practice in teaching…

What Teaching Is All About

In this evocative Boston Globe Magazine article, novelist Steve Almond remembers the precise moment when he felt literature come alive: his ninth-grade English teacher picked up a copy of The Catcher in the Rye and read the first chapter to the class. “Nearly every person I know has some version of this story,” says Almond: “The moment when a teacher changes the course of your life. A good teacher, after all,…

Robert E. Slavin

Director of the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University

Support Your Local Principal

April 2014

Dear_______________________

As you are profoundly aware, there has been much controversy surrounding not only the Common Core Learning Standards, but more specifically the testing of students in grades three through eight.    As an elementary principal I have had many conversations with parents regarding their concerns about testing.  I have also had many meetings with teachers who express their concerns about when the test is…

LAST week, the New York State Legislature struck a deal ensuring that …

 Most articles about Common Core try to  plunge into this extremely complex and unexplainable thing, and explain it. Good luck on that. Very quickly, everyone is adrift.

 I tried to do more of a panorama shot, standing well back. I argue that  Common Core is an unholy alliance between the wrong people (Bill Gates and our Education Establishment), both trying to sell the wrong ideas for the wrong…

How The College Admissions Process Works

Small Actions That Can Cut the Pyramid of Prejudice Down to Size

In this powerful Kappan article, David Light Shields (Saint Louis Community College) describes comments that are heard almost every day in schools:

• “Boys will be boys.”
• “That’s so gay!”
• “It figures that he’s good at math – he’s Asian.”
• “He throws like a girl.”
• “Oh,…

We've all had them, class clowns.  The April issue of Scholastic Parent and Child contains my "Field Guide to Class Clowns."  One of the most interesting and affirming things that I learned while researching this piece, is that it would be very unusual for a parent to be completely surprised when a teacher tells them their child is a class clown.  Parents would typically see "clowning" behavior at soccer practice, karate, or any other social situation.  Here is a sneak peek at the…