NYSRSAS Position Paper on

High-Stakes Testing in New York State

As former school administrators/supervisors and residents of school districts in New York, the New York State Retired School Administrators and Supervisors [NYSRSAS] are concerned about the current state of high-stakes testing in our schools.  

It is our position that the impact of current testing on children, teachers, administrators and…

Is It Better to Have a Great Teacher or a Small Class?

Why America's Prep Schools Aren't Following Arne Duncan's Public School Education Reforms

Good+You

Shaun Johnson

http://www.good.is/posts/why-america-s-prep-schools-aren-t-following-arne-duncan-s-public-school-education-reforms

Using Blogs and Twitter to Improve Teaching and Learning

In this Kappan article, William Ferriter (a North Carolina sixth-grade teacher) and Nicholas Provenzano (a Michigan high-school English teacher) sing the praises of the two-way conversation with fellow teachers around the world made possible by blogs and Twitter (Provenzano’s The Nerdy Teacher has almost 30,000 Twitter followers), and the “unconferences” they…

I originally posted this last year:

I wish everybody in education could read this piece: "Education's Intellectual Machinery Is Broken."

The thesis is that most of what we see discussed in the media is secondary. 

So what is primary? Public schools are handicapped by inferior…

What if Kennedy wasn't assassinated?  Would the U.S. have entered Vietnam when we did?  Would the  Civil Rights Act have been passed when it was?  These are questions posed by Stephen King's 11/22/63.  For time travel, historical fiction, rhetorical questions and even a romance, read Stephen King's 864-page book, 11/22/63.

Happy reading,

Christine…

Russ on Reading: The Common Core in English/Language Arts: A Critically Literate Reading

Test, Punish, and Push Out: How "Zero-Tolerance" and High-Stakes Testing Funnel Youth Into the School To Prison Pipeline

A report by The Advancement Project

Advancement Project is an innovative civil rights law, policy, and

communications “action tank” that advances universal…

Universal Design for Assessment

In this article in Better: Evidence-Based Education, Benjamin Lovett (Elmira College) agues that giving students with special needs extra time on tests is not always appropriate. “Giving extended time accommodations is an attractive solution when young people with disabilities perform poorly on school assessments,” says Lovett. “The accommodations can raise performance, and they have also been shown to reduce…

Highly Effective Study Strategies

In this helpful article in American Educator, John Dunlosky (Kent State University) summarizes the research he and several colleagues have done on the most effective methods of studying. [For a more detailed report on this research, see Marshall Memo 470.] It turns out that the strategy used most often by students – reading, re-reading, and highlighting – is one of the least-effective ways to retain…

Finding and Replicating Successful Practices 

In this intriguing Kappan article, Arvind Singhal (University of Texas/El Paso) says that every community has positive deviants – “individuals or groups whose uncommon behaviors and strategies enable them to find better solutions to problems than their peers although everyone has access to the same resources and challenges.” The challenge for change agents is (a) spotting the positive deviants, who…

When my children and I started reading When Did You See Her Last? my son commented on how long it takes authors to release new books.  I told him I didn't remember how long ago Lemony Snicket's last book came out.  He said, "Sure you do.  Don't you remember we read it in the dark, in the den during Hurricane Sandy?"

And suddenly it all came flooding back to me.  Not just the memory of reading that book, but the memories of reading significant books in my life.  Speechless and…