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…

Great Teachers Don't Always Want to Become Principals

The Common Core and Core Knowledge

(Originally titled “Why Content Is King”)

“Text complexity, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder,” say E.D. Hirsch Jr. and Lisa Hansel (Core Knowledge Foundation) in this Educational Leadership article. “Simple or dense, fictional or informational, what matters most for comprehension of a particular text is whether the reader has knowledge relevant to the text.” Which student will…

Toy Story

By BILL…

Not Feeling the Love

In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, Allison Vaillancourt (University of Arizona) tells about a colleague who is thinking seriously about leaving the university despite having an important role, being exceptionally well regarded, frequently hearing validation from colleagues, enjoying his work, and having strong ties to the university and the community. Why? Because the senior leadership doesn’t tell him that his…

Ten Pieces of Advice for a Job Interview

In this helpful Chronicle of Higher Education article, Robert Sternberg (University of Wyoming) offers suggestions for those about go before a hiring committee:

• Ask in advance if there are concerns about your record. Most interviewers have one or more questions about your credentials or suitability for the job, and it’s wise to find out about them before the…

What Motivates Educators to Work Harder and Smarter?

In this thoughtful Education Week article, Deborah Stipek (Stanford University) says the theory of action behind America’s current accountability movement is that rewards and punishments will motivate teachers and administrators to do better work. Behaviorism is a well-accepted theory of human motivation, but decades of research have shown that for people to change, three elements must be…