For those who are not hockey fans, players in the National Hockey League (NHL) have been on strike thus far this season.   A fourth grade teacher casually asked his class, “When does the NHL start?”  A student gleefully replied, “next week.”  This prompted another student to moan and groan, “oh no, not another test.”

At first blush this appears to be an innocent and seemingly humorous exchange.  It does, however, belie a more insidious reality.  It reveals what appears to be…

Measures of Effective Teaching: Final Reports

By Amber Winkler and Daniela Fairchild

Education Gadfly

After three years, $45 million, and a staggering amount of video content, the Gates Foundation has released the third and final set of reports on its ambitious Measurements in Effective Teaching (MET) project (the first two iterations are reviewed …

Does a Double Dose of Algebra Help High-School Students?

In this Education Next article, Kalena Cortes (Texas A&M University), Joshua Goodman (Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government), and Takako Nomi (St. Louis University) report on a follow-up study of 11,507 students who took a “double dose” of algebra in Chicago high schools. Researchers found that increased time in algebra resulted in minimal gains for most students, and for a subset of…

Robert Marzano on Analyzing Complex Texts

(Originally titled “Analyzing Complex Texts”)

In this Educational Leadership column, author/consultant Robert Marzano says that when students analyze a text’s structure, they should be aware of two levels: (a) the overall organization – for example, rising action, climax, falling action in literature or, in non-fiction, presenting and supporting a claim; and (b) the underlying…

7 Ways to Increase Student Ownership

We hear it all the time. "Students should take ownership of their school." But how do we make that happen?

Last spring, my colleagues and I began the process of…

January 9, 2012

Earlier today, Governor Cuomo propsed extending the school day/year.  Read about it here.

Happy reading,…

Petition to Governor Cuomo and the Legislature to End High Stakes Testing

By carolcorbettburris, December 29, 2012

We, the undersigned, support higher standards that are reasonably designed, implemented with care, and accompanied by the resources schools need to…

Confidence, as an educator, is something that is not a skill to be taught. It is not a method to be memorized. It is an attitude. It is a state of mind. It is also elusive to many educators. How do we foster confidence? How do we enable educators to be confident in their profession?

To answer the question of confidence, I rely on my understanding of what I know of my own struggles with confidence. I am only confident in areas that I have a proven knowledge of the subject. I…

January 8, 2012

Language Education We Can Use

As the global nature of work and life in the 21st century becomes clearer by the day, calls for a greater focus on international education and language learning are growing louder.…