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More Reflections on Change by a Veteran Teacher Still Going After Many Years of School Reform
The increased motor activity level in my sister in law Ticia’s classrooms over forty years of teaching seems to signal an increase in kids with disabilities, Attention Deficit Disorder with or without Hyperactivity the most obviously.
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Tagged changes school climate, effects poverty school progress, Florida class size, instructional aides classroom assist, low income school, online resources workshops curricula, reflections change veteran teacher years school reform, South Florida No Child Left Behind, support services for special education, teacher micromanaged, technology kids' learning, testing disturbing questions learning
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Many Years of School Reform: A Veteran Teacher Reflects on Changes in Kids and the Classroom
The attention span of young kids in particular has shortened, both in the intellectual and physical sense, over the duration of Ticia’s career. Roughly 50% of kids need to be moving all the time – feet, bodies, hands, fingers — whereas at the beginning of Ticia’s working life compulsive movement described perhaps only one or two out of a class of 30. This is one category of school measurement where boys have continued to reign supreme. Continue reading
Housing Disorder, Poverty, and Test Scores
Summary: Poverty and serial housing destabilize the school fortunes of children from poor neighborhoods and stymie the battle to improve their academic skills. Promising political developments, economic insights and human resilience contribute hope to the schoolhouse.
School Reform: Tough to Measure and Hostage to Heightened Poverty
Summary: What is the report card on school reform? Test scores, mediocre at best, are too narrow a measure, though useful. Project based deep learning and interventions that motivate students are important, but difficult to measure. Increasing poverty and income … Continue reading
Testing Wags the Dog and Other Tales of Unintended Consequence
Summary: Testing in schools has taken its impetus from corporate measurement, and has a place. But the steps taken to assess skills have altered classroom chemistry and in the end may have retarded the very progress the tools have been … Continue reading
At Risk Kids and the Banner of Universal Preschool
Summary: Universal preschool has rightly been on the policy upswing, and while long term benefits look to be worth the cost, pivotal questions remain about curriculum appropriate to three and four year olds and the role of parent training.
At Risk Kids: A Road Map to Intervention
Summary: Children of poverty often need more intensive services to succeed in school; a blueprint for doing so out of the University of Oregon School of Education merits a review.
Design Thinking and What At Risk Kids Need
Summary: Design thinking arrives in a big way at IBM to empower employees to work closely with customers to design the next wave of IBM products. Might the same process illuminate the real needs of at risk, under performing kids, … Continue reading
Schools and Politics: In Epitaph Of A Tale Told By An Idiot
Summary: The demise of No Child Left Behind together with the rise of Every Student Succeeds acknowledges the limits of federal power and corporately inspired test measurement, targets funding to lower performing groups, and shifts the balance of policy power … Continue reading
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