The Straight-A Gospels: Pseudo-Work Does Not Equal Work
This is the first post in a three-part series focusing on the Straight-A Gospels — the core concepts behind my book, How to Become a Straight-A Student. Today we focus on Gospel #1: Pseudo-work does not equal work Here are two facts: (1) I made straight A’s in college. (2) I studied less than most people I know. The same holds true for many of the straight-A students I researched for my book. If this sounds unbelievable, it is probably because you subscribe to the following formula: work accomplished = time spent studying The more time you study the more work you accomplish. To understand our accomplishment, you must understand the following, more accurate formula: work accomplished = time spent x intensity of focus That last factor — intensity of focus — is the key to explaining why straight-A students never seem to embark on the same fatigue-saturated all-night study adventures that most undergrads rely on. [For math geeks, this is standard exponential decay.]
How Standardized Testing Damages Education (Updated July 2012) | FairTest
How do schools use standardized tests? The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) era has seen an unprecedented expansion of standardized testing and test misuse. Despite ample evidence of the flaws, biases and inaccuracies of standardized exams, NCLB and related state and federal policies, such as Race to the Top (RTTT) and the NCLB waivers, have pressured schools to use tests to measure student learning, achievement gaps, and teacher and school quality, and to impose sanctions based on test scores. Aren’t these valid uses of test scores? Measurement experts agree that no test is good enough to serve as the sole or primary basis for any of these important educational decisions. Who is most often hurt by these practices? Students from low-income and minority-group backgrounds, English language learners, and students with disabilities, are more likely to be denied diplomas, retained in grade, placed in a lower track, or unnecessarily put in remedial education programs. No. Revised July 2012
Teach to the Test? Just Say No
1Kleinschrodt, M. H. (2006, April 8). Lessons learned. The Times-Picayune. 2O’Neill, J. (2006, March 12). 3Mathews, J. (2006, February 20). 5Shepard, L. 6Popham, W. 7Richards, C. (2006, March 15). 8Resnick, L., & Zurawsky, C. (2005, spring). 9 Levy, F., & Murnane, R. 10 Olson, L. (2006, March 22). 11 Newmann, F. 12 Newmann, F. 13 Mathews, J., & Chenoweth, K. (2006, April 4). 14 Steiny, J. (2006, March 19).
Promising remedial math reform in Tennessee expands
A group of community colleges in Tennessee is going into local high schools to try to help more students get ready for college math. The experiment has showed impressive early results, and now the state’s governor is forking over serious money to expand it. The four community colleges have worked with teachers at local high schools to run math labs for 600 high school seniors who appeared likely to place into remedial tracks after high school. Pass rates have been high. For example, 83 percent of a group of 200 students in the remedial, dual-enrollment group at Chattanooga State Community College completed all of the college’s required math “competencies” during their senior year of high school. Even better, 25 percent of those students completed a credit-bearing, college-level math course while still in high school (remedial math is typically noncredit). “They were completely done with math before they even started” college, said Kimberly G. Officials in Tennessee aren’t stopping there.
piaget - Montessori Answers
There really isn't that much difference, and for good reason. The experimental nursery school in Geneva, La Maison des Petits, where Piaget carried out his first studies of children in the 1920s, was a modified Montessori institution, and Piaget was the head of the Swiss Montessori Society for many years. The two philosophies have a lot in common both Montessori and Piaget were constructionists who believed that children develop in a progression sequence or order. They also believed in hands-on, multi-modality activities, learning focused on creating mental models, not the pure rote memorization of facts, multiple measures of assessing learning to mastery, and incorporating students' prior knowledge into the curriculum. What they disagreed on was timing.
San Diego Schools - San Diego California School Ratings
The Case for Banning Laptops in the Classroom
A colleague of mine in the department of computer science at Dartmouth recently sent an e-mail to all of us on the faculty. The subject line read: “Ban computers in the classroom?” The note that followed was one sentence long: “I finally saw the light today and propose we ban the use of laptops in class.” While the sentiment in my colleague’s e-mail was familiar, the source was surprising: it came from someone teaching a programming class, where computers are absolutely integral to learning and teaching. Surprise turned to something approaching shock when, in successive e-mails, I saw that his opinion was shared by many others in the department. My friend’s epiphany came after he looked up from his lectern and saw, yet again, an audience of laptop covers, the flip sides of which were engaged in online shopping or social-media obligations rather than in the working out of programming examples. I banned laptops in the classroom after it became common practice to carry them to school.
When did university become a factory? - Comment - Voices
Some of this can be blamed on the academic establishment, most on those who run the country – big business and politicians, fanatical proponents of Orwellian instrumentalism, the processing of young people into workers, strivers, androids. Propaganda for university education has a number attached: you will be this much more likely to get jobs, earn this much more than those simple-minded saddos who go for NVQs, live this much longer, etc. Universities used to be gateways to infinite possibilities, places of free thought and experimentation where young men and women could define and find themselves, expand their maturing minds, argue, develop ideas and interrogate beliefs. Now they are expected to be maniacally focused on degrees that lead to jobs, the repayment of the fee loan and cut-throat competition. My own daughter is halfway through university and planning the future with a seriousness that will, of course, give her direction, but it is too much, too soon.
