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. 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. Bill Haslam, the state’s Republican governor, caught wind of the project. That money has allowed 114 high schools and all 13 of the state’s community colleges to participate. Officials in Tennessee aren’t stopping there. 'Not Just Talk' Changes are also afoot in Florida.
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.
San Diego Schools - San Diego California School Ratings 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. Thatcher expanded the sector but narrowed its purpose, and that political engineering has gone on since. Our top universities have not delivered.
A high school teacher alerts professors to the limitations of a generation of No Children Left Behind Part swan song, part favor for a friend, Ken Bernstein’s letter to college professors upon his retirement from teaching high school government is generating buzz across higher education. Called “Warnings From the Trenches," the piece alerts professors to the generation of No-Child-Left-Behinders they’ve begun to inherit in their classrooms and what standardized test-driven K-12 educations will mean for college-level teaching and learning. “No Child Left Behind went into effect for the 2002-3 academic year, which means that America’s public schools have been operating under the pressures and constrictions imposed by that law for a decade,” largely sacrificing meaningful content and development of critical thinking and writing skills for test preparation, Bernstein wrote. In other words, if it wasn’t tested, it wasn’t taught. “None of us blame our high school teachers,” he wrote in his e-mail to Bernstein.
College Degree, No Class Time Required Lynn University to require all new students to buy iPads When the Commission on Presidential Debates selected Lynn University as the site for the third presidential debate, it probably didn’t realize that hosting the debate would force Lynn to upgrade its wireless infrastructure to accommodate the thousands of reporters who would swarm the campus – and that those upgrades would be significantly discounted because of the debate. This turned out to be just the push the university needed to launch a program it had been discussing for a while: moving its new core curriculum to the iPad. “We thought we were a few years out, but realized after the debate that we could throw that switch. We’re set up now for a mobile environment in a way we never were before,” said Lynn President Kevin Ross. University administrators had been eyeing a move toward the iPad for some time. After meeting with Apple representatives and learning more about iTunes U and the iPad, Lynn officials became convinced iPads were the way to go.
Educational Problems: It’s the Kids Fault School Problems: It's the Kids' Fault! by Pamela Darr Wright, M.A., M.S.W. Licensed Clinical Social Worker I know they think Brian’s problems are my fault. When I said that I thought he needed more individual help from the LD teacher, they shook their heads. The school psychologist said that all these school problems were Shannon’s fault. The Blame Game Parents of special ed kids often say that they are intimidated, patronized and made to feel guilty and inadequate by staff at their children’s school. Sometimes, emotions get out of control. What is the basis for these negative experiences? If you are a "special ed" parent, you know that it's hard to fight - and almost impossible to bail out. And here is another question: If the school staff believes that you or your child are responsible for your child’s problems, how can you work with them so your child’s interests are protected? Dr. Alessi expressed serious concerns about these findings. When Dr. The "Child-as-the-Problem" Dr.
uld online courses be the death of the humanities? | Higher Education Network | Guardian Professional Let's be clear, access to quality lectures for free is a fantastic achievement, allowing hundreds of thousands to access knowledge for its own sake. But with Tedx, Coursera and others like them taking part in the democratisation of education by removing it from the shackles of consumerism and the market, there is a risk that such developments will be detrimental to the exploration of knowledge in the long term. Carole Cadwalladr recently reported in the Observer that free online access to tertiary courses and lectures was set to revolutionise education. A world where online learning is generalised and ends up replacing other education delivery modes could seriously impact the original purpose of a university. The development of online courses in lieu of university-based teaching also poses a more practical problem for the humanities. The hard sciences can seek industry partners for research funding, while the humanities largely depend on government grants..
Teach to the Test? Just Say No 1Kleinschrodt, M. H. (2006, April 8). Lessons learned. The Times-Picayune. Retrieved June 30, 2006, from 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). 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. This is on top of using tests to determine if children are ready for school; track them into instructional levels; diagnose learning disabilities, retardation and other handicaps; and decide whether to promote, retain in grade, or graduate. School systems also use tests to guide and control curriculum content and teaching. 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.