למידה, אינטרנט ... ומה שביניהם

Technology will soon provide a better “learning” experience to kids needing to pass the test than a classroom teacher with 30 (or 50) kids. Self-paced, formatively assessed, personalized to each student’s needs.

There is an urgency now to redefine our value. We cannot be about passing the test. We cannot be about content to the extent we are today because content is everywhere. We cannot be about a curriculum that’s a mile wide and an inch deep. Something else can do that now, and in some ways, that’s a good thing. We have to be about the thing that technology cannot and will not be able to do, and that’s care deeply for our kids as humans, help them develop passions to learn, solve problems that are uniquely important to them, understand beauty and meaning in the world, help them play and create and apply knowledge in ways that add to the richness of life, and develop empathy and deep contextual understanding of the world. And more.

תוויות: טכנולוגיה, למידה, מבחנים, סטנדרטים, פני החינוך

Finally, while SB 547 attempts to improve the API, it relies on the same quantitative and standardized paradigm at the heart of the current system. The criticism of the API is that it has led schools to focus too narrowly on tested subjects and ignore other subjects and matters that are vital to a well-rounded education. SB 547 certainly would add more things to measure, but it is doubtful that it would actually improve our schools. Adding more speedometers to a broken car won’t turn it into a high-performance machine.

Instead of recognizing that perhaps we have reached testing nirvana, editorialists and academics alike call for ever more measurement “visions and revisions.”

A sign hung in Albert Einstein’s office read “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

SB 547 nowhere mentions good character or love of learning. It does allude to student excitement and creativity, but does not take these qualities seriously because they can’t be placed in a data stream. Lost in the bill’s turgid mandates is any recognition that quality is fundamentally different from quantity.

תוויות: הערכה, מבחנים, סטנדרטים

Where we are today is a lot better place in terms of discussion, but not in terms of results compared to 10 years ago. What we’re doing now is building a system empowered by technology with a huge infusion of private capital aimed at bringing a total delivery system. Eventually, we’ll have far fewer teachers who are paid much more. Education would be data-driven, customized, will engage kids, differentiate instruction, and value human capital in a different way. What we’re doing now is trying to reform a broken delivery system rather than create an effective delivery system.

תוויות: סטנדרטים, פני החינוך

As the number of computers increased the goals for what children did with them seemed [to] be lowered. No longer did “computer literacy” mean that every child should have the expertise required to program the computer, but that they would be able to bookmark a web page or identify the mouse in a standardized “tech literacy” test.

The moral of that tale is that the computer lab is a historical accident that need not be preserved in amber.

Don’t be surprised when kids do extraordinary things. Be surprised when adults are surprised. I expect that children can use computers in deeper more thoughtful ways than school traditionally asks of them. Cute may be a subset of “good,” but is a poor substitute.

If students can come use a computer whenever they need to for as long as necessary, they’ll learn more, the computers will be used to greater benefit and the school will take an important step towards learner-centered school reform.

If a kid is breathing, she has probably surpassed the NETs
The ISTE NETs standards are unimaginative and technocentric. Declare that every child has satisfied them and move on.

תוויות: מבחנים, סטנדרטים, פני החינוך

dictate how political events and figures will be taught to about 4.8 million schoolchildren in Texas and beyond for the next decade.

The standards also will be used by textbook publishers who often develop materials for other states based on those approved in Texas.

While my daughter was in school, I always complained that the teachers weren't using the text books enough. Now, given the religiously-biased texts, I hope they continue their independent curricula development.

תוויות: סטנדרטים, ספרי לימוד

I no longer believe that either approach will produce the quantum improvement in American education that we all hope for.

Her book is being promoted as a big break from the past. That is certainly what her subtitle suggests. But you can't judge books by their titles. When I finished hers, I was delighted to see such an erudite analysis of where the education policy debate is right now. She left some blood on the floor, sure, but she also, in vintage Ravitch style, blessed some good ideas from all sides.

Many education reforms have gone badly in the last 20 years, but there never has been a golden age of school improvement. No Child Left Behind had many flaws, but it left us better off than than we were before, with more attention to low-income and learning disabled children, and some gains in lower grades, particularly in math. We bumble along, doing our best, hoping that our next idea will produce big gains but knowing that all we can expect is to be a bit better than before.

If the best that billions of dollars and the establishment of a test-score-obsessive, standardized education system can produce is “more attention” and “some gains” (as measured by those same tests, of course), that is not “better off”.

Narrowing the curriculum studied by almost all students in public schools to little more than reading and math drills is more than a “flaw”.

תוויות: מבחנים, סטנדרטים, NCLB

The report highlighted the "adverse effects" that often flow from a target-driven school culture and criticised Ofsted (ה-Office for Standards in Education) for taking a narrow, results-based view of learning in schools.

The report did not argue for an end to all external assessment. But it called for a shift toward more within-school, teacher-led assessment. This, it said, would not only save money but also a lot of the teaching time that is lost to exam preparation and administration.

And this is the key point: it is not about dropping school accountability altogether, but about making sure it does not obstruct teaching and learning.

"Hey Mr. Spencer, why do we have the Galileo if we already have common assessments and quizzes and projects with rubrics."
"Great question."
"If the purpose of an assessment is to see if I'm learning, isn't assessment happening every day?"
"Uh  huh."
"So, would they rather spend our time on teaching instead of assessing what they already assessed?"
"Yeah, you would think."

תוויות: מבחנים, מורים, סטנדרטים

... the 75 Harlem kindergartners were going not only for a glimpse of rural life, but to rack up extra points on standardized tests.

have invented a form of test preparation. The schools haul their students to a farm each year, hoping to expose them to the rural life and lift their scores.

תוויות: הרהורים, למידה, סטנדרטים

It would be impossible for the information revolution to unfold and NOT have transformative implications for how children can be educated

תוויות: הרהורים, מורים, סטנדרטים, פני החינוך

Mandating portfolios on a system wide or statewide basis may destroy one of their greatest assets: allowing students to reflect on their learning and feel a sense of hope and control. Once standards are defined by an outside authority, teacher-student collaboration is minimized and the importance of students' own goals and learning assessment diminishes.

... if there is no extrinsic motivator or mandate, where is the intrinsic motivation to reflect on learning, especially when there are so many competing priorities in our students' lives? If only we could capture the motivation behind social networks to facilitate reflection on learning! That is the place where students reflect on life, albeit most often with a more social, less academic focus.

heavy with documentation but light on passion

תוויות: סטנדרטים, פורטפוליו

Instead, we have numbed the brains of future teachers with endless blather about process and abstract thinking skills. We have taught them about graphic organizers and Venn diagrams and accountable talk, data-based decision-making, rubrics, and leveled libraries, but we have ignored what matters most. We have neglected to teach them that one cannot think critically unless one has quite a lot of knowledge to think about. One thinks critically by comparing and contrasting and synthesizing what one has learned. One must know a great deal before she or he can begin to reflect on its meaning and look for alternative explanations.

תוויות: כישורי המאה ה-21, סטנדרטים, שינון

To my utter astonishment, she said it was because it made her feel stupid. After a couple of years of feeling stupid every day, she was ready to do something else.

Science makes me feel stupid too. It's just that I've gotten used to it. So used to it, in fact, that I actively seek out new opportunities to feel stupid. I wouldn't know what to do without that feeling. I even think it's supposed to be this way.

The crucial lesson was that the scope of things I didn't know wasn't merely vast; it was, for all practical purposes, infinite. That realization, instead of being discouraging, was liberating. If our ignorance is infinite, the only possible course of action is to muddle through as best we can.

And it is interesting to note how strongly Schwartz contrasts with the proponents of NCLB and the high stakes testing movement that has swept our country in recent years.

תוויות: הרהורים, למידה, סטנדרטים

Through the lesson, students engaged in discussions of creditability, validity, timeliness, and search strategies to find and evaluate fantasy football information. The assessment of these instruction sessions showed incoming students successfully identifying evaluation criteria and reporting positive changes in how they viewed research and libraries.

Librarians have the ability to connect these existing skills to academic content in order to help students become successful information literate students.

The student athletes discussed the sources and argued over their conclusions. These discussions could have taken place in any traditional information literacy class and were the true intent of the session itself. The students seemed surprised at the similarities to academic concepts.

תוויות: אוריינויות, מידענות, סטנדרטים

We change the Course of Study about every ten years. But the truth is that ten years is too short a time to change classroom education. If we greatly changed the Course of Study every ten years, teachers would be turning their heads this way and that so often that their necks would break. So we make major changes in the Course of Study only every twenty years or so, and in between it's just fine tuning.

The changes made to these documents (about once a decade) are often brief, abstract descriptions of new goals: "autonomy," "initiative", "desire to learn" "problem-solving capacity". Although I initially found these vague goals - provided without accompanying concrete examples - frustrating, they may reflect an underlying assumption that policymakers cannot define good classroom practice.

תוויות: מורים, סטנדרטים