Since testing seems to be a cornerstone to improving performance I don't understand why this principle isn't applied to other businesses that are not performing up to expectations. I was thinking about the problem of falling milk prices and wondering why testing cows wouldn't be effective in bringing up prices since testing students is going to bring up test scores.

The federal government should mandate testing all cows every year starting at age 2. Now I know that it will take time out of the farmers necessary work to do this testing every year and that it may be necessary to spend inordinate amounts of money on the testing equipment but that should not detract us from what must be done.  ( Read more.)

by the Bald Piano Guy by Diane Ravitch on the Ravitch site.

Bald Piano Guy is one of our best humorists, and he has a great perspective on education. In this video, he sings "Auld Lang Syne" with new lyrics, explaining why opt out is going to be bigger than ever this year.

Okay, the corporate reformers have Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Arne Duncan, Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, Rick Snyder, ALEC, even President Obama.

But we have the Bald Piano Guy, EduShyster, Peter Greene, and many more who can make you laugh out loud at the idiocy of reformer policies that fail and fail and fail and fail and fail and fail. Yet live on as zombie policies.  (View video.)
 

Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick? by Vicki Abeles on the New York Times site.

But even Dr. Slavin seemed unprepared for the results of testing he did in cooperation with Irvington High School in Fremont, Calif., a once-working-class city that is increasingly in Silicon Valley's orbit. He had anonymously surveyed two-thirds of Irvington's 2,100 students last spring, using two standard measures, the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. The results were stunning: 54 percent of students showed moderate to severe symptoms of depression. More alarming, 80 percent suffered moderate to severe symptoms of anxiety.

"This is so far beyond what you would typically see in an adolescent population," he told the school's faculty at a meeting just before the fall semester began. "It's unprecedented." Worse, those alarming figures were probably an underestimation; some students had missed the survey while taking Advanced Placement exams.  ( Read more.)

Never in U.S. history have more students, parents, and teachers engaged in acts of resistance to standardized tests. During the 2015 testing season,  over 620,000 public school students around the U.S. refused to take standardized exams, according to a report by the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest). Advocates for authentic assessments scored these five significant victories in 2015 against the "testocracy" and its test-and-punish model of education:

For those of us who worry that Google might be making us stupid, and that, perhaps, technology and education don't mix well, here's a new study to confirm that anxiety.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development looked at computer use among 15-year-olds across 31 nations and regions, and found that students who used computers more at school had both lower reading and lower math scores, as measured by PISA or Program for International Student Assessment. The study, published Sept. 15, 2015, was actually conducted back in 2012, when the average student across the world, for example, was using the Internet once a week, doing software drills once a month, and emailing once a month. But the highest-performing students were using computers in the classroom less than that. ( Read more.)

A teacher explains what teachers really do all day by Lily Eskelsen Garcia on the Business Insider site.

In  a speech at a Campaign for America's Future event, National Education Association president and teacher Lily Eskelsen Garcia gave a rousing explanation for what the teaching profession entails.

After starting the speech by saying teachers needed to educate politicians on what the typical teacher does in a typical day, she rattled off a long list, at auctioneer-level speed, of what a teacher does all day.

She listed everything from checking for head lice to challenging racism to, of course, teaching reading and writing.  ( Read more.)

Something Extraordinary Is Happening in the World, and I Am Noticing It by   Gustavo Tanaka    on the Huffington Post site.

Most of us haven't quite realized there is something extraordinary happening.

A few months ago, I freed myself from standard-procedure society. I broke the chains of fear that kept me locked up into the system. Since then, I see the world from a different perspective: the one that everything is going through change and that most of us are unaware of that.

Why is the world changing? In this post, I'll point out the eight reasons that lead me to believe it.

1. No one can stand the employment model any longer.

2. The entrepreneurship model is also changing.

3. The rise of collaboration.

4. We are finally figuring out what the Internet is.

5. The fall of exaggerated consumerism.

6. Healthy and organic eating.

7. The awakening of spirituality.

8. The Unschooling trends.

Who created this teaching model? Who chose the classes you have to take? Who chose the lessons we learn in history classes? Why didn't they teach us the truth about other ancient civilizations?
Why should kids follow a certain set of rules? Why should they watch everything in silence? Why should they wear a uniform? What about taking a test to prove what you actually learned?

Fortunately, a lot of people are working to rethink that though concepts such as un-schooling, hack-schooling and homeschooling.  ( Read more.)

5 K-12 trends to watch in 2016   by  Erin McIntyre on the Education Dive site.

The year 2015 saw many small changes in education, and a momentous one, long-awaited by many: the departure of the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. With just weeks left in the year, the updated federal education bill, the Every Student Succeeds Act, flew through the Senate and the  House after a revision process that some called a " love-fest." The ESSA was  signed into law by President Barack Obama on Dec. 10. 

But that's just the beginning of what to keep an eye on in 2016. A number of issues are poised to shape K-12 over the coming year. From budget crunches that are expected to shut down schools to the development of unique learning plans for individual students, here's a glimpse of five hot topics administrators should keep on their radar.  ( Read more.)

 

The Year in Education: Politics All Around by  Beth Fertig on the WNYC site.

The politics of education dominated 2015 from Albany to Brooklyn's waterfront.
Cuomo's About Face:  Gov. Andrew Cuomo started the year with guns blazing,  as he took on the teachers unions . After complaining that too many teachers got high ratings despite lackluster student performance, he persuaded Albany to change the teacher evaluation system once again by giving more weight to student test scores. But many teachers and parents thought the governor went too far in attacking educators. They also complained about the emphasis on standardized tests, especially because they were aligned to new Common Core standards that they argued had been rolled out too quickly. 
In the spring, a record-breaking  20 percent of students opted out  of the state's elementary and middle school tests as a form of protest. That got the governor's attention. Cuomo appointed a task force to study both the Common Core and the teacher evaluation system. 

( Read more.)

  A Tale of 2 States: Lessons to Be Learned (Frederick Hess and Sarah DuPre) by Larry Cuban on the Cuban site.

Frederick M. Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Sarah DuPre is a Research Assistant in Education Policy at American Enterprise Institute. 

(Article by Hess and Dupre.)

The new Every Student Succeeds Act wisely returns to the states much of the authority for directing school improvement that the federal government had assumed in the past 15 years. Some states are ready to roll, but plenty are searching for potential role models. Fortunately, at least two such candidates are easy to find.

Earlier this fall, the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the "Nation's Report Card," provided a snapshot of student achievement across the land. Amidst generally disappointing results, there were a few bright spots. Washington, D.C., and Hawaii, led the nation in aggregate national assessment improvement over the past decade.  ( Read more.)

 

 

    

  

 

A Gift:   On the Art of Teaching   by Horace Mann