Teaching – Embrace the Absurd

Pushing Through on Through-Year

Through-year assessment. Is it an idea whose time has come or a bad idea that just won’t go away? Is through-year assessment the best thing since sliced bread? Or is through-year assessment simply the back-up quarterback; that is, the next best thing that isn’t what we’re doing now. As any football fan knows, unless yourContinue reading “Pushing Through on Through-Year”

Education is a Matter of the Heart

On January 31st, we celebrate the feast day of St. John Bosco, whose words, Remember, Education is a Matter of the Heart, are a credo of educators around the world. Don Bosco, as he was known, was a nineteenth century Italian priest who dedicated his life to the education of young people, particularly those living in poverty.Continue reading “Education is a Matter of the Heart”

Reading Revisited

The Reading Wars are over. While most of us were lost in the chaos of the pandemic, the political circus of the last five years, and the endings and beginnings of real wars around the world, a victor in the long and often bitter Reading Wars emerged cloaked in the mantle of science – theContinue reading “Reading Revisited”

You Can Lead a Horse to Water

What is the purpose of education? Whether we’re talking about primary, elementary, secondary, or postsecondary education, what is its purpose, the real purpose, the reason we are investing so much time and money in this endeavor. Short answer – behavior – establishing, maintaining, changing, if necessary, and ultimately, refining, behavior. You can refer to theContinue reading “You Can Lead a Horse to Water”

The Clock is Running

The Clock is Running – what a terrible title and miserable metaphor for a post about the first day of school. But the fact is that as soon as the bell rings, the first roll call is taken, the pledge of allegiance recited, and a brief period of silent meditation completed, the clock is running.Continue reading “The Clock is Running”

Slow Down, You Move Too Fast

Once again, those of us on the technical side of large-scale assessment and educational measurement find ourselves behind the curve. In the 1990s, the public clamored for achievement levels and criterion-based results while we were comfortable reporting percentile ranks and grade equivalent scores. Just as we were “getting a handle” on standard setting and percentContinue reading “Slow Down, You Move Too Fast”

Grading the Grading Arguments

Recently, Daniel Buck, a Fordham Institute Teaching Fellow, argued against grading policies that arbitrarily place a lower limit on student scores of 50 points on a 100-point scale. Buck’s piece elicited a response from Douglas Reeves. The Buck-Reeves exchange and the very mention of Zero Grades incited a response from Scott Marion. Thinking about theirContinue reading “Grading the Grading Arguments”

Teacher Man

“I didn’t call myself anything. I was more than a teacher. And less. In the high school classroom you are a drill sergeant, a rabbi, a shoulder to cry on, a disciplinarian, a singer, a low-level scholar, a clerk, a referee, a clown, a counselor, a dress-code enforcer, a conductor, an apologist, a philosopher, aContinue reading “Teacher Man”

10,000 Hours

The so-called “Ten-Thousand Hour Rule” became popularized after the 2008 publication of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success. By popularized, of course, I mean that the discussion of the relationship between success and 10,000 hours of preparation presented by Gladwell was simplified and bastardized so that it could be deliberately misapplied when presented toContinue reading “10,000 Hours”

School’s Out for Summer

School’s out for summer School’s out forever School’s been blown to pieces 2020-2021. The school year like no other is complete and the question of the day is whether the pandemic changed school forever. Has the traditional model of public K-12 education that we all know and hold strong feelings about been blown to pieces?Continue reading “School’s Out for Summer”