Roots of Learning » public education in America

Creativity and the Education System

admin — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 01:19:26 +0000

This is worth the 20 minutes it takes to watch.

The Merits of Single Sex Education

admin — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 02:30:17 +0000

I just read an article from the Washington Post describing how a middle school in Northern Virginia will be piloting a voluntary program wherein students will attend single sex classes in the core academic areas. I laud this effort. Many students, both boys and girls, will – in my opinion – likely flourish in this new setting. I hope that this growing trend in K-12 education keeps growing. Unlike some critics of the idea, I do not believe that single-sex instruction leads to a confirmation of stereotypes. Rather, teachers are less able to ‘gloss’ over divergent learning styles. If a teacher knows that she is facing a class of all girls, or all boys, each day, then she will tailor her teaching to their styles. This brings up my only concern with this program. I hope that those in charge who have made the decision to go forward with the single-sex instruction have not neglected to invest in appropriate training for the teachers to prepare them for the different methods that they will need to employ. I hope to hear more examples of this, and will update my blog as I find them. For those reading this, if you know of a program such as this, please let me know!

Heather

Performance Assessments Would Address Basic Knowledge and Skills as well as “21st C. Skills”

admin — Wed, 26 May 2010 19:52:34 +0000

I don’t know when they began calling critical thinking skills “21st Century Skills” – I used them and taught them plenty during the 20th century, but no matter. It seems to be the educational buzzword of the day. And if the trend results in teachers and parents focusing more on communication, collaboration, critical thinking, problem solving, innovation and use of technology, then I’m all for it. One thing that articles and reports focusing on 21st century skills – as well as those focusing on No Child Left Behind and state assessments – tend to neglect is the concept of performance assessment. Performance assessments can help school divisions, private schools, and homeschooling parents determine not only their students’ mastery of basic knowledge and skills, but also their capacity with those skills deemed “21st century skills.” However, we rarely hear of performance assessment being used in a widespread manner.

It is not a new invention, either. In the mid to late 1990′s, some states used performance assessment measures to assess every student for all types of skills and capacities. These assessments can, however, be costly. Perhaps that is the issue during this time of ever tightening budgets. A performance assessment cannot be run through a scantron for scoring. It requires manpower. So while we may not see widespread performance assessment in the near future, we can all encourage the educators that we work with to use them in their own classrooms for formal and informal assessment of students. Before the end of the 21st century, they’ll thank you.

Word Processing and Formatting for Youngsters?

admin — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:00:56 +0000

I was talking with a parent of a fifth grader who is attending our local “gifted zone center” program. Her daughter was assigned a paper that needed to be two pages, double spaced. Her daughter does not type well, so this assignment was taking a while. At one juncture, the parent noticed that her daughter was not double-spacing the paper. “Oh yes, I am,” responded the student. “I am putting two spaces between each word.” Clearly, this student had not learned about basic formatting in a word processing program.

So this got me thinking – there are plenty of great typing programs out there for students, such as the BBC’s Dance Mat Typing, but are there resources (books, software programs, etc.?) that help teach word processing conventions and formatting ‘rules?’ If you know of any, I’d love to hear from you! If I come across any, I may do some field-testing and review them for you here.

- Heather

Year-Round Schooling and Curriculum Centered Around “Big Ideas”

admin — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 03:22:19 +0000

There are two things I like about the recent Washington Post Editorial I read about year-round schooling. Firstly, I like the concept itself, for some pretty simple reasons:

Kids learn more and forget less.
Parents who work can cope a little better.
There is no reason (not educationally, not practically) in today’s world for the school calendar that most of us currently keep.

Secondly, the school that the author refers to in the article uses its intercessions to focus curriculum around “big ideas.” If you are asking “what is the big idea?” then you’re not alone. Basically, curriculum focused this way allows an interdisciplinary inquiry into larger issues that affect all areas of ‘traditional’ curriculum.

One example of a “big idea” might be something like “What is the relationship between governments and innovation?” Such a broad question can encompass history, science, literature, art, mathematics, civics, and much more. It also leaves the student, after delving into various aspects of the “big idea,” with a firm impression of (in this case) those relationships throughout history.

This type of inquiry allows students to make evaluations and to become thinkers for our future – by “our” here I mean civilization.

- Heather

Uh-Oh…

admin — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 01:35:44 +0000

Do you think your state’s standards and standardized testing is bad now? Just you wait…. “Forty-six states and the District of Columbia today will announce an effort to craft a single vision for what children should learn each year from kindergarten through high school graduation, an unprecedented step toward a uniform definition of success in American schools. ” – The Washington Post

While this, on the surface, sounds reasonable, I believe that it will only lead to the following in America’s public schools:

a further watering down of the curriculum as ‘baseline’ standards get treated as the ‘be-all and end-all’
a further beaurocratization of public schools (as if it wasn’t bad enough)
an expansion of testing that does not take into account the real needs of real students in 21st century America.

I sure do hope I’m wrong on this one.

- Heather

Transformation! or, The Care and Feeding of a School

admin — Sat, 30 May 2009 03:12:24 +0000

From the Richmond Times-Dispatch, some great local education news: “Carver Middle has been transformed from a failing school… to an exemplary one.” Read on.

All it really takes is a little TLC. Amazing that it took a first time principal, rather than a current staff or commnity member, to take notice! Great job done!

Revolution, or Spinning our Wheels?

admin — Wed, 06 May 2009 00:50:32 +0000

I was reading a blog post by Jerry Mintz of the Alternative Education Resource Organization. He had traveled recently to Washington and had the opportunity to ask Education Secretary Arne Duncan whether No Child Left Behind would be scrapped. The answer: ”I don’t know. But the name No Child Left Behind is toxic. We will at least change the name!”

Needless to say, this is anything but reassuring. I used to be a program specialist at the U.S. Department of Education (early 90′s) and I will be the first to make what is, in Washington, a political suicide declaration: the U.S. Department of Education (not just NCLB) should be scrapped. With all the money saved by not maintaining several huge office buildings full of paper pushers who do nothing to augment education in this country, we could work wonders with alternative schooling options, charter schools, experiential education facilities, immersion schools, alternative and special education options for those who need or choose them, and much much more.

Oh, and when I was at ED, it was called “Beyond the Year 2000″ and then it was called “Goals 2000″ – it had another name or two before NCLB, but as Barack Obama has himself state, you can put ‘lipstick’ on a pig…. and let me tell you – there is some pork at the USDOE!

- Heather

How Our Schools Should Be

admin — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 23:38:27 +0000

I was just reading a post on The White House blog about a recent visit by President Obama to a successful charter school in Washington, DC. He noted that Capital City Public Charter School is “an example of how all our schools should be.”

Yes. Innovation. A focus on problem solving, writing, math, and science. Expectations of excellence. I think we all want that to be the definition of our child’s school. However, so often that is not the case in public schools in America.

I was recently on a trip to my hometown where I read in our local paper that the town’s high school currently sent home letters to all parents notifying them that, currently, 50% of the students at that high school were failing. FAILING. Knowing the culture of mediocrity and acceptance of poor behavior and less (much less) than excellent academics at my own alma mater, I wasn’t surprised to learn that the school was not flourishing, but to find that number of students FAILING is, needless to say, disconcerting.

As Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Clearly, a school at which 50% of students cannot succeed needs some serious re-thinking. According to Obama’s new education secretary, Arne Duncan, improving our schools isn’t just about education – it’s a matter of social justice.

What defines a leading school to you?