By Sherman Dorn on June 18, 2013
Last Thursday’s commentary by Tom Kane in the Brookings Institute education blog is an interesting new argument around teacher evaluation. He suggests that the modal first-year/novice teacher performance is the proper criterion for giving teachers permanent employment status (he uses the word tenure inappropriately here). As a hypothetical, Kane’s column moves us away from an algorithmic approach (I hope!) and towards a realistic question that are on most sane principals’ minds anyway: if I recommended dismissal of this teacher, am I likely to get someone better instead?
This reality-based question is not a formula that converts value-added measures, scores on Danielson- or Marzano-lite performance rubrics, and student/parent surveys into a single number that must be used in the same way whether you are in a big city or in the rural hinterlands. For that, I welcome Kane’s comments. He adds in a bit of shadow-play from game theory — what should happen to expectations of experienced teachers when novice teachers’ performance is improving — but I’d stick with the question I think most school administrators understand and use when looking at a whole host of policies and issues regarding teacher performance: what would actually change if I denied permanent status to a teacher?
Posted in Accountability Frankenstein, Education policy |
By Sherman Dorn on June 15, 2013
This entry is going to proceed through some maddeningly vague statements, so I will start with the bottom line: currently my best idea for teaching critical thinking in social sciences or related areas is to have students wrestle with an important substantive question or puzzle in a reasonably-well-bounded area of knowledge. The structure may be the writing of a history essay such as those the Concord Review publishes, an International Baccalaureate extended essay, a seminar class with a central question, or any other experience that has the “substantive wrestling” part. That forces students to develop skills in the context of learning or using background knowledge in an area, and some part of that limited but important set of skills will then transfer to some nearby areas of knowledge. And that is enough to justify the exercise.
Continue reading “How to teach critical thinking: an immodest idea”
Posted in Education policy, Higher education, History, Teaching |
By Sherman Dorn on June 12, 2013
Checker Finn and Mike Petrilli have a short essay this morning, Repairing the Conservative School Reform Coalition, that addresses their sense of fragmentation on the right in education policy. In the last few weeks, debates over both the Common Core and reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act have shown additional shredding of what was once a fairly broad political coalition in 2001, a coalition between key liberal Democrats and George W. Bush that led to the No Child Left Behind Act. I winced several times at the historical inaccuracies in the Finn/Petrilli piece (let’s just say their description of the 1970s is about 30 years out of date), but their impression of the conservative politics is correct.
Continue reading “The right-wing goat rodeo and the Common Core”
Posted in Education policy, History, Politics |
By Sherman Dorn on June 10, 2013
What does an education historian bring to the table on national security debates? Just this:
- When have we heard government officials assure the public that they’re competent and the public doesn’t need to have more information?
- When we have heard government officials assure the public that there is sufficient oversight of activities?
- When has security been used as a rationale for withholding information that is much broader than truly confidential information?
- When have government officials complained about the disclosure of information that pretty much everyone knew was going on?
Nope, no similarity there at all. For what it’s worth, I’d feel much better about FISC if there were a reasonably-funded office of 3-4 people whose jobs were to argue against every broad-scale order — a Citizens’ Advocate Office staffed with highly competent lawyers and other staff with clearance, as it were, triggered by surveillance that could touch a threshold number of Americans.
Posted in Accountability Frankenstein, Education policy, History, Politics |
By Sherman Dorn on June 5, 2013
I recently read Matt Reed’s Confessions of a Community College Administrator, which was released earlier this spring. Bottom line: read it if you want a good description of community colleges today and an administrator’s perspective on the dilemmas of the public 2-year college sector.
Continue reading “Brief review of Matt Reed’s “Confessions of a Community College Administrator””
Posted in Higher education, The academic life |
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