Middle schools and getting students to be organized and do the work
As anyone who has taught or been a parent to someone in the middle grades knows, the most common apparent reason for student failure in grades 6-8 is not completing or turning in the work. (We’re not talking Aristotelian causes yet…) Joanne Jacobs links to a chain of opposing views on giving students incompletes: Laura/Huerter0, who describes […]
NASBE may have evolution opponent as leader
The National Association of State Boards of Education‘s upcoming election turns out to have one candidate now for president-elect: Kenneth R. Willard, who is part of the anti-evolution faction on the Kansas Board of Education. He’d take office in a few years, but I can’t imagine that this will do NASBE any good in terms […]
Florida NRT scores
Today, the Florida Department of Education released the scores from this spring’s norm-referenced testing in reading and math. The basic story: nothing clear. Some scores went up slightly in terms of percentile rank, some went down, and a number stayed about the same. The spin from the department is that the state’s percentile rank is […]
Graduation news
Several items of note related to high school graduation: Yesterday, the Texas House of Representatives initially approved the elimination of the 22-year-old requirement that high school graduates pass a state exam. The state senate’s proposal would replace the generic achievement tests with end-of-course exams. The House proposal faces another vote today. (My personal prediction: whether […]
Iran arrests Haleh Esfandiari
Human Rights Watch is reporting the detention of the head of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’s Middle East program. She went to Iran to visit her mother and had her passports robbed shortly before she was to return, subjected to questioning when she asked for replacement travel documents, and then arrested a week […]