Brutal rites of passage
The stories about the Dallas school “cage matches” between students is a sign that unprofessional and brutal treatment of children is possible whenever the adults lack a moral compass. This is something that could have happened 50 or 100 years ago, and it happened because some twisted people in charge thought that the best way […]
By request: on teaching quality
I am not going to write today about the new report, An Evaluation of Teachers Trained through Different Routes to Certification, because I haven’t read it. (Other things take higher priority for me right now; the report is heading to my to-read pile. But after reading the praise and also Aaron Pallas’s criticism, let alone […]
Longitudinal data systems, good; unique teacher linkage, bad
Diane Ravitch’s blog entry this morning seriously disparages the value of longitudinal data systems, including the linking of teachers to students, and John Thompson’s entry discusses the abuse of data by administrators. Essentially, both Ravitch and Thompson fear the brain-dead or conscious abuse of data to judge teachers out of context. That’s also the reason […]
A letter from someone else’s Stu Dent
I generally don’t write about students I am currently teaching. I will occasionally write about events months or years later, but generally not in the same semester. But I have an e-mail this morning from someone else’s Stu Dent: Hi I am from England, currently studying a [type of] degree in [field]. For my last […]
Recession-and-education humor
You know things are weird when late-night comics start channeling socialist intellectuals: “The president said we can’t stick with the school calendar that was created during a time when most Americans were farmers, and he is right. We need a new school calendar for a time when most Americans are unemployed.” Jimmy Fallon, March 11, […]