Sally Ride, astronaut and teacher
Sally Ride, America’s first woman in space, died yesterday of pancreatic cancer at the age of 61. A physicist, Ride devoted her post-NASA career as an educator to making science “cool” for young...
View ArticleIrreplaceable — and underappreciated
Principals don’t try to retain excellent teachers, concludes The Irreplaceables. TNTP analyzed teacher retention in four urban school districts: The top 20 percent of teachers, based on value-added...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Lemov: How teachers get better
Doug Lemov’s new book, Practice Perfect,gives teachers (and others) “42 rules for getting better at getting better.” In an Amazon interview, Lemov and co-authors Erica Woolway, and Katie Yezzi, call...
View ArticleHow to get the best teachers
In The Best Teachers in the World, John Chubb advocates reconfiguring schools to make good use of teachers and technology, eliminating teacher licensing requirements and giving school principals...
View ArticleChubb: Get serious about high-quality teachers
Today’s teachers “don’t come close to meeting the academic standards being set for students” writes John Chubb in The Best Teachers in the World. A proficient score on NAEP reading or math translates...
View ArticleProfessional development doesn’t pay off
Most professional development is a waste of time and money, writes Rick Hess. “Teachers are routinely subjected to fly-by consulting or enthusiastic workshops, without any sustained focus on particular...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The bigotry of low (teacher) expectations
Common Core Standards didn’t invent effective teaching, writes Julie Greenberg in The bigotry of low (teacher) expectations in the National Council on Teacher Quality’s blog. She objects to step 5 in...
View ArticleEd schools don’t ‘train’ teachers
Ed schools don’t train teachers, writes Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, in Education Next. “Training” is taboo. Instead, teacher educators believe it’s their job to...
View ArticleLearning to teach — with avatars
No children were harmed in this teacher training exercise. Prospective teachers can practice their teaching skills on avatars in the Teach LivE lab, writes Sarah Butrymowicz on the Hechinger Report....
View ArticleLemov: Train teachers to perform, not just reflect
“Teaching is a lot like acting, but teachers aren’t trained to be performers, writes Katrina Schwartz on KQED’s Mind/Shift. Actors, musicians or acrobats spend hours perfecting their craft because...
View ArticleOutside experts, exhausted educators
Schools are deluged with consultants promising to explain Common Core standards, writes Peter DeWitt, an elementary school principal, in Ed Week. Greg, who now teaches in Australia, suggests schools...
View ArticleTeacher training programs need a reboot
Teacher training programs should be designed on the medical model, writes Jane Dimyan-Ehrenfeld in the Washington Post. I went to a highly ranked liberal arts college and graduated with a special major...
View ArticleRavitch’s alternative to reform
An “architect of school reform,” Diane Ravitch turned against it, writes Sara Mosle in The Atlantic. Instead of leading a “mid-course correction,” she “further polarized an already strident debate”...
View ArticleUnprepared to teach
Olivia Blanchard quit Teach for America because the five-week training program hadn’t prepared her to teach “difficult” fifth-graders. I had few insights or resources to draw on when preteen boys...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Untrained to teach reading
In The Training Gap, education school graduates tell PBS NewsHour they’re not well-prepared to teach reading. The segment visits “an innovative public school in Hartford, CT that may serve as a...
View Article‘An Industry of Mediocrity’
Education schools are “an industry of mediocrity,” opines Bill Keller in the New York Times. In 2005 Arthur Levine, then the president of Teachers College at Columbia University, shocked colleagues...
View ArticleSchmidt: Poor kids get poorly trained teachers
The U.S. has some of the best — and worst — university-based math teacher training in the world, says William Schmidt, co-director of Michigan State’s Education Policy Center. Sixty percent of math...
View ArticleClik here to view.
If you like your curriculum, you can …
“If You Like Your Curriculum, You Can Keep Your Curriculum,” Common Core advocates promised. But it ain’t necessarily so, writes Jason Bedrick at Cato @ Liberty. “Common Core’s primary backers have...
View ArticleWhat is good teaching?
What Is Good Teaching? asks New York Times columnist Joe Nocera. The New Public shows how hard it is to teach in an inner-city school, he writes. Teachers College at Columbia plans to use the...
View ArticleThis is not a parody
Why do teachers say “professional development” is a waste of time and money? This seems like a parody of dreadful PD, but it’s a real training session for Chicago teachers, says Larry Ferlazzo....
View Article
