For those unaware, standards-based grading is a popular evaluation system designed to simplify teaching, learning, and assessment. It strips a student’s grade down to their ability to meet the announced standards. The idea is that students will learn more easily if teachers grade based upon very explicit and clear standards. Moreover, by standardizing the grading […]
How to Fix Education
Posted inCurrent Events in Education
Pandemic Movie Choice: Bad Education: A Movie Review
“It’s not having what you want,” quips Roslyn Assistant Superintendent Pam Gluckin in her Long Island accent, “it’s wanting what you got.” And what educators got from HBO’s Bad Education was a harrowing detail of a pair of school administrators gone rogue with the school district’s treasury, sacking $11.2 million before they were caught… by […]
Posted inAsk a Teacher
Jake Miller Interviews (A Different) Jake Miller Re: Online Learning
I’m here today with Jake Miller, host of the fantastic Educational Duct Tape podcast, to the man with the same name AND profession as me on ways to guide us on keeping kids first and using technology in our new, COVID-19-pushed learning environment, not to mention ways to apply this learning regardless. @MrJakeMiller (Me): […]
Posted inHow to Fix Education
The Ideal School Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic
What would an ideal school look like? My wife and I, like many educators and parents, have had this question thrust to the forefront as part of the COVID-19 crisis. Overnight, my wife and I–both trained, veteran middle school teachers–have had to set up The Sutton School to teach our own kids. We’ve made all […]
Posted inCurrent Events in Education
A Pandemic Brings Opportunity to Rethink Standardized Testing
Coronavirus-canceled testing brings an opportunity. As a teacher and parent in the state of New York, news that standardized testing might be canceled this year brings mixed emotions. I suspected the closures due to COVID-19 might come to this, and for many years I have been pretty open about my personal feelings about abuse-by-test. My […]
Posted inHow to Fix Education
Getting Reading Right: The Education Week Online Summit
Getting Reading Right was the title and focus of the free online Education Week summit held on January 28, 2020. EdWeek reporters moderated with guest literacy specialists in six separate online chats framed by the results of the 2019 EdWeek Research Center survey on Early Reading Instruction. Online registered participants were eligible for a certificate […]
Posted inAsk a Teacher
The Formal Observation: When Teachers and Administrators Dance
Every school year, teachers across the country play a sort of game. It is mostly an activity we play alone, like solitaire. We plan lessons in units to cover roughly 180 instructional days, with the intent that learning occurs. Most tenured teachers get one to two chances to demonstrate how we play this game and […]
Posted inThe State of Education
Is School Boring? A Closer Look Into A Problem That Plagues Most Schools
I never found school boring when I was in high school. Challenging and frustrating? Yes, but never boring. So it always comes as a bit of a shock to me when students tell me how boring they find their high school classes today. The interesting thing about boring, of course, is that boring tends to […]