Update: The policy recommendations passed.

The times, they are a changing in education. Some of this is not good. We have new standards and curriculum that have numerous problems. We’ll either agree or disagree, as to whether this just poor implementation, or inherent in the standards. But there is some good change. People starting to ask some hard questions about our so-called system of accountability. Changes in congress offer both sweet (less testing!) and sour (more “choice”). This questioning of testing and using testing for so many crucial decisions is now coming into question in the state as well. The new testing scheme under Common Core (SBAC in California) means that the old state system of rating schools, API (Academic Performance Index) needs a rewrite.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most difficult moments after any death is knowing the appropriate thing to say. A recent article after the shooting of a 29-year old mother by her two year-old,  had comments by her father-in-law, which seemed to say, “Can we please focus on mourning the loss of life, and not try to make political capital out of my family’s tragedy?”

Certainly as someone in the “inner-circle” of this tragedy, he’s going to be more focused on the individuals at this point, but I wonder if this reflects a general tendency after something like this occurs where there is a conflict between community values (in this case, gun ownership and gun-carry laws) and tragic outcomes that can result from tolerating that level of risk as part of the culture. This can lead to folks handing over any agency which to outsiders, is baffling.

As an example, look at this piece about year after the fertilizer explosion in West, TX, where a local folks seemed to classify the accident as part of “God’s plan” and not the result of lax regulations, poor training of local emergency response personnel, and dangerous conditions, as seen here:

Muska’s view is widespread in West: that nobody can know the mind of God, and no rational person could have seen it coming — and therefore, nobody is really to blame. The explosion just happened. There’s less emphasis on accountability and more on being supportive of the victims.

That quote is obviously heavily steeped in Christian thinking, and least you think I’m going all Bill Maher, I have no way of knowing what religious world-view influenced Mr. Rutledge’s thinking in the case of the Idaho shooting. I can also think of an example of this sort of willing away of consequences among the liberal and college-educated with the anti-vax movement, and the childhood illness epidemics it leads to.

While Mr. Rutledge should be focused on his family at this time and may be too close to the situation to see the larger implications. Without belittling  those involved, we owe it to that poor mother, that truly unfortunate toddler, and the many others unnecessarily killed by guns each year to look at this situation.  First, we need to be doing epidemiological research into this subject that is unfettered by the gun-lobby, so we can have an informed, research-based discussion on the subject. I know, good luck on that, but I needed to put that out there. Currently there is a conflict occurring between how these sorts of deaths are classified, because they are often not tracked as “accidents”. This reflects the desire of those who want to hold folks like adults who have guns accessible to children accountable for the deaths that result from this. I’d suggest a new category to capture unintentional but preventable gun deaths involving children, but we need both accurate information, and more accountability for owners. For more on the accountability, Justin Peters at Slate has written on the topic extensively.

I grew up in a household with guns stored in what was considered to be a “safe” way for the time, high on a rack in my parent’s bedroom. This is no longer considered safe, just like we don’t let kids sit loose in the back of a truck or station wagon. Still, my parents did not feel it a necessary part of our culture to carry a hand-gun with them everywhere they went. The guns stayed in the closet until they were brought down for a trip out to do target practice (I was given my turn with a friend of the family’s 22 caliber). Our gun culture has changed. More households used to have guns, but now fewer homes have more weapons and seem to want to have these guns on them at all times.

This post starts with my response to a question that Larry Ferlazzo asked about formative assessment and that I responded to on his EdWeek blog. There were many excellent responses there, and I urge you to read them here.  I’ve expanded that response to look at an example of what won’t work.

My first thought is that it is not a final, but should give students, and teachers, interim feedback about where the student is at. This leads to the idea that they should also have the chance to act on that feedback and be either re-assessed, or have another chance to show they have mastered the content. It should not be a first and last chance to show knowledge and/or mastery. Read the rest of this entry »

Proving a point I’ve been trying to make for a while about CCSS ELA, Tom Hoffman takes a look at his daughter’s homework:

Of course, the right answer is “Was that there yesterday?” which you’d know if you read the text. Really the problem is just that the question does not refer specifically to the text. I guess what is creepy about this one is that I understand that part of schooling is giving banal answers to banal questions. But conditioning kids — and I mean “conditioning” — to bubble in “citations” as banal answers to serious, open-ended philosophical questions like “What kind of questions can art make you ask?” is… disturbing.

I have a post up about why I’m voting for Tom Torlakson for State Superintendent of Public Instruction at K12 News Network. Thanks Cynthia Liu for letting me share!