In his “Class Dismissed” post, Mr. Foteach–writing From the Desk of Mr. Foteah– describes the last day of school he had with his fifth grade students. It’s bittersweet—and you don’t have to be a former fifth-grade teacher like me to understand what he’s talking about. Via EdWise
As if to confirm that it’s back-to-school time, The Education Sector Biweekly Digest sent me this timely link to an April 2010 post by Forrest Hinton at the Quick and the Ed. Hinton argues that teachers are by nature quite competitive. But he wonders if they’re competitive about the important things: The truth is, as [...]
Science Daily reports that UK researchers at Northumbria University have found that many people who speak English don’t understand its basic grammar. Apparently this has nothing to do with intelligence: [Dr Ewa Dabrowska] also stressed that the findings have nothing to do with intelligence. Participants with low levels of educational attainment were given instruction following [...]
Trip Gabriel at the NYT reports on test-taking at a school in Queens: Multiple choice: New York State’s fifth-grade social studies test was given Nov. 16 and 17. After students completed the test, which of the following should NOT have occurred: (A) Students waited patiently to learn the results. (B) Students enjoyed the week without [...]
Naomi Schaefer Riley at the Wall Street Journal brings us the latest on Teacher for America (TFA) in her interview with TFA founder Wendy Kopp. Teach for America has two goals. One is to place talented (though usually not credentialed) teachers in some of the lowest performing schools in the country. The second is to [...]
You can’t be in the education business too long without having a thought or two about something called constructivism. There’s not a lot of agreement about what the term means, though. Catherine Johnson over at Kitchen Table Math offers some definitions: definition constructivist classroom: A classroom in which the teacher uses pedagogical methods that are [...]
Joe Carter, the web editor at First Things, has an interesting take on sex education. His argument is that neither the Planned Parenthood approach–recently in the news for teaching middle-schoolers in Iowa how to perform female exams–nor the just-say-no crowd is actually educating kids: Both types of programs are equally flawed and flawed in the [...]
Sharon Cohen reports for AP about Urban Prep, an all-boys charter school in Chicago. There are many things that make Urban Prep different, but perhaps the most important one is that 100% of its first graduation class is headed to college. Along the way, boys’ lives have been changed — and very possibly saved. Urban [...]