Joanne Jacobs
ACT: Pandemic fueled grade inflation
High school grade inflation accelerated during the pandemic, according to ACT. “The findings echo a recent federal study that also showed...
Joanne Jacobs
- May 9
- 1 min
Teaching about racism: Americans are divided
Americans agree that schools should teach about historic racism and slavery, but divided on present-day racism, writes Matt Barnum on...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jan 3, 2020
- 1 min
Tutoring, or Test Prep?
I was well into this article before I realized that the British “tuition” must be the American “tutoring”. An east London secondary...
Joanne Jacobs
- Sep 19, 2018
- 1 min
Grade inflation is expanding
Grade inflation is expanding, especially at high schools with affluent students, concludes a Fordham’s newest study, Grade Inflation in...
Joanne Jacobs
- Aug 29, 2018
- 1 min
Math licensing test is too hard, say teachers
Does a third-grade teacher need to know high school math? asks Ann Doss Helms in the Charlotte Observer. “Almost 2,400 North Carolina...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jul 31, 2018
- 1 min
Testing basic skills leads to two-tier system
Schools serving mainly poor and minority students end up teaching the basic skills and schools serving more advantaged students, knowing...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jul 30, 2018
- 2 min
Show me the test scores
You want my kids to go to your schools? Show me they’re learning, writes Citizen Stewart in a defense of test-based accountability....
Joanne Jacobs
- Jul 19, 2018
- 2 min
Elite colleges drop SAT, ACT essay test
The ability to write cogently, quickly and under pressure, helped me get into and through college. However, a growing list of selective...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jul 12, 2018
- 2 min
Kids made honor roll, but aren’t at grade level
“It’s no use if my kids are on the school’s honor roll if they are not proficient in reading and math,” a mother tells LA School Report’s...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jul 11, 2018
- 2 min
More states rely on robo-graders for essay tests
Pearson’s “automated scoring program graded some 34 million student essays on state and national high-stakes tests last year,” she...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jul 9, 2018
- 2 min
None dare call it tracking
Well, it looks like tracking to me. And I’m fine with it. Jonathan Plucker, a Johns Hopkins education professor, sees “a subtle shift” in...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jun 18, 2018
- 2 min
Equity and excellence
New York City’s elite high schools are filled with Asian-American students — many from low-income, immigrant families — who’ve aced the...
Joanne Jacobs
- May 31, 2018
- 2 min
22% of Pomona students are ‘disabled’
classified as disabled, largely because of mental-health issues such as depression or anxiety,” reports Douglas Belkin in the Wall Street...
Joanne Jacobs
- May 16, 2018
- 1 min
Are test scores irrelevant?
Students defended their Providence, Rhode Island middle school in a panel discussion sponsored by Generation Citizen, reports the...
Joanne Jacobs
- May 15, 2018
- 2 min
How to motivate students
Many believe “extrinsic” motivators, such as incentives, “decrease student effort by eroding students’ intrinsic desire to learn,” they...
Joanne Jacobs
- May 1, 2018
- 2 min
Test-optional students are as likely to graduate
At colleges that don’t require applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores, students admitted on grades alone are just as likely to graduate...
Joanne Jacobs
- Apr 15, 2018
- 2 min
We’re teaching reading wrong
We’re teaching reading wrong, writes Natalie Wexler in The Atlantic. U.S. schools spend a lot of time on reading skills in the early...
Joanne Jacobs
- Apr 10, 2018
- 2 min
Nation’s report card shows ‘lost decade’
Reading and math proficiency isn’t improving for fourth- and eighth-graders, according to the 2017 National Assessment of Education...
Joanne Jacobs
- Apr 9, 2018
- 1 min
Test scores matter
Test scores matter, writes Erika Sanzi on Good School Hunting. In deciding where to build its second headquarters (HQ2), Amazon is...
Joanne Jacobs
- Mar 28, 2018
- 2 min
Teachers debate: Should students get retakes?
Baptiste Delvallé doesn’t let students retake quizzes and tests, he writes in Education Week. Here’s how I explain it to my students. If...