Joanne Jacobs
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....
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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
- Apr 27, 2018
- 1 min
Remember when every kid counted?
all their students made the grade — not just some of them, not just the White ones and the middle-class ones.” Under No Child Left Behind...
Joanne Jacobs
- Mar 27, 2018
- 1 min
Test scores don’t predict life outcomes
How do we measure a school’s success? School of choice that raise reading and math scores don’t always improve later outcomes, such as...
Joanne Jacobs
- Feb 28, 2018
- 2 min
SAT/ACT may replace state test in California
California may let schools replace 11th-grade Smarter Balanced tests with the SAT or ACT, reports CALmatters’ Felicia Mello. That might...
Joanne Jacobs
- Feb 27, 2018
- 2 min
What’s proficient? It’s every state for itself
Once upon a time, 45 states adopted Common Core standards and exams — either the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and...
Joanne Jacobs
- Feb 16, 2018
- 1 min
Requiring the impossible leads to fraud
Washington, D.C. public schools were held up as a model of “expert driven” education reform, writes Max C. Eden and Lindsey Burke on...
Joanne Jacobs
- Dec 27, 2017
- 1 min
Testing empowers parents
Testing enables social justice, argues Keri Rodrigues, founder and CEO of Massachusetts Parents United in CommonWealth Magazine. Minority...
Joanne Jacobs
- Dec 19, 2017
- 2 min
Fudging graduation and now college-going rates
Federal education law encourage schools to fudge graduation rates, writes Laura Jimenez, director of standards and accountability for the...
Joanne Jacobs
- Dec 8, 2017
- 2 min
Why test scores matter
Standardized test scores matter, writes Ryan Williams-Virden, dean of students at Minneapolis’ Hiawatha Collegiate High School, on...
Joanne Jacobs
- Nov 16, 2017
- 2 min
Orange is the new red
Orange is the new red for California schools, writes New America’s Conor Williams in The 74. Twice as many schools fell in the bottom...
Joanne Jacobs
- Sep 1, 2017
- 1 min
Here’s how schools inflate grad rates
Public school officials are “using fraudulent methods to inflate graduation rates,” writes Bernard Gassaway in Education Week. He saw it...
Joanne Jacobs
- Aug 14, 2017
- 1 min
Testing pushes weakest teachers to K-2
How should an elementary school deploy its best teachers? Many would argue that first grade is the most critical grade — or maybe...
Joanne Jacobs
- Apr 21, 2017
- 2 min
Indiana: Private schools test for vouchers
Indiana’s private schools now “live or die by test scores,” reports Dylan Peers McCoy for Chalkbeat. If schools don’t score well enough...
Joanne Jacobs
- Apr 12, 2017
- 1 min
Wisconsin governor: Let schools set class time
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s state budget plan lets schools set their own days and hours of instruction, reports the Milwaukee...
Joanne Jacobs
- Mar 31, 2017
- 1 min
Is there a future for test-based accountability?
Is Test-Based Accountability Dead? asks Education Next. Since No Child Left Behind passed in 2001, holding schools accountable for their...
Joanne Jacobs
- Mar 21, 2017
- 2 min
California adopts ‘rosy’ school ratings
After three years without a school accountability system, California Superintendent Tom Torlakson lauded the California School Dashboard...
Joanne Jacobs
- Mar 21, 2017
- 1 min
‘Dashboards’ replace A-F school grades
It’s getting harder to hold schools accountable for performance writes Lane Wright on Education Post. The Education Department’s new ESSA...
Joanne Jacobs
- Feb 27, 2017
- 2 min
How high schools hide dropouts
High schools are inflating graduation rates and test scores by steering low achievers to alternative schools, reports ProPublica and USA...
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