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Thinking and Linking

On first day of school, think big

Joanne Jacobs

Aug 26, 2018
1 min

On first day of school, think big

Think big, she writes. For now, plan grandly, not precisely. Think about the things students need to know for the next decade, not the next standardized test or unit quiz. Not even the end-of-course or college admissions exams. Focus on things they need to master and understand before adulthood. Very soon, you will be dealing with the ordinary grind: daily lesson plans–plus assemblies, field trips, plays, the school newspaper, the spelling bee, the science fair, yada yada. Bu

Teachers may not know how kids learn to read

Joanne Jacobs

Aug 19, 2018
2 min

Teachers may not know how kids learn to read

How do children learn to read? Most states don’t require new elementary and special-education teachers to show they understand the “science of reading,” concludes a new 50-state analysis by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ). Even states that test the literacy knowledge of elementary teachers often exempt special-education teachers, notes NCTQ president Kate Walsh. Only 11 states “connect two rather self-evident dots—between children’s failure to learn how to read

Enrollment falls at teacher ed programs

Joanne Jacobs

Aug 10, 2018
1 min

Enrollment falls at teacher ed programs

Enrollment is down at teachers’ prep programs, reports Ed Week‘s Madeline Will, but there’s still a surplus of would-be elementary teachers. The number of teacher education graduates declined by 23 percent from 2008 to 2016, according to a report by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. Fifteen percent fewer people earned bachelor’s degrees in education from 2006 to 2015. “While there isn’t a national teacher shortage, there are some perennial shortage a

Best teachers ask for help the most

Joanne Jacobs

Aug 7, 2018
1 min

Best teachers ask for help the most

The most effective teachers are the most likely to ask colleagues for advice on improving their teaching, according to a recently published Northwestern study of elementary schools. “It seems that the better the teacher performed, the more likely they were to go out and obtain feedback on how to be even better,” writes Bradley Busch. Richard Kaplinsky, a math teacher in California kicked off the #ObserveMe movement. Observing other teachers in action has been a fabulous sourc

Going AYP

Joanne Jacobs

Aug 3, 2018
2 min

Going AYP

Roxanna Elden’s Adequate Yearly Progress is an entertaining — and often infuriating — novel about a Texas high school coping with a celebrity superintendent, a clueless consultant, endless test prep, incomprehensible acronyms, Creepy Santa and a Waiting for Superman-style documentary. The story is told through the point of view of several teachers, the football coach and the beleaguered principal. Alexander Russo calls it “one of the best education book I’ve read in years,” b

Who wants to teach

Joanne Jacobs

Aug 2, 2018
1 min

Who wants to teach

Only five percent of high school students who took the ACT in 2017 plan to major in education, according to a new ACT report. That makes education the eighth most popular prospective major, behind health sciences (23 percent), business (10 percent), engineering (9 percent), social sciences (9 percent), science (8 percent), arts (7 percent) and undecided. Alarmingly, interest in majoring in education correlates, negatively, with college readiness. ACT reports that 73 percent o

Look lively: Big Brother is watching

Joanne Jacobs

Jul 22, 2018
2 min

Look lively: Big Brother is watching

A Chinese high school installed cameras that monitor students’ facial expressions, reports Don Lee in the Los Angeles Times. Artificial intelligence software grouped “each face into one of seven emotions: anger, fear, disgust, surprise, happiness, sadness and what was labeled as neutral.” . . . the surveillance cameras took the data on individual facial expressions and used that information to create a running “score” on each student and class. If a score reached a predetermi

A shiny new school fails

Joanne Jacobs

Jul 1, 2018
3 min

A shiny new school fails

San Francisco spent $54 million to build and equip a new STEM-focused middle school to serve low-income black students — and lure middle-class students from nearby neighborhoods, writes Daniel Duane in Wired. “Tech titans” contributed. It sounded great, he writes. “Then it opened.” It shouldn’t be a surprise: A great building doesn’t make a great school. There were laboratories for robotics and digital media, Apple TVs for every classroom, and Google Chromebooks for students.

Teaching citizens: How are we doing?

Joanne Jacobs

Jun 28, 2018
1 min

Teaching citizens: How are we doing?

High school students observe a moment of silence outside the North Carolina Capitol in Raleigh in memory of the victims of the Florida school shooting. Photo: Jonathan Drake/Reuters Schools need to do more to prepare students to become “engaged, informed, and compassionate” citizens and strengthen our democracy, concludes the 2018 Brown Center Report on American Education. While scores on NAEP civics assessments “remained steady or climbed slightly from 1998 to 2014, “there a

‘No big payoffs’ to teacher evaluation push

Joanne Jacobs

Jun 25, 2018
2 min

‘No big payoffs’ to teacher evaluation push

Teacher-effectiveness programs funded by the Gates Foundation didn’t improve students’ achievement, reports Madeline Will in Ed Week. A RAND analysis, also funded by Gates, found “no big payoffs in terms of improved graduation [rates] or achievement of students in general, and low-income and minority students in particular,” said Brian Stecher, the lead author. . . . the Gates Foundation gave grants to three large school districts—Memphis, Tenn. (which merged with Shelby Coun

Core confusion

Joanne Jacobs

May 16, 2018
2 min

Core confusion

The switch to Common Core instruction was annoying, intriguing, inconsistent and sometimes unnoticeable, concludes a survey of 54 high-achieving students — most were Latino — at nine inner-city schools. High achievers at inner-city schools dislike working in groups and prefer teacher-led instruction, a USC survey found. Common Core led to more “projects, discussions, group work, deep analysis of complex texts, and other classroom activities that involved complex thinking,” wr

Glitter jars, bean bags and progress

Joanne Jacobs

May 14, 2018
1 min

Glitter jars, bean bags and progress

At a Columbus, Ohio school in a high-poverty neighborhood, teachers use different strategies to help children learn to calm themselves, writes Katherine Reynolds Lewis in The Atlantic. Many students at Ohio Avenue Elementary come from troubled families and violent neighborhoods. Staff have been taught that “trauma can make kids emotionally volatile and prone to misinterpret accidental bumps or offhand remarks as hostile,” writes Lewis. “They’ve learned how to de-escalate conf

2 + 2 = 4, intolerant teacher tells kids

Joanne Jacobs

May 10, 2018
1 min

2 + 2 = 4, intolerant teacher tells kids

A Muncie, Indiana teacher told her kindergarten class that “two plus two equals four . . . no matter how anyone feels about it,” reports the Babylon Bee, an Onion-like Christian satire site. . . the intolerant zealot systematically denied the possibility that the answer could be anything but “four,” going so far as to single out the specific integers three and seven as “wrong” when mentioned by students as possible answers. The “close-minded bigot” has been suspended without

Let teachers teach

Joanne Jacobs

May 4, 2018
1 min

Let teachers teach

Teachers teach better than students, writes Alex Tabarrok on Marginal Revolution. “A slew of research shows that direct instruction produces superior results compared to other instructional methods,” he writes. Researcher Eric Taylor ran a controlled study comparing direct with student-led instruction. Direct instruction produced higher test scores. The study also analyzed data on teachers’ understanding of math of how to teach it, writes Tabarrok. That was linked to student

Tried-and-true vs. innovation

Joanne Jacobs

May 3, 2018
1 min

Tried-and-true vs. innovation

Educators are obsessed with innovation, while ignoring the tried and true, writes Mike Schmoker in Education Week. For example, “ongoing monitoring and adjustments to teaching, informed by feedback, may have more impact on learning than any other instructional factor,” he writes. In Teach Like a Champion, Doug Lemov “identifies ‘checking for understanding’ as the pivotal element in an effective lesson.” I know teachers in two different schools in the same district whose adopt

Joanne Jacobs

Apr 22, 2018
2 min

Failure is educational for teachers too

Being “the worst” in his weight-lifting class made Ryan Sprott a better teacher, he writes on Ed Week Teacher. “Remembering what failure feels like can be difficult for teachers,” he writes. Adults usually get to avoid doing things they’re not good at. Students don’t have that choice. When I began workout classes as an adult, I was transported back to that dusty weight room of my youth, once again feeling like a failure in comparison to those around me. I was partnered with a

Mental illness in school: What can teachers do?

Joanne Jacobs

Apr 20, 2018
2 min

Mental illness in school: What can teachers do?

A high school teacher might see eight to 30 students a day with serious mental health issues such as bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety, writes Michael Goldstein on FutureEd. The teacher doesn’t necessarily know who’s headed for trouble and who’s just struggling with “normal adolescent angst.” A teacher might mentor one, two or three students in a given year, he writes, but eager rookies don’t know what to say and experienced teachers probably have been “burned or disap

‘Learning styles’ debunked — again

Joanne Jacobs

Apr 18, 2018
1 min

‘Learning styles’ debunked — again

Olga Khazan take a whack at the learning styles myth in The Atlantic. In the early ‘90s, a New Zealander named Neil Fleming developed the VARK questionnaire to sort students into “Visual, Auditory, Reading, and Kinesthetic” learning styles, she writes. By 2014, “more than 90 percent of teachers in various countries believed it.” Research have not found students learn more if taught in their preferred learning styles, writes Khazan. “Strangely, most research on learning styles

Joanne Jacobs

Apr 12, 2018
1 min

Parents, stop coddling your kids

Students and parents disrespect teachers, complained Julie Marburger in a Facebook post that went viral. She teaches sixth grade in a suburb of Dallas. Administration always seems to err on the side of keeping the parent happy, which leaves me with no way to do the job I was hired to do … teach kids. . . . People absolutely HAVE to stop coddling and enabling their children. It’s a problem that’s going to spread through our society like wildfire. It’s not fair to society, and

Teach ‘science of learning’ to teachers

Joanne Jacobs

Apr 4, 2018
1 min

Teach ‘science of learning’ to teachers

Teaching teachers the “basic science of learning” probably would improve teaching and student outcomes, writes Dan Willingham in Education Next. Currently, education schools ask teachers “to learn content that is appropriate for future scientists, not future practitioners,” he write. Then, future teachers don’t get “enough practice with the principles they learn to fully absorb them and thus make them useful.” K–12 teachers don’t need “psychological theory,” he writes. They c

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