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Thinking and Linking

Looping boosts achievement

Joanne Jacobs

Apr 3, 2018
2 min

Looping boosts achievement

Angie Harman started her second year with Destiny Roman, left, and Imani Cole in 2016 as part of a looping pilot for third- and fourth-grade teachers in York, Pennsylvania. Photo: John A. Pavoncello/York Dispatch) Looping — a teacher staying with the same class for two or more years — raises achievement for elementary students, according to a new study, reports Ed Week‘s Brenda Iasevoli. Non-white students gained the most. The researchers also say the results explain why spec

Students — but not teachers — are safer

Joanne Jacobs

Apr 1, 2018
1 min

Students — but not teachers — are safer

Students feel safer in school, according to a Indicators of School Crime and Safety 2017, an annual federal report that analyzed 2015-16 data. Rates of student victimization are down. Schools have beefed up security in the last 20 years, writes Evie Blad in Ed Week. More schools have armed guards or police officers on campus, the report noted. Ninety-five percent of schools reported holding lockdown drills with students. However, teachers are less safe in school, reports Mark

Teachers debate: Should students get retakes?

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 you’re asked to meet a deadline in a future job, and you’re late or have poor-quality work, you might get fired. If you’re in a relationship and don’t show up to the dates, you might get dumped. If you cross the road without looking, and a car comes zooming by, you don’t get a second chance. I prefer that they get a bad grade and learn to gi

‘Doing it wrong’

Joanne Jacobs

Mar 25, 2018
2 min

‘Doing it wrong’

In We’re Doing It Wrong, David Michael Slater goes after 25 bad education ideas and provides his alternatives. A middle-school English teacher, he’s taught mostly low-income students in Oregon and gifted students in Nevada. He’s also written more than 20 fiction books for children, teens and adults. The book criticizes grouping students by age, rather than performance, then asking teachers to “differentiate.” Instead, he suggests letting students win badges for mastering skil

Learn, talk, think

Joanne Jacobs

Mar 21, 2018
1 min

Learn, talk, think

Three girls are using prior knowledge, texts and images to rank five Civil War heroes in order of heroism. Then they’ll write essays justifying their choices. Two classmates are analyzing the Lincoln-Douglas debates. “Explain what Lincoln meant when he said, ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand,’” Madison reads. “So, that means, if everyone’s arguing, the country will break apart.” Knowledge matters in Chris Hayes’ second-grade class at Westergard Elementary School in

History is taught as texts without context

Joanne Jacobs

Mar 20, 2018
2 min

History is taught as texts without context

Studying texts, without context, is no way to learn history, writes Will Fitzhugh on Diane Ravitch’s blog. But it’s the Common Core way. A notorious lesson called for teaching the Gettysburg Address without discussing the Civil War. Teachers were told: Refrain from giving background context or substantial instructional guidance at the outset. It may make sense to notify students that the short text is thought to be difficult and they are not expected to understand it fully on

Reaching out to every child

Joanne Jacobs

Mar 7, 2018
1 min

Reaching out to every child

Teachers chart their relationships with students at a high-poverty North Carolina school, reports Lisa Philip on WUNC. Pattillo Middle School teachers post the names of school’s 265 students on index cards, then place dots by those with whom they have meaningful relationships. “Then we were able to step back and see which students didn’t have a dot, or didn’t have as many dots as other kids,” said Byron Bullock, an administrator at the Edgecombe County school, about 75 miles

Teaching ‘Black Panther’

Joanne Jacobs

Mar 3, 2018
1 min

Teaching ‘Black Panther’

Black Panther, a huge box office hit, is a “hit with teachers” too, reports Brenda Iasevoli in Ed Week. Teachers are building lessons based on the film, set in the super hi-tech, uncolonized African nation of Wakanda, where T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) inherits the fictitious kingdom upon the death of his father only to be challenged by a Wakandan exile, Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan). The Black Panther Challenge, which is raising money to buy Black Panther tickets for black c

Closing the gap in Chicago

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 27, 2018
1 min

Closing the gap in Chicago

Two Chicago charter schools are closing the achievement gap for low-income, black children, according to a new book, The Ambitious Elementary School. “They greatly expanded the school day, week, and year,” writes Daniel Hamlin. “Weekdays begin with before-school tutoring at 7:00 a.m. and end with after-school enrichment classes at 6:00 p.m. There are also academic and enrichment courses for several hours on Saturdays.” In the “shared, systematic” model, teachers receive “inte

Should teachers ban spiral notebooks?

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 16, 2018
1 min

Should teachers ban spiral notebooks?

Should schools ban spiral notebooks? After all, writes Thomas Arnett of the Christensen Institute, students often use them “to scribble or doodle, pass messages to their friends, or construct wads, planes, and spitball projectiles.” They can be a distraction. digital distraction, Arnett writes. A study found college students allowed to use computers in class earned lower scores on their final exams than students in classes where laptops were forbidden. Like spiral notebooks,

The high cost of cheap diplomas

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 15, 2018
1 min

The high cost of cheap diplomas

“Making graduation too easy” doesn’t just undermine “the motivations of students (and teachers),” writes Robert Slavin, who directs the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins and chairs the Success for All Foundation. “It also undermines the motivation of the entire system” to improve. If educators can keep doing what they’ve always done, knowing that numbers will be fiddled with at the end to make everything come out all right, then the whole system can

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 14, 2018
1 min

We know what works, but don’t do it

“Direct Instruction is the Rodney Dangerfield of education,” writes Fordham’s Robert Pondiscio. Despite 50 years of research showing its effectiveness, DI “gets no respect.” A new meta-analysis in the Review of Educational Research finds “strong positive results” for DI “regardless of school, setting, grade, student poverty status, race, and ethnicity, and across subjects and grades” in studies from 1966 to 2016. So why are so few schools using it? Many teachers see it as lim

Sitting in rows is old-fashioned — and effective

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 7, 2018
1 min

Sitting in rows is old-fashioned — and effective

Students sitting in rows facing the teacher is horribly out of date, writes Tom Sherrington, a British headmaster, on teacherhead. But it works. When I teach, I want to look everyone in the eye; I want to gauge their responses, hold their attention; I want to communicate with them. All of them. At the same time. This is the most intimate person-to-person aspect of teaching: eye contact. It matters; it’s powerful. It’s a deeply human element of communicating ideas and emoti

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 3, 2018
1 min

Another bad teacher on TV

A.P. Bio, another bad-teacher sit-com isn’t bad, writes Mark Walsh on Ed Week. Denied tenure at Harvard, a philosophy scholar finds himself teaching biology in Toledo. Or not teaching it. “I don’t care about biology,” Griffin tells the wide-eyed students in his class. “We’re not going to do any biology in here. And this isn’t one of those things where over the course of a year, I secretly teach it to you.” No, Griffin intends to use the class to get back at that nemesis, Mile

Teacher coaches boost math learning

Joanne Jacobs

Jan 30, 2018
2 min

Teacher coaches boost math learning

“Extending the reach of excellent teachers,” the goal of Public Impact’s Opportunity Culture initiative, improves math achievement, according to an evaluation by Michael Hansen of Brookings and Ben Backes of American Institutes for Research. Opportunity Culture schools pay excellent teachers more to teach more students or to coach teams of teachers in the same subject or grade area. Students made large gains in math when schools used the coaching-focused multi-classroom leade

Easy-pass policy fails students

Joanne Jacobs

Jan 28, 2018
1 min

Easy-pass policy fails students

In last week’s post on “grading floors,” Memphis teachers debated whether giving minimum grades for minimal achievement motivates failing students — or misleads them and their parents. lowering expectations for students’ achievement and work habits. District policies discourage teachers from setting “hard” deadlines or “giving a student less than 50 percent on an assignment (regardless of the quality of work or level of completion),” Langhorne writes. Teachers are encouraged

Don’t wait to get students on track

Joanne Jacobs

Jan 26, 2018
2 min

Don’t wait to get students on track

In the U.S., disadvantaged kids start school behind on vocabulary and cultural experiences, then fall farther behind as they go through school, writes Marc Tucker. In top-performing countries, such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Finland, Flemish Belgium and Canada, students don’t arrive at middle or high school years behind. “No one waits” till middle school “to fix what is wrong.” When students start, in kindergarten or first grade in top-performing countries, their teac

Grading ‘floors’ can become learning ceilings

Joanne Jacobs

Jan 25, 2018
2 min

Grading ‘floors’ can become learning ceilings

After a grade-switching scandal at two high schools, Memphis Superintendent Dorsey Hopson has issued a moratorium on “grade floors,” reports Chalkbeat Tennessee. “Proponents of grade floors had called them a useful tool to motivate students who lag far behind to bring up their grades — for instance, bumping a student performing at 20 percent up to a 60 percent on a scale that requires at least a 70 percent to pass.” Failing grades deprive students of hope,” argues Marlena Lit

Teaching troublemakers

Joanne Jacobs

Jan 22, 2018
1 min

Teaching troublemakers

She likes Carla Shalaby’s book, Troublemakers, subtitled “lessons in freedom from young children at school.” A former elementary teacher, Shalaby focuses on four first- and second-graders who are “daring, charismatic, silly, curious, creative” outside of school, as Lander puts it. In school, they’re considered problems. #CarlaShalaby #teaching #troublemakers

Joanne Jacobs

Jan 8, 2018
2 min

Will robots replace teachers?

Robots will replace teachers by 2027, predicts Anthony Seldon, a British educator. Can teaching be automated? asks Kristin Houser, senior editor of Futurism. “Machines are replacing finance experts, outperforming doctors, and competing with advertising masterminds,” she writes. However, no digital system can compete with humans when it comes to understanding what students need, Rose Luckin, a University College London Knowledge Lab professor, told Futurism. “I do not believe

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