Comments on: Posted Without Snark

By: Nancy

Nancy — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 00:09:58 +0000

Dan, Have you seen this? It reminded me of you—-
http://indexed.blogspot.com/

By: Jason Dyer

Jason Dyer — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 02:47:21 +0000

My NCLB feelings are complex (if I ever wrote my essay it’d be titled In Defense of and Against NCLB Simultaneously) but I did want to pick on this bit (Tom Sobol is quoting someone else)

The standards movement is pushing teachers and students to focus on memorizing information, then regurgitating fact for high test scores.

I don’t know about other states, but our math standards involve very little memorization. All formulas are given.

There’s vocabulary, sure, but it’s just knowing the territory and would show up in even in a standards-free class.

I think the “memorize and regurgitate” meme is a throwback to the days where education involved knowing the dates and locations of every war in Western Europe from 1000-1880.

By: Chris Lehmann

Chris Lehmann — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 02:27:45 +0000

I've cited this speech on your blog before, but Tom Sobol's critique of NCLB -- that it is much more than implementation error -- is worth revisiting.

By: Tom Hoffman

Tom Hoffman — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 01:59:09 +0000

So…. the implementation was poor?

By: Amanda, High School Science Teacher

Amanda, High School Science Teacher — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 01:35:40 +0000

I really see where you are coming from but some students need incentives to do the practice. Some students will continue to think they already ‘know’ it and just plan on pulling it out at the end if they know this is how the system works (which they’ll figure out quite quickly). The real question then is won’t we have failed them as teachers when they don’t manage to magically master it all in the end? I don’t think it is right to ‘punish’ one child because of the greater good but you do have to consider the implications.
This is certainly something I’ve come to reflect on more as I transfer to a standards based grading rubric. In a perfect world we’d have the time and resources to differentiate not only instruction but truly differentiate grading. This also takes time to explain the reasons and research behind this to the community and parents. But then that wouldn’t matter if the college admissions process still works the same way (GPA+Test Scores=#). In order to really reach every student we need policy change towards concept mastery across P-20.