Comments on: Great Academia Action

By: Kevin Hall

Kevin Hall — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 02:02:54 +0000

Steve Ritter has written an interesting reply to Justin Reich’s post. See it here:

By: Kevin Hall

Kevin Hall — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 00:07:46 +0000

Regarding this: “But it also isn’t clear to me who in the system is incentivized to provide disinterested, broadly-accessible, readable summaries of important studies that help educators make careful decisions with scarce resources based on careful interpretation of existing evidence,” I would say the What Works Clearinghouse is what you’re looking for. Some would also say RAND.

By: Jason Dyer

Jason Dyer — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 22:49:23 +0000

Just wanted to mention:

I’m using the Carnegie books this year (my entire district bought new books for Common Core). Reviews have been pretty mixed; a good amount of it is a more heavily scripted Boaler-esque curriculum but the students are currently used to lecture-and-take-notes so I have some Algebra 2 students who are melting down. The freshmen have been less indoctrinated so appear to be having a better time with Algebra 1.

The Cognitive Tutor questions look exactly like the PARCC questions (same user interface, even down to the color scheme). The same company owns both.

By: Mary Dooms

Mary Dooms — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 20:37:20 +0000

Back in June I wrote two posts regarding Carnegie Learning asking if it was a Game Changer. One of the founders of Cognitive Tutor responded. I was also interested in learning what John Hattie had to say on the topic so I posed the question to him in a follow uppost. Hattie’s response was, “… It is tough out there making changes and even changes of d> .20 can be worth striving for.” I'm just a middle school teacher mind you, not a statistician. But I was interested in Carnegie's claims because the effect size wasn't "significant"--in my mind. Again I'm not a statistician, nor am I knowledgeable about what is technically deemed significant. And this is precisely the point Justin Reich makes. I welcome more conversation on this topic. Over the summer I read a comment on Diane Ravitch's blog of how one teacher was directed to implement the program merely as a proctor in her 8th grade class (She did not use the word “proctor”, but that's how I think she wanted it to be interpreted.) The high school department chair thought the program was all that. I’m looking forward to the comments.

By: Tom Hoffman

Tom Hoffman — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 20:10:32 +0000

I just can’t believe any existing program could be a revolution hiding in plain sight given the current testing regime. If there was one middle school in Rhode Island that doubled their math proficiency in a year after adopting a piece of software, OTHER SCHOOLS WOULD BUY THE SOFTWARE. It would all be perfectly clear.