Pres. Obama's Good Ideas on Education!

[Winnie]

I just love it when our President pushes something I really agree with!

I support his efforts on this one:

Holding out billions of dollars as a potential windfall, the Obama administration is persuading state after state to rewrite education laws to open the door to more charter schools and expand the use of student test scores for judging teachers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/education/17educ.html?em

I was worried he may have changed his mind about charter schools and holding teachers accountable earlier this year when he acquiesced on not renewing the DC charter school funding. This is great though. I'm so happy that he is standing up for the good of the children.

Good work, Mr. President!

 

[Blair]

I just love it when our President pushes something I really agree with!

I support his efforts on this one:



http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/education/17educ.html?em

I was worried he may have changed his mind about charter schools and holding teachers accountable earlier this year when he acquiesced on not renewing the DC charter school funding. This is great though. I'm so happy that he is standing up for the good of the children.

Good work, Mr. President!

Finally something we can all agree on.....maybe?

 

[TooFarTampa]

I much prefer charter schools to a voucher system ... too much potential for voucher fraud and too much money filtered away from the public schools. Thanks for posting this WInnie!

 

[Lynnie]

Me too. I digg this.

 

[Gidget]

I saw a special years ago on KIPP schools. I was SO impressed. Most are charter schools.

KIPP: Knowledge Is Power Program

Thanks Winnie for sharing this info.

G

 

[GoodWitch58]

The president is also very supportive of our community colleges:

Can Community Colleges Save the U.S. Economy? - TIME

this talks about how the community colleges can help the economy improve....

 

[believer]

I know for a fact that teachers are nervous about being rewarded based on performance scores. There is only so much a teacher can do with a pot luck group of kids each year. I guess after a long period of time like ten plus years, you could come to a better judgement on a teachers students scores. The kids tend to change year after year and speaking from experience the state includes special education kids in the testing which you can imagine drastically lowers the overall classes total score. I hope Obama takes the special ed kids scores out because the great state of Miss. does not as of 2009. The special ed kids only stay in class for one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon. Teachers are all for involving the two different students but against combing testing scores. My guess is the school district or state education makes more money if the special ed students take the test.

 

[Winnie]

I know for a fact that teachers are nervous about being rewarded based on performance scores. There is only so much a teacher can do with a pot luck group of kids each year. I guess after a long period of time like ten plus years, you could come to a better judgement on a teachers students scores. The kids tend to change year after year and speaking from experience the state includes special education kids in the testing which you can imagine drastically lowers the overall classes total score. I hope Obama takes the special ed kids scores out because the great state of Miss. does not as of 2009. The special ed kids only stay in class for one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon. Teachers are all for involving the two different students but against combing testing scores. My guess is the school district or state education makes more money if the special ed students take the test.

That is a good point. I tried, briefly, to find information on this subject. Most of what I found in a short time was from various teaching organizations and most roundly against standardized testing for special education students.

Some early arguments for inclusion were centered around whether special education students should be expected to perform at grade level or not if they are to be included in regular classes.

I think, with my limited knowledge of this subject, that they should be tested differently and probably not have their scores included in the schools overall average. But some type of testing needs to be done to find out if the child is getting anything out of their instruction. Also to assess the abilities of special education teachers. Some progress should be evident in all students over time.

I ran across one good article about an assessment tool called TAMI-Test Accessibility and Modification Inventory that is to help make the tests more fair.

Recent regulations under NCLB permit states to create separate tests for students in special education who have demonstrated past difficulties with standardized assessments. These students must all have Individual Education Plans and need to have been identified as having a disability that is believed to be the cause of their failure to perform at expected grade level.

The researchers began by developing an item modification guide that was used to modify a set of questions given to students with and without identified disabilities, and in both their original and modified forms. They partnered with testing boards in Indiana, Idaho, Arizona and Hawaii to carry out their initial research.

"The findings largely confirmed our hypothesis," Beddow said. "We were able to close the achievement gap with the regularly performing students by modifying the questions that might have been problematic for students with special needs."

Vanderbilt researchers seek to make standardized tests accessible

Maybe with more work like this, the problem will be resolved.

 

[lms47]

I am a retired educator who taught for 27 years in AL. A majority of my career was in a middle shcool where 98% of our students qualified for the free lunch program and the population was 95% Black, 3% Caucasian and 2% Hispanic. The STAT9 was the standardized test of choice for the state 9 years ago. For the last 10 years, under the direction of a very progressive principal, our student scores rose dramatically in all subject areas. Thank God, my teacher evaluation was not measured on the progress of my students on THIS test. A majority of my time was spent in disciplining students, observing and trying to intervene in gang-related activities, attempting to deter teenage pregnancies, desperately trying to get parents involved with the education process and guiding students to make wise life choices. Oh yea, I forgot, I did manage to impart some type of "book learning" to some of the students and received the honor of "Teacher of the Year" from my school for 6 years. I strongly support teacher accountabiliy; but, NOT through standardized test scores.

 

[Yarmap]

I am a retired educator who taught for 27 years in AL. A majority of my career was in a middle shcool where 98% of our students qualified for the free lunch program and the population was 95% Black, 3% Caucasian and 2% Hispanic. The STAT9 was the standardized test of choice for the state 9 years ago. For the last 10 years, under the direction of a very progressive principal, our student scores rose dramatically in all subject areas. Thank God, my teacher evaluation was not measured on the progress of my students on THIS test. A majority of my time was spent in disciplining students, observing and trying to intervene in gang-related activities, attempting to deter teenage pregnancies, desperately trying to get parents involved with the education process and guiding students to make wise life choices. Oh yea, I forgot, I did manage to impart some type of "book learning" to some of the students and received the honor of "Teacher of the Year" from my school for 6 years. I strongly support teacher accountabiliy; but, NOT through standardized test scores.

There's a special place in Heaven for teachers. And they can get in with a 80% score.