Tag Archive for ‘New York’ at The Core Knowledge Blog

Rewarding students for high performance has been discussed here and elsewhere, now a pending California bill would authorize and encourage school districts to provide nonmonetary incentives to middle and high school students.

“What we’re really looking at is recognition and motivation and incentive to achieve,” Sen. Elaine Alquist, a Santa Clara Democrat who proposed the measure, tells the Sacramento Bee. Not everyone agrees. “At some point, students need to be taught that every good deed does not require reward,” said Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

I’m a pragmatist. I favor whatever works. But there will always be something that rubs me the wrong way about having to reward people for acting in their own self-interest.

Update: The Gradebook, a really good edublog by the St. Petersburg Times’ Jeffrey Solochek, has more on this, including similar proposals in Florida and New York.

I’m almost sorry I chose to be on the north rim of the Grand Canyon when my home state of New York announced that universal proficiency is nigh. Better than four out of five public school students in the Empire State are suddenly at or above grade level in math up from 73 percent last year while 69 percent of students were at or above state standards.

There’s so much to say about lowering the bar and how the good news doesn’t square with NAEP results, but lots of other commenters including Sol Stern were on the job while I was away:

Sometime in the next decade, the white children of Lake George and the black children of New York City will come face to face with reality. On a high school math Regents test—or on an SAT test, or in a college remediation course—they will discover that they are not quite as proficient as New York State once assured them.

Other fascinating items waiting in my inbox: Karin Chenoweth’s take on the IES Reading First report is crystal clear on what the data shows…and what it doesn’t; and a study shows elementary-school teachers are poorly prepared by education schools to teach math. Hmmm. I wonder why no one is suggesting copying whatever it is that has helped New York’s teachers do so well.

Nice to be back.