Curriculum A shorter version of this post originally appeared on the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s Flypaper blog. Like pretty much everyone who is passionate about closing the achievement gap, I’m interested in Success Academies. I’ve read Eva Moskowitz’s book, Mission Possible: How the Secrets of the Success Academies Can Work in Any School, and watched the videos…
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Core Knowledge Schools By Debbie Reynolds Debbie Reynolds has been teaching for over ten years in grades K-2; she currently teaches second grade at Diedrichsen Elementary School in Sparks, Nevada. Diedrichsen is located in a middle- to lower-socioeconomic neighborhood, with 44% of students being of low-SES background. The student exemplars presented in this article are from a student…
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Education Practice By Ilene Shafran Ilene Shafran is a 2nd-grade teacher at PS 34 in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. This appraisal was originally published as a Teacher to Teacher column in the New York Teacher, the newspaper of the United Federation of Teachers, and was posted on the UFT website. The opinion expressed in the column is the author’s own…
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Curriculum By Greg Ashman Greg Ashman is a teacher in Australia. Supported by his school (but not necessarily representing its views), he has developed a love of educational research. Ashman is now pursuing a PhD. This post originally appeared on his blog, Filling the Pail. To mark the recent cricket world cup, I thought it might be a good idea…
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Education Leadership Reading Recovery is an intensive intervention for first graders who are struggling to learn to read. Although its research base is not huge, well-controlled studies have found it highly effective. Newly published research shows that Reading Recovery is remaining effective even as it scales up. This is great news—and could mean that Reading Recovery will…
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Literacy Teach for America (TFA) aims to increase student achievement by increasing the quality of teaching. Concerned with the short-term commitment TFA asks its recruits to make, I’ve never been sure what to make of TFA. Seeking teachers who were themselves strong students and focusing on outcomes, it has the potential to elevate the teaching profession….
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Teaching In my last post, I described conversations with three teachers that revealed their different views about what teaching is. The most persuasive was a teacher who focuses on retention—and thinks teachers are making a mistake when they change topics as soon as they see that students have comprehended the topic at hand. As we spoke,…
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Teaching According to a recent survey, fifty-five percent of Americans believe that the Common Core standards address “sex education, evolution, global warming and the American Revolution.” Pro or con, left-leaning or right-leaning, misperceptions were widespread. Sadly, the problem isn’t merely lack of information—it’s misinformation: there were more mistaken beliefs about what’s in the Common Core among…
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Curriculum By Joy C. Dingle Joy C. Dingle is an independent K–16 education consultant in the Washington, DC, area. She can be reached at [email protected] Recently, a colleague and I had a fascinating conversation about education and exactly what a meaningful, well-balanced US education should include. My adopted city of Washington, DC, and our nation are…
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Curriculum By Samantha Wesner Samantha Wesner is the managing editor of The Concord Review, which publishes high school students’ research papers. As a junior in high school taking American history, my class had two options for the final project: a PowerPoint presentation or an extended research essay. To many it was a no-brainer; the PowerPoint was…
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