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Jonah Edelman said that growth models should show where kids are relative to themselves, not each other based on norm-based benchmarks. This is a great suggestion.

He also said we need to do more than high-stakes testing, and portfolios were mentioned as were attempts to measure creativity. Also great suggestions.

But here's a big red flag: we need to point to very specific examples of this kind of big picture assessment, otherwise it's just window dressing for quantitative data and test scores. Randi Weingartner, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, served as the head of the NYC teachers' union before she became AFT president. She sold out on performance/"merit" pay, claiming that teachers would be measured on more than just test scores. Guess how teacher "merit" is measured in NYC? Test scores, the fill-in-the-bubble kind of tests that Obama excoriated in his recent speech on education.

posted 3 years, 2 months ago
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Want to know what can be done to mitigate the effects of poverty on school achievement? Here’s a must-read from researcher David Berliner.

“Berliner reviews a half-dozen out-of-school factors that have been clearly linked to lower achievement among poor and minority-group students: birth weight and non-genetic parental influences; medical care; food insecurity; environmental pollution; family breakdown and stress; and neighborhood norms and conditions. Additionally, he notes a seventh factor: extended learning opportunities in the form of summer programs, after-school programs, and pre-school programs. Access to these resources by poor and minority students could help mitigate the effects of the other six factors.”

posted 3 years, 2 months ago
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