Friday News Roundup

It’s Friday! Time for the news roundup.

Are There Better Ways Than Standardized Tests to Assess Students? Educators Think So (EducationWeek)

EducationWeek writer Larry Ferlazzo recently shared a series of posts addressing assessment. Here’s a sampling of topics addressed in each of the posts:

Let’s Take a Holistic Approach to Judging Schools

Let’s Dump the Obsession With Standardized Testing

It’s Time to Debunk the Myths About Standardized Tests

How Can You Measure a School’s Success? It’s Not Just Through Test Scores

Using Rubrics for “Targeted Feedback”

Rubric Do’s and Don’ts

Alternatives to Standardized Tests During a Pandemic Year

Students Should Not Believe a Grade “Defines Who They Currently Are”

Teachers Can Implement “Equitable Grading”

Grades Should be a “Feedback Tool”

In a week or so, principals will be meeting with their teachers, preparing for the new school year. Here’s a suggestion to every principal out there. Use a full day of professional development time to explore these posts with your teachers. Then use a second day to decide how your school is going to evaluate learning this coming year. You notice I didn’t say “how each teacher is going to evaluate learning this coming year.” This shouldn’t be a teacher decision. It should be a school-wide decision and strategy. If you spend some time on deciding on alternate evaluation methods beyond standardized testing, I’m betting your young learners, their families, and eventually your entire school staff will begin to see the benefits.

New Research: Summer Learning Boosts Math Performance, College Graduation (The 74)

The 74’s Kevin Mahnken reports this week: “With August underway, America’s kids have begun nervously counting the days until vacation ends, while their parents are eyeing back-to-school sales and carpool schedules. But the educational policy world is still soaking in the glories of summer – or, more precisely, summer school.”

Mahnken continues, “New research released last month has offered persuasive new evidence of the potential of summer learning opportunities, particularly in STEM subjects. One, a meta-analysis compiling the findings of dozens of prior studies over the last two years, shows consistent gains in math achievement resulting from student enrollment in summer coursework. Another showed participants in a summer STEM program enjoying significant later-life benefits, including greater success in college and higher earnings.”

All of this is promising news. What I don’t get, and haven’t for quite awhile now, is why we are still separating “learning” by the seasons – in this case summer. If we’ve learned anything over the past 50 years, we now understand that learning happens anywhere and anytime. Learners themselves don’t really care whether they are learning during “regular school” or “summer school.”

We really need to stop compartmentalizing “learning.” It’s so 20^th century.

Opinion: The Most Recent Efforts to Combat Teacher Shortages Don’t Address the Real Problems (The Des Moines Register)

The Des Moines Register reprinted an opinion piece, originally released in The Conversation, and written by Henry Tran, an associate professor of education leadership at the University of South Carolina, and Douglas A. Smith, an associated professor of education at Iowa State University.

Tran and Smith write “States have recently focused their efforts to reduce the nation’s teacher shortage by promoting strategies that ‘remove or relax barriers to entry’ to quickly bring new people into the teaching profession. But these approaches do not address the actual causes of the nationwide teacher shortage. The root cause of the problem is a longstanding overall lack of respect for teachers and their craft, which is reflected by decades of low pay, hyperscrutiny, and poor working conditions.”

Let me ask a question. When was the last time this country respected teachers? 2005? 1970? 1890?

I don’t really know the answer to this question, but I know teachers have been criticized and attacked for the last 40 years. I know this because I was a public school educator during that time.

And so I have to ask the question again – are we ever again going to respect public school teachers, or is it time to create a new type of learning leader – the learning coach – to clean the slate and allow a new respect to begin?

A Sheriff Is Putting AR-15s in Every School. What Safety Experts Have to Say (EducationWeek)

According to a recent EducationWeek article, “A North Carolina school district made headlines over the weekend for its decision to place AR-15 rifles in every school in the event of a school shooting. It’s a high-profile and potentially controversial strategy that school safety experts say isn’t unheard of and can be effective if done right. But it requires serious consideration of the risks involved.”

Really? AR-15s in schools?

I don’t know which one is scarier – a sheriff putting assault rifles in the hands of minimally-trained school resource officers, or a school safety expert that agrees with the idea.

My experience with school resource officers, and the training they have received, suggests this might be one of the worst ideas every when it comes to school safety.

And, is it just me, or does it seem like all these types of stories come from states like North Carolina, Florida, or Texas.

Strange days. We’ll talk Monday. Enjoy the weekend. It’s starting to cool off in Iowa. SVB