Mixed Results for Charters

NYT article of May 1, "Despite Push, Success at Charter Schools Is Mixed," by Trip Gabriel,
talks about mixed results for Charters. Thanks Mike P. for sending this my way.

Key idea: charters vary WIDELY in effect.

Key paragraph setting up that idea:

But for all their support and cultural cachet, the majority of the 5,000 or so charter schools nationwide appear to be no better, and in many cases worse, than local public schools when measured by achievement on standardized tests, according to experts citing years of research. Last year one of the most comprehensive studies, by researchers from Stanford University, found that fewer than one-fifth of charter schools nationally offered a better education than comparable local schools, almost half offered an equivalent education and more than a third, 37 percent, were “significantly worse.”

Teachers Evaluated by Student Test Scores in NYC

Yesterday's NYT story, "Agreement will alter evaluations of teachers," by Jennifer Medina details a NY teahers' union agreement to overhaul teacher evaluations "and tie them to student test scores" something "the unions had bitterly opposed for years. Check this out: "Teachers would be measured on a 100-point scale, with 20 percent points based on how much students improve on the standardized state exams. Another 20 percent would be based on local tests, which would have to be developed by each school system. After two years, 25 percent would be based on state exams and 15 percent would come from the local tests."

Is this coming to a state near you soon? Too soon to say, but this detail from the article is interesting: NY Teachers will be will be placed in one of the following categories: highly effective, effective, developing, and ineffective. Illinois has agreed to move to that same system next year.

There are not that many common denominators left

Today's NYT's article "As Newsweek goes on Block, an era fades," author Stephanie Clifford details the implications for a world where magazines from the middle with great stature.

For English teachers, this is really essential -- our job is to help kids figure out who's talking and what's their authoirty -- everything is rhetoric.

The end of the 3-hour phone conversation. So what?

After the hyperbole about the effects of increased technology on kids, this article talks about "the really nuanced things about the way technology is affecting the closeness properties of friendship." Half of American kids send 50 or more texts per day. Studies show that kids are less interested in face to face meeting. Kids don't have hour-long phone conversations with bosom buddies anymore. Should we care? This article introduces the topic. Article "Antisocial Networking?" by Hilary Stout, published today in the New York Times Style section here.

"Contesting Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?" Short Interview of James Shapiro

Julia Keller supplies a quick e-mail interview of James Shapiro, author of new book "Contesting Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?" Key idea: "My interest is not about proving what people think.. so much as why they think it. Keller: "His book tells the story of the people who refuse to believe the obvious -- that Shakespeare was Shakespeare -- and what this deathless skepticism revesals about our changing notions of authorship, creativity and the extent to which written works are imbued with autobiography." Article here. I'll use it in my freshman English class now that we're reading Romeo and Juliet as a modern connection.

Teacher Training like Medical Residency?

Programs Train Teachers Using Medical School Model
What if we prepared teachers the same way we prepare doctors? Teacher "residency programs" based on the medical residency model are becoming popular; Boston was one of the first to create one in 2003. Morning Edition, NPR, April 22, 2010

This from NCTE's "InBox" listserv.

Adolescent Literacy: What Hot, What's Not

The March 2010 JAAL shares What's Hot and Not in Reading. This year: adolescent literacy, comprehension, literacy coaches, RtI, among others.

The article references CCAAL's Time to Act: which concludes "that adolescents need a higher level of literacy than ever before, both for college-readiness and employment in the new gloabal knowledge economy".

Also, Reading Next (2004) which says "very few of these older struggling readers need help to read the words on a page; their most common problem is that they are not able to comprehend what they read." The report idenitifes 15 elements of effective instruction: direct, explicit ecomprehension instruction, strategies instruction, comprehension monitoring, metacognitive instruction, teacher modeling, scaffolded instruction, apprenticeship models.

Motivation was a topic that should be hot, according to those who were surveyed. Taboada (2009) identifed 5 dimensions of reading: perceived control, interest, self-efficacy, involvement, and social collaboration.

Ending quote from Brozo: "To me it is at the heart of why programmatic initiatives are failing. They are decontextualized; meaningful learning is not taking place. Students today have so many options for gaining information other than print. We need to focus on ways to engage students with their texts."