Reform & Policy

Schools will not be fixed merely via pedagogy. Content is the heart. Content knowledge and the content delivered. #edreform #CommonCore

Does the concept of hysteresis apply to public schools? If so, caution must be taken when altering school communities: http://bit.ly/wRaotM

We are entering an era of increasing turbulence. Climate, economy, and politics. Chaos and complexity must be understood across domains

Just had a thought the other day. Why do our public representatives need to be real people? If their function is to listen to and balance the needs of their constituency, why not make a virtual representative, an algorithmic avatar?

It sounds silly, but consider how the primary issues we run into with representatives are issues of human fallibility, corruption, and trust. A virtual representative would impartially reflect aggregate constituent views.

There's already work being done on building Liquid Democracy processes atop blockchains. This may not be as sci fi crazy as it sounds. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23531424-500-bitcoin-tech-to-put-political-power-in-the-hands-of-voters/

Also, this would remove all of the nonsense about electing a public representative just based upon completely irrelevant and superficial traits, such as the way he or she looks or talks.

So I went to each individual state website to see how they label their ESEA mandated 3-8 reading/language arts #assessments.

Here is the list: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11n2BxNjeIOox8KyEcUFopk526yq7dAeeMXO861onIjw/edit?usp=sharing

@AchieveInc @edcommission @ed1stconsulting #testing

This is interesting to me because it's really quite revealing of the confusion in the we have between ELA as a subject and literacy as a set of general skills

ELA as a subject, one would think, would mean much more than just general skills. There's specific knowledge and study of genres, literature and literary techniques, historical epochs and literary canons, critical methods, etc

But because tests are labeled ELA, despite their general nature, literacy then falls under ELA, thus watering down what was once a rich subject

The irony being that our reading scores remain stagnant both on PISA and NAEP because we've completely confused ourselves about what we mean by literacy and thus flub how we teach it.

92% of states refer to their tests as ELA. 12% include the word "literacy"

Honestly, if you are a teacher and developing your own lessons right now, STOP. There is an overabundance of free and well-developed online materials already out there. It's just a matter of selection and connecting your students to it.

Thinking out loud: I'm wondering whether remote learning needs to lessen a focus on an "instructional core" and instead focus on small group/individual intervention and more opportunities for project-based enrichment. Seems like remote is more suited for those types of learning.

I find it fascinating that in a nation of 13,000 school districts we talk about the notion of a "canon." Which district's canon are we referring to, now?

How about all educators gain access to relevant journals based on their area of speciality or grade-band?

It's really quite absurd that research is meant to expand knowledge, and there is constant decrying how educators don't know the research, but most articles are behind a paywall.

Yes, I get that you can email the author, but that avoids the underlying issue.

We need better ways

. . . and to sell you what you never knew you wanted. Of course they will allow bad actors to manipulate truth and dictators to manipulate a populace. A facile vision of social media private enterprise as a utopian fulfillment of democracy/freedom should never have been believed.

And it's ridiculous to expect them not to, while at the same time expecting them to provide you everything for free. Of course they will sell your info to the highest bidder. Of course they will leverage your weaknesses to make you addicted ...

We are facing a reckoning for the Faustian bargain we've made by expecting everything online to be free. You really think a private enterprise like Facebook is actually committed to world peace and connection? They'll sell your soul down the river to make money. . .

We want everything to be free, but won't acknowledge the compromise we make when we join. Maybe it's time to start expecting to pay for the protections we expect.

Lower class sizes, tutoring, and coaching are backed by research.

But they all require more professionals--and a supporting infrastructure--in a time when schools are both losing enrollment and frequently short staffed.

These tensions need to be acknowledged if their promise is to be actualized for the students and school communities that need them the most.

A school is defined by the very place in which it sits, in that particular community, within that particular state and local policy context, in that specific time.  https://schoolecosystem.wordpress.com/2021/07/16/what-will-it-take-to-improve-our-schools/

A tendency is to jump into immediate action, put in place some singular practice or program or system, and then clap one another on the back and start a new school year without ever having addressed the underlying root of problems that prevent universal success.

One the one hand, teams need to slow down to do deeper analysis and planning at the systems-level. They need to check their biases and assumptions, collect more data, more clearly problems they can change, and refine their theories and designs for action.

Been thinking a lot lately about the balance and tension between systems-level work and classroom-level work within MTSS in a school and district.

A brief 🧵 👇

On the other, teachers, staff, and students need immediate and ongoing guidance and supports across the school community and in classrooms.

Navigating and carrying school teams through these competing tensions seems to be a key aspect of improving outcomes.

We need to slow down teams to speed up instructional efficacy.

10 years ago, I wrote a series on #curriculum on @ChalkbeatNY, and I stressed the importance of #opensource curriculum. I don't think the field was ready to hear it then, but maybe we are now given developments since then. Here is the post republished: https://languageliteracy.blog/2022/12/11/the-open-source-imperative-for-k-12-curriculum/

Something I haven't seen flushed out empirically yet in examinations of scaling: Can we deliberately scale up good things, leveraging power scaling laws while simultaneously.and inversely scaling down bad things? Would love to read more on this.