The Education Train May Have Left the Station
The education train may have left the station, leaving traditional educators still groping their way blindly to the platform. New, innovative, non-educators are poised to blaze the new education...
View ArticleIncidental Oversight or Deliberate Social Engineering
America is full of sober, responsible people who tried very hard to do the right thing financially. They got their education, got a job, bought a house, stayed out of debt and saved for retirement....
View Article“Education... From Cradle Through a Career”
I appreciate that the President talks so often about the importance of education, most recently at the Centennial of the NAACP. All of us can agree that we need to offer every child in this country --...
View ArticleThe Foolishness of Educational Ethnocentrism
Anytime the Japanese education system, and the advisability of adopting some of its features, comes up, most certainly voices will arise in dissent. Americans have heard somewhere that Japanese...
View ArticleThe Ugly Flip Side of Meritocracy
(paraphrased) If you believe in meritocracy, then those with the potential and work hard will reach the top, and those who deserve to be at the bottom will be at the bottom. Failure within a goal of...
View ArticleCellphones the New Calculators?
Dear ---, As I understand your research proposal, it sounds like you are collecting an anthology of ways to use the IPhone as an instructional instrument. The current cell-phone-as-tool-of-instruction...
View ArticleAn Alternate Theory of Human Evolution?
Elaine Morgan hypothesizes that humans evolved from a water primate and laments the lack of interest and research within the scientific community. She questioned the prevailing Savannah theory of the...
View ArticleWhole-System Reform
Yeah, that's what we need for education in America—whole system reform. But it sounds daunting and overwhelming. Is whole system reform even possible?Opposing ideologies argue themselves into...
View ArticleLesson Plan: The Chocolate Factory or Place Value in Algebraic Thinking
Even good math students often begin studying of algebra with misunderstanding of place value. The following activity offers middle school students concrete, hands-on experience with the concept of...
View ArticlePlace Value Part 2: Base Ten for Young Students
One of the most fundamental mathematical concepts, yet one of the most poorly understood, is place value. The typical primary school lesson presents only a superficial, nominal understanding of place...
View ArticleSo I Received This Health Care Call To Action Today
Since I actually care about people who sent me this email, I have left out all identifying references. .... The U. S. senators and representatives who were elected to serve us are on their August...
View ArticlePlace Value Part 3: The Bake Sale
Place value is such a fundamental concept that we ensure the students recognize place value and its significance wherever it occurs. In Part 1, The Chocolate Factory, I introduced a middle school...
View Article“Do Teachers Need Education Degrees?”
That's today's question on the New York Time's Room for Debate feature. The debate suffers from a conflation of credentialing with the schools of education, understandable since graduation from a...
View ArticleThe New School Year: My Top Ten To-do
Getting right to it: Number 10. Go through your closet and get your own school clothes ready to go. Update or accessorize your outfits. I know I did not like wasting time trying to figure out what to...
View ArticleThe New School House Rock
Give a listen to Georgia teacher, Crystal Huau Mills, her students and friends performing their version of Grammar: the Musical, entitled Grammar Jammer, available on DVD. Crustal Huau Mills wrote the...
View ArticleI Love Eureka! Physics
Here is a complete episode guide. It is pretty expensive to purchase the entire series. Here is one source. Here are a handful of the first episodes: Episode 1-Inertia See the rest of the samples over...
View ArticleWestern Education has the Wrong Mindset
Science educators know full well that school textbooks lag at least a generation behind the times. Teachers who do not take the initiative to independently keep up and supplement the textbook with...
View ArticleThe Candle Problem: How to Damage Motivation
Herbert Kohl says we are missing the boat, motivation wise, in an open letter to Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education. Now the mantra is high expectations and high standards. Yet, with all that zeal to...
View ArticlePlace Value Part 4: Geometry of Place Value
If you've missed any part of the series, here's what we've covered so far: Part 1: The Chocolate Factory which covered the regrouping or trading aspect of place value and explored regrouping in base...
View ArticleWhen a President Speaks: 6 Reasons to Object to Objectors
I remember President Kennedy urging us kids to be physically fit. Anybody else out there earn a Presidential Fitness Award while they were in school? In fact, the program has followed us into...
View ArticlePlace Value Part 5: Applications of Place Value
So far we have completed three parts of the place value series: Part 1: The Chocolate Factory. Part 2: Base Ten for Young Students. Part 3: The Bake Sale. Part 4: Geometry of Place Value. For the...
View ArticleAll Politics---and Education—is Local. Well, Maybe.
According to a commentary in the September 10, 2009 online issue of EdWeek, U.S. Rep. John Kline (R-MN), the senior Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, the public outcry over the...
View ArticleWhat's an Argument?
When I was in high school, there was an active debate club that competed with all the area high schools. If successful, our team could compete at regional, state and even nation events. At the time,...
View Article$133/Month Health Insurance Premiums?
The Truth-O-Meter found that Keith Olbermann had told a "half-truth." Olbermann said that for middle-class families, the Baucus plan would mean that "13 percent of what they make could be deducted...
View Article“Learning Science vs. Doing Science”
In March 2009 Texas adopted new standards for science education. High school students are expected to In all fields of science, analyze, evaluate, and critique scientific explanations by using...
View Article5 Reasons Why Education Reforms Fail
Veteran teachers have been there, done that, seen multiple attempts at educational reform turn out to be just another failed fad. Worse, superintendents and principals sometimes order teachers around...
View ArticleClosing the Achievement Gap: One Modest Story
If you are an American overseas with a family, apart from homeschooling, there are generally three ways you can see to your kids' education. One, The Department of Defense Dependent Schools (DODDS) on...
View Article4 Difficult Students and How to Handle Them
Have you ever noticed that it seems the harder you push back against difficult students, the more resolute they become? As strange as it may seem, resisting difficult students strengthens their...
View ArticleConfounding Teacher Recruitment by Discouraging the Best
Good teachers matter. The data on that are clear. If we want more talented people in the classroom, a first step toward encouraging them would be to stop discouraging them. I did not expect to see a...
View ArticleSelling Grades
Chocolate didn't work. Presumably gift wrap, cookie dough, flower bulbs, toffee peanuts didn't work either. I wouldn't be surprised. It seemed like for a while there, almost every day somebody's...
View ArticleDon't Blame the Schools of Education.
They are just doing the best they can with what they've got, says Pedro Noguera. First he grants the schools of education deserve some criticism. It’s true that many schools of education don’t recruit...
View ArticleDissing the Gifted
For too long, the nation’s education system has neglected the needs of its high-potential students. Ann Robinson, president of the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) is right. One...
View ArticleUp or Down, the Market Makers Profit
The market makers profit in any market, whether up or down. The market makers understand human psychology very well, and use it to set bid and ask prices. The bigger the news, the more they make. So...
View ArticleAlgebra in 2nd Grade?
Back in February, a teacher in Montana made EdWeek headlines because she was teaching algebra to second graders and had been doing so for five years. Why all the oohs and aahs? Gregorio C. Sablan,...
View ArticleStand and Deliver? No, Sit Down and Shut Up
The movie, Stand and Deliver, told the inspirational story of one teacher's success in using Advanced Placement (AP) calculus with his demoralized students. The students complained, worked hard,...
View ArticleTeachers with Masters Degrees Not Worth Their Pay?
Schools are having trouble paying the bills. The extra pay teachers get for having a Masters degree costs schools nearly $9 billion per year. One college of education, the University of Washington,...
View ArticleNo Evidence for Learning Style Optimization. Educational Apocalypse?
Cognitive scientists* reviewed over a thousand studies, but first, they thought it necessary to give the reading public a primer on basic study design. In the abstract no less. First, students must be...
View ArticleReview of Rosetta Stone
There are any number of online reviews of the popular language learning program, Rosetta Stone. Reviews are mixed. Some reviewers love the product, other loathe it. At around $500, nearly everyone...
View ArticleDiscovery Good, Lecture Good, Too
Lecture doesn't have to be a dirty 7-letter word. One of the things we are learning about education is that we do not know what we think we know. See the new research on learning styles. Another...
View ArticleCalculator Research in the Earliest Grades
The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) has gone on record recommending use of calculators in the earliest grades, thereby precipitating a debate on such use within the academic...
View ArticleScience for Preschoolers?
I am shocked, I tell you, shocked. The change in Mr. Hoff’s room, and in a handful of other classrooms like it around the country, stems from growing interest among academic experts and educators in...
View ArticleBook Review: The Language of God by Dr. Francis Collins
Book Review: Francis S. Collins The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. 2006. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc. The science curriculum is the battleground for one battle...
View ArticleExpensive Useless Education Technology
While preparing a post on state-of-the-art language labs in schools, I came across this piece about interactive white boards (IWB). Our society is so enchanted by technology. If you are a grant...
View ArticleThe Tragedy of Disheartened Teachers
There are three kinds of teachers: disheartened, content and idealistic, according to a new study released by Public Agenda. Disheartened teachers comprise a huge 40% of the teaching force, but it's...
View ArticleCharacteristics of Japanese Textbooks
It is the chicken and egg puzzle. Which came first, the teaching philosophy or the textbook? Do teaching methods and philosophy determine textbook content, or does textbook content drive subject...
View ArticleEducation Professors: Blind Leading the Blind?
I don't know about you, but my education students have often groused about what they perceive is the lack of teaching experience among those tasked to teach them how to teach. Every term, after my...
View ArticleLake Wobegone of the Future
What would happen if some popular policies of today were taken to their logical conclusion? If all the children are above average, would they not be "re-centered" like SAT tests? I do not know if the...
View ArticleSmart Phones, Or Why Teachers Resent Education Research
It is not that teachers resent all research. But an extended advertisement posing as research? Or administrators mandating teachers implement new "researched-based" practices? Or research with...
View ArticleDoes teacher professional development work?
Apparently not. So concludes a pair of studies, one focused on middle school mathematics, and the other on early reading. Results after one year of providing teachers math professional development...
View ArticleCollege the New High School?
Long ago, American society decided that high school graduation represented the minimum amount of education to get a decent job. It used to be a person could graduate from high school and make a...
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