There’s something I need to get off my chest, and that’s what a blog is for, correct? In recent months, a particular student has been thrust into the spotlight as a passionate advocate for progressive values in education. This young person, who is of high school age, wrote a book about it. Upon completing high […]
GUEST POST: Julie Gorlewski Responds to AFT
February 22, 2013 By 3 Comments
Julie Gorlewski, State University of New York at New Paltz Response to Raising the Bar: Aligning and Elevating Teacher Preparation and the Teaching Profession (A report of the American Federation of Teachers Teacher Preparation Task Force, 2012) As an educator who has dedicated my professional life to continuous improvement in the field, I appreciate the […]
#ASCDforum discussing #teacher #education
February 11, 2013 By 3 Comments
Use the titled hashtag to discuss teacher education with ASCD. I scanned the link they provided, and here’s what I saw: Educators have begun to make their voices heard. For example, 2012 Emerging Leader and Regional Science Coordinator Fred Ende has five suggestions for improving teacher preparation: Prepare educators to be specialists, instead of generalists. […]
Ya know what? @educationweek has a good piece up on new teacher surplus. Zang!
January 23, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Here’s the entire piece, but stay with me. Now, this is all in response to a recent NCTQ report, which I’ll have to go through. Considering their funders, I’m guessing they follow the Hanushek model of teacher education. That is, reduce the supply by a reduction in programs. That way, you can presumably increase the […]
From a friend and peer on #Pearson
October 20, 2012 By 1 Comment
From the old Facebook feed: On a creepy note: word from a colleague that the Assoc. Dean for Research was heard to say: ‘We need to repair our relationship with Pearson.’ Serious? Question: what relationship? This comment was stated with regard, most likely, to linkages between colleges of education and the publishing giant Pearson that […]
#teacher #educators: you’re on notice. do something or consider yourselves obsolete #highered
August 17, 2012 By 1 Comment
I’m primarily responding to my own situation, which is thus: So, for the new semester, faculty members have to sit around and listen to a bunch of people speak to us, as if we have nothing to contribute. This is part of my “development.” The above is one of the speakers who will be speaking […]
UOON Supports Barbara Madeloni and UMass Students
June 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Link from United Opt Out: This week United Opt Out National stands in solidarity with the UMass teacher educators and the sixty-seven student teachers at UMass Amherst School of Education who together chose to boycott the Teacher Performance Assessment field test via Pearson. Barbara Madeloni, lecturer at UMass and one of the teacher educators who joined the boycott, has recently […]
@educationradio exposes the #TPAC
May 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Need we any other confirmation that these teacher performance assessments are anything but another attempt to pull evaluation and autonomy out of teacher education programs, and out of the hands of individual educators? It is an attempt to define for others what good teaching is, what good curriculum is, without the explicit advise and consent […]
Duncan’s ED: We Need to Double Down on Irrational and Unscientific Practices
April 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment
An email from Monty Neill alerted me to the latest development by today’s Corporate Stalinists at ED to judge teacher education programs on the basis value-added test scores of students who are taught by the graduates of these teacher ed programs. Got that? No, it’s too late for April Fool’s. To the credit of some […]
Part of my job as #education #professor
November 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment
I do a lot of supervision of pre-service teachers. I tend to see a lot of test-driven and scripted instruction in classrooms. No matter how much we try to encourage innovative and meaningful methods, we’re cut off, hand-cuffed to basal anthologies, unresponsive to daily realities. Part of that job is to offer feedback and guidance […]
The teacher “bar exam” will work, if and only if…
… You completely abolish alternative certification programs, like Teach for America. That’s it. AFT President Weingarten cannot proclaim this: Under the AFT plan, prospective teachers who have undergone training at an education school would have to demonstrate knowledge of their subject areas, an understanding of the social and emotional elements of learning, and spend a […]