Below are a few education stories I've bookmarked recently.
“It’s very difficult to change student learning if we are not changing adult learning,” says Paul Fleming, of the Tennessee education department, in a recent article in District Administration about new approaches to teachers' professional learning.
Tennessee and other states are using a personalized approach to PD that is collaborative, and measures success based on the acquisition of new skills and ways of thinking rather than hours spent in lectures.
Districts nationwide continue to grapple with not only how to prepare teachers and provide effective professional development, but also how to measure success, and to do so in a way that is equitable for both students and teachers.
In Chalkbeat, Matt Barnum explores the case of one teacher in Baltimore who earned the highest-possible rating on her evaluation, but stands to lose her certification due to low scores on the math portion of her certification. The article calls into question the current certification process and its impact on recruiting and retaining oustanding teachers. Especially in underserved communities.
Finally, the video below (from Vox in 2014) turned up in my Facebook newsfeed earlier this week, and it's certainly a conversation starter. Dana Goldstein (The Teacher Wars) says, "We need to address making the job an attractive job more than we need to focus on things like telling teachers they can trump poverty."
In a world where teachers are often asked to be all things to all people (and, given the above Chalkbeat reporting, are themselves often part of questions around inequity), what do you think of Goldstein's argument?
LINKS:
-
This top-rated black teacher may lose her job over one test. Are ‘high standards’ working?
-
As if teachers' jobs aren't hard enough, they're asked to fix poverty, too
