Dept of Education report on Online Learning

A study just came out from the US Dept of education on the efficacy of online learning vis a vis traditional learning and, basically, the report states that classes that infuse online learnining are more successful than those that solely use traditional face-to-tace education.
Here's a quot4e from the Abstract:

The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.

If you have the time to read the full 93 page report, here it is (pdf file).

Obama Administration: Tests will matter more!

Just read a New York Times article about the obama administration's push for education. It seems that the emphasis on students scores is only going to increase. Here's a quote


“We’re mindful of all the criticisms about federal overreaching, about too much testing, of all the complaints about No Child Left Behind,” Mr. Cunningham [Education Department spokesman ]said. “These complaints come up all the time in conversations about all our programs, not just this one, with education officials across the country. The context that No Child has generated is the context that we have to live with.”




The administration is also pushing that teacher evaluations be more closely tied to student test performance-- Many teachers, including myself, find this problematic. If you're asking, yourself 'Why don't teachers want to be assessed based on student performance?' you're probably not a teacher. It is not because I do not want to be held accountable--but rather becuase associating teacher performance with student test performance opens a pandora's box of issues--only a few of which I'll discuss.

#1) If you get a strong vs a weak class, your test scores will unfairly affect your reviews as a teacher--for better or for worse. All of us who have taught know how true this is--a strong class will do well no matter who teaches them and some classes are unmotivated no matter what you do. Moreover, I get 1-2 'skewed' classes a year (strong or bad) and that's over half of the number of classes I teach that take a standardized test. In other words, more than half of the data that would influence my year end performance will, on average, be comprised by a 'good' or 'bad' class's performance. Moreover, what about the teachers who only teach 1 standardized test based class?

#2) States will have even more of an interest in making tests easier. Anyone who has taught Math in New York state just needs to look at how easy the Math A regents (or the new Integrated Algebra) have become over the last 7 years or so. Also consider this, how can you hold an Integrated Geometry teacher responsible for low test scores on the difficult Geometry test when the same students passed the prior year's integrated Algebra exam--even though the latter test is a complete joke requiring like 1/3 of the total points to pass?

#3) It's almost a gurantue that by encouraging teachers to 'teach to the test' the 'good' teachers who encourage true thinking and inquiry will have to replace thought provoking education will test tricks--trust me, test tricks work but they do not necessarily teach much else.

A Great New City Dentist

This post does not fit in with my normal one here--but I had to help promote this guy--he's a dentist that I just started going to and basically, he saved me from having to get a root canal! My prior dentist said I needed one, but went Dr. Auerbach who was able to fill my tooth : no root canal needed!

So if you live in or near Rockland county, New York and need a great New City Dentist check out his website or read about him on yelp.

Summer Time

Now, I want to first start this post by stating that I did not get a teaching job just so I could have summers off! That said, by the time June rolls around I ready for summer! I am in the last stages of getting my students prepared for the end of the year regents, God rest this course's soul after this year, and I just wanted to say...bring on the summer!

Teacher Observations

I have taught at both public and private schools . And there were, obviously, many differences between the two types of institutions. I have to say that maybe the greatest farce of public schooling has been the way in which teacher observations have been used by administrators. Please know that I've not had 'problems' with administrators. I work at a high paying, high performing public school and teach largely motivated students--it's quite nice. But I've always been intrigued and, at times, disturbed by the discrpencies between perception and reality vis a vis teacher performance. I have seen many good teachers get 'bad' write ups and vice versa. True enough, that being a 'good teacher' is a subjective judgement but regardless of what your personal opinion of good or bad teaching is, there is an inevitable farce that can occur during an observation.

If you assume that an observation is supposed to asses the normal conditions/teaching styles that occur on a daily basis, there is an immediate obvious problem: as soon as a strange person with a suite and tie or as soon as a well known administrator with a suit and tie enters your classroom... guess what? Students suprisingly do not act naturally. Of course, there are some exceptions--some students could care less whether or not principal is in the next seat, but those kids are rare. I know of classes that behaved great during an observation on a teacher--even though the students were known to dislike the teacher and believe that the said teacher was very very bad at teaching. And I know of examples where students interacted quite disrespectfully while a teacher who was quite respected was teaching.

So what can we draw from these observations?....that a teacher's control of a class or rapport with a class cannot be accurately assessed by an external observer who surprises the class by a once or twice a year visit.

Teaching in Hard Times

Well, it's not the first post about being a teacher in hard economic times, but I can say, as several of my friends find themselves either
A) Out of work
or
B) worried daily about the potential of soon being out of work.

It's yet again good to be a teacher! I actually had noteworthy conversation with one of my friends, a guy who recently lost his very lucrative wall street job, and he asked me what we teachers are going to do to help out--are we going to take a reduced pay or what? And I couldn't help but chidingly respond to him: "Are you going to give back all of your bonuses from the last decade?" Well, I could tell from his grin that he got my point!

If you need a teaching job, go her for teacher placement services. I've used both NAIS and Carney Sandoe(for private school job hunts) and can recommend both.

The TI 89 Graphing Calculators: They can do anything!

I have taught Math for many years and have generally used the TI 84, TI-83 Graphing Calculators--pretty cool calculators that can do neat things like add imaginary numbers and output the results in reduced form etc.. But the TI-89 is like getting used to a whole new machine. When you first encounter it, you might not even know how to use it as the main screen's menu and interface is completely different. However, if you work your way through learning it, the 89 can really do some powerful things including algebra! This of course raises the issue of whether or not it is appropriate to use such powerful machines to take a test; many tests, in fact, do not allow the 89's to be used. So before you go out to buy a graphing calculator like the 89, you should first make sure that it a) can be used on any standardized tests that you take and b) isn't too fancy for your own tastes.