So many topics have presented themselves of late. However, I have spent most of my time either working on the book Donalyn Miller and I are writing or reading tons of new books for some upcoming PD sessions I will be doing in June. So, I have let some things slide for now. Rest assured that I will tackle them as time permits. But this graph ( Read more... )

The latest issue of Education Week's Spotlight screams this headline: Creating a Culture of Data. Readers are encouraged to do the following: "Explore how states are developing governance structures to guide data use, consider the difficult balancing act between data collection and privacy concerns, and learn how some educators are making data ( Read more... )

Yes, this is another rant about numbers, folks. Feel free to click onto something else. It is that time of year when state test scores are being announced. The general consensus us that scores for the past 5 years are fairly flat, that the gap is not narrowing, and that student performance is not improving despite hours, days, weeks, and more ( Read more... )

I was watching a "news" show this morning where reporters were commenting on results of a survey. Once again, what I really wanted was to see the actual survey questions. Here is why ( Read more... )

Thank you, Alfie Kohn, for once more demonstrating how important it is to go behind the headlines when research is reported. Read his article in the Washington Post here: http://www. ( Read more... )

I have the best friends. Really, I am blessed. What I adore is that they send me links and notes giving me fodder for the blog. Despite feeling puny today, I did manage to get online for a while. Here is one of the wonderful jpegs awaiting me:


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Thanks to Franki Sibberson for making sure I saw this posting from EDUCATION WEEK: http://mobile.edweek.org/c.jsp? ( Read more... )

When I read this post, all I could think of was that walls keep people out or, in this case, close in the classroom and narrow a focus down to data. Here is the post: http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/top-teaching/2013/10/ ( Read more... )

One of the things that has become apparent to me as I enter my 37th year of teaching is that no two classes, no two courses, no two students are the same. Actually, when I see an assignment that is a clone of another submitted, I suspect there has been some collusion, some sharing, some plagiarism. Don't you? As humans, we approach tasks and ( Read more... )

I took quite a few stat classes when I was working on my doctorate. I actually enjoyed them (I know, weird, right?. Part of the reason was because I had a lovely study group which included my pal Kylene Beers. We told ourselves going in to the first course that we could get a "C" and still be doctoral candidates. It took the pressure off, and ( Read more... )