Tips by Tony

Question: Should I keep doing these Monday Morning Roundups?

Since I’ve started posting daily Twitter roundups, which include links to many of the articles I found interesting, should I continue to post these Monday Morning Roundups? The Roundups do go into more detail about a handful of articles. Also, are the daily Twitter recaps too much? Would one long weekly Twitter update be better? Sound off in the comments…

Articles I Found Interesting in the Last Week

• High school exit exam hinders female and non-white students, study says

  This is one of several articles questioning the usefulness of the high school exit exam, using data from a study by researchers at Stanford University and UC Davis.

  The study by researchers at Stanford University and UC Davis concluded that girls and non-whites were probably failing the exit exam more often than expected because of what is known as “stereotype threat,” a theory in social psychology that holds, essentially, that negative stereotypes can be self-fulfilling.

• Five Things Schools Must Do To Avoid Extinction

  Some very good ideas from David Marcus Title. David expands on each of these ideas in the article, but here’s the short version of the list:

  1. Stop banning iPods/cell phones from school classrooms.
  2. Stop blocking/banning Internet use.
  3. Teachers must start to police their own ranks.
  4. Merit pay for schools, not teachers.
  5. Teachers must take a performing arts/ drama class at some time in their careers.

  As a technologist, I strongly agree with the first two items on the list. A teacher I met at a conference put it this way – restrictive policies against iPods, cellphones, and Internet use are born out of ignorance and fear, and have no place in our schools. Turn these “distractions” into tools.

• What’s Wrong With Merit Pay

  One side of the merit pay debate.

  Here is my prediction: Merit pay of the kind I have described will not make education better, even if scores go up next year or the year after. Instead, it will make education worse, not only because some of the “gains” will be based on cheating and gaming the system, but because they will be obtained by scanting attention to history, geography, civics, the arts, science, literature, foreign languages, and all the other studies that are needed to develop smarter individuals, better citizens, and people who are prepared for the knowledge-based economy of the 21st Century. Nor will it identify better teachers; instead, it will reward those who use their time for low-level test preparation.

• What We Learn From School Tests

  A look at the NAEP findings. Responses from five different people: Sandra Stotsky, professor of education reform, Sandra Tsing Loh, author, Howard Gardner, professor at Harvard University, Bill Evers, research fellow at Hoover Institution, Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, professor at New York University.

  Education reform doesn’t seem to be working:

  We have no English curriculum in the secondary grades (6-12) in most school districts worthy of the name. And the 2008 study by Renaissance Learning of what millions of students actually read in 2007, based on the data base for their program, Accelerated Reader, corroborates this judgment. – Sandra Stotsky, professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas

  No more group comparisons?

  If I were the education czar, I’d give group comparisons benign neglect for awhile, and push toward all students reaching at least a basic level of competence. – Howard Gardner, professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education

  Give administrators the power

  Administrators need the capacity to improve teacher performance and to be able to fire ineffective teachers as a last resort. Administrators need pay for performance, which will encourage them in making effective teaching assignments and in firing teachers when necessary. – Bill Evers, research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a member of its Koret Task Force on K-12 Education.

  Throw out the tests

  Moving forward, we need to go beyond the mastery of facts and rules. Instead, we should nurture interpersonal sensibilities in children and teenagers so that they learn to work in groups, within and across disciplines and cultures. In short, we need to educate, not test. – Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, a professor of globalization and education at New York University and co-director of its Institute for Globalization and Education in Metropolitan Settings

Blogs I’ve Subscribed To

• Creating Lifelong Learners – digital literacy, higher level thinking, closing the digital divide
• Patrick Malley – a progressive educator in the Midwest, writing about education and technology
• Copy / Paste by Peter Pappas – Dedicated to relinquishing responsibility for learning to the students

Who/What I’m Following on Twitter

Added in the last week: @The_SA_Blog, @chadratliff, @bionibber

Related posts:

1. Monday Morning Roundup (06/01/2009)
2. Monday Morning Roundup (5/11/2009)
3. Monday Morning Roundup (8/31/2009)
4. Monday Morning Roundup (08/10/2009)
5. Monday Morning Roundup (5/18/2009)
6. Monday Morning Roundup (6/8/2009)
7. Monday Morning Roundup (4/27/09)
8. Monday Morning Roundup (4/20/09)
9. Monday Morning Roundup (07/27/2009)
10. Monday Morning Roundup (8/24/2009)