I stared at the stack of bus discipline reports on the corner of my desk. Well, there goes my day, I thought. Another day of trying to translate the bus driver’s comments in a way that makes sense to misbehaving elementary school students. Another day of listening to explanations and excuses from students. Another day of knowing that nothing I do seems to change behavior and make the problems go away.
I have had several people contact me about how to approach teacher evaluation in a Quality Learning context, so I decided to make it the subject of a newsletter. This is a hot topic, especially in the United States, since state and federal grants and funding are now requiring teacher evaluation. I don’t have any quick fixes to this dilemma, but I do think there are three concepts to consider when…
Often when I hear educators discussing problems related to school improvement I want to shout, “Stop the madness!” Undoubtedly, everyone in education, both in K-12 schools and higher education, feels pressure to improve.
We are often faced with changing or getting rid of something, but not knowing what to do differently. Most educators I meet agree that grading and ranking systems are a destructive force in learning. However, when asked what to do instead, they go blank.
In the early 90s, the LISD administrators had agreed to ask—and be asked—one simple question of each other: How do you know? As we struggled to apply what we were learning about making decisions based on data, we needed that question to serve as a reminder to gather data and challenge our assumptions..
