D-Ed Reckoning

• Why You Can't Trust the New York Times on Education (or anything scientific for that matter)

  Number of comments: 1
  Erica Goode, the NYT environment editor, admits the NYT doesn't understand science:
  
  “We here at The Times are not scientists. We don’t collect the data or analyze it, and so the best we can do is to give our readers a sense of what the prevailing scientific view' [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: December 07, 2009, 8:11am EST
  by KDeRosa

• Things we don't know

  Number of comments: 12
  There is lots of stuff we don't know. Lots of stuff without firm scientific support. Yet in many areas without firm scientific support, we often encounter zealous advocates who either believe we know much more than we do or are confused as to what we actually know.
  
  The' [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 19, 2009, 10:46am EST
  by KDeRosa

• Your tax dollars hard at work

  Number of comments: 13
  Virginia is going to analyze why there is a disproportionately low representation of minority students in gifted education.
  
  "Virginia is proud of both the high standards of our educational system and the wealth of diversity in our communities," Governor Kaine said. "As we continue to improve on our" [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 18, 2009, 5:58pm EST
  by KDeRosa

• Pot. Kettle. Bracey.

  Number of comments: 52
  The last and thankfully final Bracey Report attempts to analyze the research support underlying the following three assumptions about how to reform education.
  
  
  1. High-quality schools can eliminate the achievement gap between whites and minorities.
  
  2. Mayoral control of public schools is an improvement over the more [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 13, 2009, 12:26pm EST
  by KDeRosa

• Today's Quote

  Number of comments: 5
  The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data.
  -- John Tukey (1986) [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 05, 2009, 11:12pm EST
  by KDeRosa

• Another Defense of SLA?

  Number of comments: 6
  Joe Bires of  Ed Tech Leadership offers a defense of the SLA position paper assignment:
  
  Your post should be titled “Why you should never publish anything on the Internet (or anywhere for that matter)”. The minute you publish something you open yourself up for attack, not [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 05, 2009, 10:56am EST
  by KDeRosa

• D-ed Reckoning Enters Edu-blogger Hall of Fame

  Number of comments: 9
  Beloved Uncle Jay and crazy Aunt Jay are picking the best education blogs of  2009.  But that's not important right now, what is important is:
  
  Valerie will select ten and I will select a different ten for our 2009 list of 20 best blogs, which we hope' [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 04, 2009, 9:47am EST
  by KDeRosa

• A defense of SLA?

  Number of comments: 3
  Marcie Hull, SLA's tech coordinator, commented on my posts on SLA. It's a serious comment and deserves a serious answer. (I've taken the liberty to clean up Marcie's lengthy comment which which was  typed on an iPhone.)
  
  Numbers... Seems to me a silly [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 03, 2009, 4:35pm EST
  by KDeRosa

• A Tale of Two Cities

  Number of comments: 16
  Now that Canada's largest school district, Toronto, has taken the bold step of reporting its testing data for racial and economic subgroups, we are able to compare its achievement gaps with the achievement gaps of other large cities that also report achievement data for subgroups.
  
  Let's compare Toronto to [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 03, 2009, 10:05am EST
  by KDeRosa

• Canada: not the educational mecca we've been led to believe

  Number of comments: 14
  Canadian edu-pundits have been leading us to believe that Canada's lefty social policy programs have nearly eradicated both income and racial inequality and have lead to an educational mecca in which achievement gaps are no more.
  
  The data indicates otherwise.
  
  The Toronto District School Board commissioned a [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 02, 2009, 4:02pm EST
  by KDeRosa

• The man can't keep them down

  Number of comments: 6
  While reviewing the 2008-2209 Pennsylvania state assessments used for NCLB I noticed something that shouldn't surprise regular readers of this blog
  
  Asians utterly dominate at the top of the performance distribution in reading and math.
  
  There are 43 data points for racial subgroup performance for the 11th grade' [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 02, 2009, 11:20am EST
  by KDeRosa

• School of the Future Crashes and Burns

  Number of comments: 3
  As I predicted three year's ago, Philadelphia's ultra-expensive, ultra-high-tech, and ulta-ironically-named School of the Future (SOF) would crash and burn.  Educators and edu-journalists believed otherwise.  they thought that SOF would revolutionize education by teaching 21st century skills.
  
  What could possibly go wrong?  There was lots of technology.  Great [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 02, 2009, 8:50am EST
  by KDeRosa

• Some Perspective

  Number of comments: 4
  Two posts ago we looked at the writing of some students (mostly seniors) at Philadelphia's Science Leadership Academy magnet school.  I was none too impressed to put it mildly.  And no one has stepped up so far to defend the actual writing ability of the students.  Time will' [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 01, 2009, 11:48am EST
  by KDeRosa

• How to teach a student to write a point that is supported by evidence

  Number of comments: 10
  The following is one way to teach a student how to write one form of a simple paragraph in which the student agrees with one of a pair of arguments presented to him in a fact pattern based on a comparison of the arguments with a source of evidence.  The lesson comes from SRA's Reasoning' [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 30, 2009, 9:56pm EDT
  by KDeRosa

• Position Papers from SLA

  Number of comments: 11
  A position paper is a classic, basic form of argument that every high school student should know how to write well--even the 21st century variety.  Here's how a tech savvy 21st Century student might learn how to write a position paper.
  
  It's not rocket science, but it does [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 30, 2009, 12:06pm EDT
  by KDeRosa

• Murray on Curriculum

  Number of comments: 4
  [I]t’s time for me to get in touch with my inner optimist. We can’t make our kids much smarter than they are naturally, but we can do a hugely better job of teaching them stuff. If you get away from the worst schools in the big cities, I think the [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 28, 2009, 10:54am EDT
  by KDeRosa

• Some Clarity on NCLB

  Number of comments: 3
  Below is a lengthy quote of Judge Sutton from the recently decided School District of the City of Pontiac, et al. v. Secretary of the United States Dep’t of Educ (back-story). The opinions in the case, which deadlocked, are long and mostly concern boring legal issues of statutory construction [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 28, 2009, 9:16am EDT
  by KDeRosa

• Today's Quote

  Number of comments: 37
  Why the belief that SES is causal is so deep and wide is perplexing and astounding. The only explanation I can come up with is that it lets publishers, professors and other "authorities", who ARE causally responsible, off the hook.- Dick Schutz [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 25, 2009, 4:38pm EDT
  by KDeRosa

• A Good Example of Why Education Professors Shouldn't Blog

  Number of comments: 7
  Education Optimist, Sara Goldrick-Rab, must not get embarrassed very easily judging by this post criticizing a mostly dopey Kristof column on education and poverty:
  
  
  Social science researchers across the nation are scratching their heads. Where in the world did Kristof get this one? For decades, [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 25, 2009, 11:32am EDT
  by KDeRosa

• Good Night, Sweet Hack

  Number of comments: 4
  Education Gadlfy, Grald Bracey, died this week.  He had a sharp analytic ability.  It is sad that he only applied it to refute some of the shoddy evidence, like international testing comparisons, against the things he believed in.  For all the other shoddy evidence supporting the things he believed in, like poverty/school [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 25, 2009, 9:34am EDT
  by KDeRosa

• Actually, That's Not What the "Research" Shows Either

  Number of comments: 23
  In her third post of her new blog, The Educated Reporter, Linda Perlstein makes an (all-too-common) error that reporters should not be making, especially reporters claiming to be educated.
  
  Perlstein starts off well by criticizing the inane trope President Obama repeated about "teacher effectiveness" in a recent speech.
  
  [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 22, 2009, 12:11pm EDT
  by KDeRosa

• Insurance

  Number of comments: 4
  Your spouse asks you "Will you wash the dishes tonight"?
  
  You respond, "Sure"
  
  Knowing you're a slacker, your spouse asks, "Promise"?
  
  You respond, "Yes."
  
  Is your affirmative response an example of insurance or its equivalent?  Why or why not?
  
  You certainly need to know something' [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 14, 2009, 9:43am EDT
  by KDeRosa

• On Content Knowledge and Stephen Downes

  Number of comments: 15
  (Update: I've edited this post (twice) to correct some typos and clarify my argument.  The substance has not changed. 3:28 pm EST)
  
  Tracy Won't Get Her Answer.
  
  At least not from Stephen.
  
  Stephen has taken his ball and gone home.
  
  Dick was [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 12, 2009, 12:53pm EDT
  by KDeRosa

• Tracy Hasn't Gotten a Straight Answer Yet

  Number of comments: 9
  Tracy asks:
  How could we learn language without content knowledge? For example, how could a small child ask their mother for a biscuit without some awareness of what a biscuit is?
  
  When Tracy writes "some awareness of what a biscuit is," I read this as meaning an "awareness of" [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 10, 2009, 9:18pm EDT
  by KDeRosa

• Tracy would like a straight answer

  Number of comments: 32
  Lightning Update: I already provided a potential answer in the comments and dredged up a similar one by Stephen.
  
  Tracy asks:
  
  Stephen Downes, I asked you before in a comment on one of Ken's posts if there is any evidence that could convince you that content knowledge' [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 08, 2009, 1:25pm EDT
  by KDeRosa

• What would you like it to say?

  Number of comments: 11
  My first grade daughter, whose class is learning how to read this year, brought home a "helpful" faq sheet for parents to help guide their child along the path to literacy.
  
  One of the faqs asked "what should you do when your child, while reading, stops and says 'what's this word'?"[...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 07, 2009, 6:11pm EDT
  by KDeRosa

• Acquiring Knowledge

  Number of comments: 12
  The Great Pondiscio has a good example of how your general reasoning ability gets short-circuited when you lack needed content knowledge (knowledge not merely facts (see the comments)).
  
  “After failing to move a runner past first base for the entire game, the Giants sent Davis to the plate [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 05, 2009, 3:27pm EDT
  by KDeRosa

• I don't know why I bother ...

  Number of comments: 4
  Stephen Downes has another good post on knowledge and expertise.  And, by good I mean that it serves as a good springboard to demonstrate why his understanding is off.   In any event it is relevant to our ongoing discussion of the topic (and in which Stephen has shown up [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: September 30, 2009, 2:19pm EDT
  by KDeRosa

• The only difference between scientific reasoning and other kinds of reasoning is the content

  Number of comments: 6
  From Professor Gross' article, which I discussed in the previous post, comes another gem on the nature of scientific reasoning.  What's so special about it?  In short nothing but the content.
  
  What differentiates scientific from, say, historical reasoning?  Other than the content being reasoned about, I can't think of anything, [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: September 29, 2009, 4:07pm EDT
  by KDeRosa

• Learning Science and Everything Else

  Number of comments: 2
  Last April, Science Magazine, published a study in which researchers administered  a pair of physics tests and  a test of general scientific reasoning to new freshman engineering and science majors in America and China.  Not unsurprisingly, the Chinese students performed very well on the physics tests (forces and mechanics:86% and electromagnetism: [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: September 29, 2009, 11:34am EDT
  by KDeRosa

• Knowledge

  Number of comments: 18
  In my last post on expertise and experts I indicated that an expert (one who has expertise) is broadly defined as someone who has acquired lots of knowledge in a particular domain.
  
  So what is knowledge?
  
  First a few preliminaries:
  
  1.  Stephen Downes has a post addressing [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: September 24, 2009, 6:16pm EDT
  by KDeRosa

• Duncan on the Future of NCLB

  Number of comments: 1
  Secretary of Education Arne Duncan gives a pretty pep talk on the future of NCLB. It is unfortunate that pretty speeches have such a long history of not translating into good education policy, or I might have been moved by such a speech.
  
  Let's look at the highlight reel.
  
  [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: September 24, 2009, 3:18pm EDT
  by KDeRosa

• Expertise: Who wants some?

  Number of comments: 5
  Let's talk about expertise and why acquiring more expertise might be a desirable goal of education.
  
  But, rather than start with the premise that having more expertise is preferrable to having less expertise. (And, being an expert is preferrable to being a novice. And, performing more like an expert' [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: September 23, 2009, 6:24pm EDT
  by KDeRosa

• Answer Sheet Bubbles in Wrong Answer

  Number of comments: 2
  Unlike Uncle Jay's new blog, the Washington Post's other education blog, The Answer Sheet, has gotten off to a rocky start (despite Willingham's pinch hitting).
  
  Take for example the post on "The Problem with Kindergarten" and this follow-up post.
  
  The Answer Sheet has a problem with [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: September 22, 2009, 4:11pm EDT
  by KDeRosa

• This Isn't Getting Us Anywhere Fast

  Number of comments: 13
  There isn't anything more disappointing than finding a long essay that starts off well and promises many insights based at least in part on its length, but then veers off track violently a few paragraphs in. Such wasted potential.
  
  This is what I was' [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: September 21, 2009, 9:23am EDT
  by KDeRosa

• Innocuous and Clueless but Creepy

  Number of comments: 8
  That's the impression I got when I listened to the President's speech to school children last week. I described the innocuous and clueless parts in a previous post. I'll get to the creepy part.
  
  The reason why I'm still writing about a week-old speech is a late feed [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: September 16, 2009, 9:15am EDT
  by KDeRosa

• SAT Scores and Family Income

  Number of comments: 2
  
  
  
  
  Here we go again.
  
  
  
  
  This graph of family income vs. SAT sub-test scores from the College Board (via the NYT's Eeconomix) has been getting a lot of play lately.
  
  
  
  [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: September 15, 2009, 11:27am EDT
  by KDeRosa

• Two Legends Depart

  Number of comments: 0
  First Swayze
  
  and now
  
  Rotherham
  
  No one puts Andy in the corner. [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: September 15, 2009, 8:52am EDT
  by KDeRosa

• Duncan Finally Gets One Right

  Number of comments: 13
  
  Today, Education Secretary Arne Duncan urged universities to get more involved in helping to improve under-performing schools, by forming partnerships with local school districts, establishing charter schools, and improving teacher education.
  
  There's nothing I'd like to see more than Ed schools putting their crackpot' [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: September 11, 2009, 11:29am EDT
  by KDeRosa

• OECD Locks Up It's Latest Report

  Number of comments: 4
  
  The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development isn't being very cooperative these days as it locks up its latest report Doing Better for Children from those of us that want to find out how to do better for children. (Or, those of us who want' [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: September 11, 2009, 11:10am EDT
  by KDeRosa

• If you only read one post on education today ...

  Number of comments: 2
  ... make it David Boulton's interview with Zig Engelmann over at Children of the Code.
  
  It's a rare treat when the interviewer is actually knowledgeable about the subject being discussed.
  
  If you didn't understand my point about the President's speech exhorting students to work hard being' [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: September 09, 2009, 4:52pm EDT
  by KDeRosa

• New edu-blog Mid-Riffs agrees

  Number of comments: 1
  I agree with promising new edu-blog, Mid-Riffs', take on Obama's speech.
  
  

  But all of that leaves out the demand-side: the students’ willingness (or not) to learn. We can deliver the perfect curriculum via perfect teachers led by perfect principals in perfect schools operating under perfect accountability standards' [...]

  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: September 09, 2009, 1:23pm EDT
  by KDeRosa

• Obama Harangues Students, Still Clueless on Ed Policy

  Number of comments: 9
  Update: After surveying the edusphere, the consensus seems to be that the President's speech was mostly innocuous, perhaps a little uplifting, and by golly them youngsters needed to be reminded about the value of hard work. Nuts to that. At best it was a waste of our time. I believe' [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: September 08, 2009, 8:24am EDT
  by KDeRosa

• More Evidence that Good Instruction Can make a Big Difference

  Number of comments: 18
  Last spring I reported on the Gering School District (Nebraska) which had taken their Reading First grant back in 2004 and, with the help of NIFDI, implemented the full-immersion Direct Instruction for Reading and Language Arts back in 2004 district wide.
  
  Let's see what the results [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: July 09, 2009, 10:44am EDT
  by KDeRosa

• When is a decoding error not an error?

  Number of comments: 7
  I recently came across the Critical Reading Inventory, a balanced literacy diagnostic, which purports to assess reading ability.
  
  
  In case you were still under the misapprehension that balanced literacy was a state-of-the-art blend of the best of code-based reading instruction and the best of whole language theory, [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: July 07, 2009, 4:34pm EDT
  by KDeRosa

• All the Cool Kids Are Doing It Now

  Number of comments: 3
  Uncle Jay is blogging.
  
  Reminds me that I have to do a post on Jay's latest book on KIPP which I enjoyed.
  
  Any other new bloggers to recommend? [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: July 07, 2009, 3:12pm EDT
  by KDeRosa

• What I learned this year

  Number of comments: 19
  Another school year down. One child completed kindergarten. One child completed third grade. A ptotracted negotiation with my school district over my third grader's GIEP. A hundred blog posts in the hopper. Innumerable education articles read. So what, if anything, did I learn this school year educationwise?
  
  The concept [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: July 06, 2009, 10:07am EDT
  by KDeRosa

• Acquiring Knowledge

  Number of comments: 8
  In the last post, we discussed the six forms of knowledge:
  
  
  verbal associations - facts and lists: (this one thing goes with that one thing);
  concepts - sensory and higher-order: (all these things have some features in common);
  rule relationships: (this set of things goes with that set [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: April 15, 2009, 8:50am EDT
  by KDeRosa

• To Struggle, or Not to Struggle

  Number of comments: 24
  I want to follow-up on my last post regarding the purported efficacy of designing instruction such that the novice K-12 student is required to "struggle" to learn the new material.
  
  All the material that is typically learned on the K-12 level is amenable of being placed into meaningful [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: April 14, 2009, 9:13am EDT
  by KDeRosa

• Once More into the SES Breach

  Number of comments: 10
  Here goes some new research on effects of positive parental efforts in their adopted children and the persistence of negative outcomes for these children:
  
  The results show that parents invested more in adopted children than in genetically related ones, especially in educational and personal areas. At the same [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: April 10, 2009, 1:47pm EDT
  by KDeRosa