Search Results for: "common core"
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Education Legislation: What You Need to Know – Part 1
The second session of the 108th Tennessee General Assembly encompassed 67 legislative days full of activity, during which the 33 senators and 99 representatives worked to promote, advocate, and revise the laws of our state with a common goal to improve life for Tennesseans. I became a member of the SCORE team in January. Prior…
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Performance-Based Tests Take the Guesswork Out of Assessing
Marianne’s multiple-choice test was the easiest things in the world to grade. A, B, A, D, D, B….it’s right or it’s wrong and I move on. The problem is that in mathematics, all “A” really tells me is that Marianne (not her real name) can write down a letter. There are a dozen different reasons…
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The Benefits of Sticking with PARCC in Tennessee
Common Core hearings took place before the Tennessee Senate Education Committee with testimony from across the political spectrum. Teachers and supporters testified to the impact they have already seen in classrooms across the state. While I hope that the committee members choose to continue our current path to implement common core, I can’t help but…
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Higher Standards Give Spoken Word Students Greater Power to Express Themselves
By Laura Louis and Benjamin Smith Students sit next to each other for 60 minutes a day 180 days a year, yet they don’t actually know each other. They can text each other at a rate of 50 words per minute, but they don’t know anything about their classmates that isn’t posted somewhere. They are…
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Elementary STEM Education and Rigor in Digital Learning
Tennessee teachers have been offered an extraordinary opportunity. With implementation of the Common Core State Standards, we can redesign the way we teach to better prepare our students for an unknown future. The Internet provides an abundance of resources that promise “Common Core aligned lessons” that allow students to apply knowledge. Apps and web tools allow…
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Are We Missing the Point? – Data Collection in TCAP versus PARCC
As someone who researches the nuances of assessment data, policy proposals, and academic studies for a living, I have a great appreciation for the details. It’s the details – the finer, perhaps boring points of education policies – that determine how things actually happen in practice. Having a clear understanding of the details gives us…
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Teacher Voice: In Defense of Standardized Testing
It seems like every day there’s another article about the horrors of standardized testing. Just this week comedian Louis CK raised the issue to seemingly new heights when he first took to the Twittersphere to rail against testing and then followed up with an appearance on Letterman. His daughter took New York’s state tests last…
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Success in the 21st Century Depends on Technology Skills
“I did fine without technology in the classroom when I was in grade school—why is it so important now?” That was a direct quote from one of my college classmates on the first day of our “Technology and Learning” course my sophomore year. I have to admit that I questioned it as well. Up until…
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More Than 300 Tennessee Organizations Support Higher Academic Standards
(Nashville) – The Expect More, Achieve More Coalition announced today that more than 300 organizations in Tennessee have now joined as coalition members. The coalition is a statewide alliance of business, community, and education organizations supporting high academic standards in public education. The Coalition’s goal is to build statewide and local engagement, support, and awareness…
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State of Education in Tennessee Report Calls for Sustaining Commitment to Standards, Assessments
The State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) today released 2013-14 State of Education in Tennessee, a comprehensive annual report that assesses Tennessee’s recent work to improve K-12 student academic performance and identifies five priorities for public education this year. The 52-page report was released by SCORE’s founder and chairman, Senator Bill Frist, M.D., at an…
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Teacher Voice: “The State of Assessment” Address
Assessment isn’t bad. Whew! I got that off my chest. And before you take a breath to agree or disagree, let me explain why I threw that out there. My recent thumbing through various social media platforms proves that assessment is THE hot topic in the current education debate. From YouTube videos to #TwitterChats to…
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Project Lead The Way and Tennessee Schools: Preparing Students for the Global Economy
The U.S. Department of Commerce estimates that jobs in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) will grow 17 percent by 2018 – nearly double the growth for non-STEM fields. Projections show that by 2018, the U.S. will have more than 1.2 million unfilled STEM jobs because there will not be enough qualified workers to fill…
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Voices of Teachers: Our Students Need a New Assessment
Dear Friends, Who was the biggest contributor to your success when you were in school? For me, three talented teachers come to mind: Mrs. Seiler, who taught me to love reading, Mrs. Funderberk who showed me that while learning can be hard, it is also fun, and Mrs. Dunning, who spent countless hours patiently supporting…
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High Expectations, High Support: Helping At-Risk Students Succeed with RTI2
Joshua is a second-grade student here in Tennessee. All his classmates are diving into books on their own, but Joshua is completely mystified by the squiggles on the page. His teacher is worried. She can’t give him the support he needs to catch up, but he’s not far enough behind to qualify for special education…
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What Higher Standards Would Have Meant for My Students
After graduating from college, I spent two years teaching math at a high school in rural Mississippi. The experience was a rewarding one that invested me deeply in education, but it was also immensely frustrating, exhausting, and humbling. It wasn’t until I moved back to Nashville and began learning about policies and reforms taking place…
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Connectivity Is Essential to Good Public Policy
One June morning this summer, I found myself sitting at a table, surrounded by smiling faces beaming with excitement and a sense of “Finally, I’m understood!” I was in Shelbyville at one of SCORE’s focus groups held across the state each year, witnessing talented educators making connections with each other, as well as with us…
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Social Media Captured Education’s Big Moments of 2013
Social media is amazing, not just for the ability to connect us in real time, but also for the living history that we create as we interact with one another. 2013 was a banner year for public education in Tennessee.
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How We’re Building PARCC: ELA and Literacy
I recently spent a week in Orlando, but I didn’t hobnob with cartoon animals or traverse any kingdoms, magical or otherwise. In fact, the only mouse ears I saw were in the airport gift shop. Instead, I spent five days with educators from across the country — including fellow Tennesseans — reviewing test items for…
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The Transformation of Tennessee’s Writing Assessment
In February 2013, Tennessee eighth-graders taking the TCAP Writing Assessment online read two articles about exploration and responded to the following prompt: “Write an expository essay comparing and contrasting how reasons for colonization have changed from settling America to attempting to settle space. […] Draw evidence from the passages to support your analysis.” This assignment…
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Why Education? Why Not Education?
I want to be a lawyer. “Law school” has been the cornerstone of my post-graduation plans since middle school. When I told classmates and family friends that I would be spending my summer interning at an education advocacy and research organization, one response came all too frequently: “Hm, interesting. Why education?”