Assessment costs
Re-authorization of NCLB: Commentary by Barbara L. Minton
Re-authorization of the No Child Left Behind Act and Its Hidden Agenda
by: Barbara L. Minton
From Natural News: The re-authorization of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has become a priority for the final year of the Bush administration. The fact that independent test results have shown NCLB to be a dismal failure seems to make no difference. With a little tweaking, it must continue. As debate on this legislation heats up, a review of the issues surrounding NCLB and the agenda behind it may be in order.
NCLB is a federal law that provides money for a… Continue reading
Vygotsky’s ZPD
“How Learning Occurs” according to constructivist learning theorist Vygotsky, who described the “zone of proximal development (ZPD)”***
Zone of Proximal Development, an idea developed by Vygotsky over one hundred years ago, falls within a socio-cultural context and seeks to define the process through which students effectively learn in cooperation with a teacher. A student’s Zone of Proximal Development, or ZPD, is defined as the student’s range of ability with and without assistance from a teacher or a more capable peer. On one end of the range is the student’s ability level without assistance. On the other end of… Continue reading
Time to Learn
As I explore all the issues associated with assessments and accountabililty, I have begun to see that the time squandered is not only lost Time to Teach, but lost Time to Learn. If I manage the time available for Curriculum and Instruction well, I can probably give adequate lessons. I can squeeze them into every crack that appears in the routinized schedule of schoolday events. The students, however, have very limited time to process those lessons that I give. So often there is another activity or scheduled event that follows on the heels of the lesson,… Continue reading
Benchmark tests consume personnel and paper
Three classroom assistants called paras work four and a half hours in each of the four Upper Elementary classrooms at Denison. None of us who act as lead teachers have figured out quite how this works, much less the assistants; but most of the time one of those helpers checks in with me sometime during the morning to see if I have clerical work and another spends two hours in my classroom during the afternoon. On Mondays I ask her to help organize the homework folders that go home on Monday afternoon. Today there was no help… Continue reading
