Education
Waste
There is the waste of paper.
There is the waste of instructional time.
There is the waste of students’ learning time.
There is the waste of professional time—the time of all those professionals who have been promoted out of the classroom to create assessment instruments, gather data, make up reporting software, draw up comparative charts to disseminate statistics, dream up new flow charts for rehabilitating students “falling behind” the norms arbitraily set by the assessment teams.
Friday morning two of these professionals, educators from the front office, were in place for our faculty meeting at 8:00 am to show us… Continue reading
Measuring Up
The statistics are public now. The scores on the first Benchmark tests are online. In the four Upper Elementary classes at Denison, there are approximately 48 fourth graders distributed equally among the classes, which also have fifth and sixth graders in their student populations. The teachers looked at the performance of these new fourth graders as a cohort in order to ascertain the cumulative status or “state of preparedness” of the entire fourth grade. Looking only at the Math scores on the first Benchmark test, there were 5 students among our 48 new fourth… Continue reading
