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Recent Posts
- Do We Still Need Public Schools? 22 April, 2022
- In Praise of Memorization 9 April, 2022
- Reading Before Writing 8 February, 2022
- Rate Busters 15 September, 2021
- Cheating in the Classroom: We all have a choice 13 August, 2021
- Rare Books 10 June, 2021
- Hershey Profits Fund $17 Billion Endowment for Nonprofit School, but Board Member Says It Won’t Let Him See Financial Records 24 April, 2021
Comments
- a on Stanford Professor Jo Boaler’s Math Revolution and War Against Algebra 2
- Samuel Adams Richardson, Sr. on Cheating in the Classroom: We all have a choice
- Math Teacher 101 on Stanford Professor Jo Boaler’s Math Revolution and War Against Algebra 2
- Math Teacher 101 on Breaking the Spell of Math Reformists
Authors
Category Archives: Curriculum & Instruction
Do We Still Need Public Schools?
Sandra Stotsky, April 2022 Do we still want a chief policy maker in in the Department of Education with little classroom teaching experience beyond grade 5 who has never administered a middle or high school? No particular ethnicity or race … Continue reading
Posted in College prep, Curriculum & Instruction, Education Reform, K-12, math, reading, Sandra Stotsky
Tagged charter schools, private schools, school choice
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In Praise of Memorization
by Pearl Leff I once worked at a small company of insanely productive engineers. They were geniuses by any account. They knew the software stack from top to bottom, from hardware to operating systems to Javascript, and could pull together … Continue reading
Reading Before Writing
Will Fitzhugh, The Concord Review8 September 2018 The extra-large ubiquitous Literacy Community is under siege from universal dissatisfaction with the Writing skills of both students and graduates, and this is a complaint of very long standing. The Community response is … Continue reading
Posted in Curriculum & Instruction, Humanities, K-12, Reading & Writing, Will Fitzhugh
Tagged academic rigor, education, standards
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Rate Busters
Will FitzhughThe Concord Review1 September 2021 Back in the day, when Union contracts specified the number of widgets each worker was expected to produce during a shift, that number was called “the rate.” Anyone who produced more than that number … Continue reading
Cheating in the Classroom: We all have a choice
I was naive about cheating as a student, so I was also naive as a professor. Then one day a student complained to me about cheating during my exam. That put me in an awkward position. The culture of my … Continue reading
Posted in Curriculum & Instruction, Education Fraud, Ethics, K-12, Testing/Assessment
Tagged cheat sheet, cheating, Rousseau
1 Comment
Rare Books
There is a general consensus among EduPundits that teacher quality is more important than student academic work in producing student academic achievement. That is mistaken. There is a general consensus among Social Studies educators that High School students are incapable … Continue reading
The Sabotage of Public Education
By Bruce Deitrick Price Genuine rigorous testing of educational ideas is rare in America. Why? Because practical testing usually goes against what the professors want to do. Their impractical ideas don’t perform well in the real world. For example, Operation … Continue reading
Comments of Mary Byrne to Springfield, MO public schools board on critical race theory
Mary R. Byrne, Ed.D.December 8, 2020______________________________________________________________ I’d like to address Focus Area 5, Goal 1 of the 2019-2020 Strategic Plan End of Year Report that will be presented tonight specifically with regard to the following language: Facing Racism training objectives … Continue reading
K–12: The Life and Death of the Mind
By Bruce Deitrick Price The life of the mind. This lovely phrase states what education is supposed to be about.. All things bright and cerebral. Play chess. Write a story. Devise a plan for any goal. Weigh evidence for and … Continue reading
Stanford Professor Jo Boaler’s Math Revolution and War Against Algebra 2
Recently, Stanford GSE professor Jo Boaler, the foremost champion for reform math, has scaled up her campaign to displace algebra 2 with “data science” in American high schools: https://www.salon.com/2020/09/26/teaching-data-science-instead-of-calculus-high-schools-math-debate/?fbclid=IwAR2_EUTcMIrSEK2Y2HffJchGn4EKZ7IQOK4ePvGxttvl407m2Oo8Ut8nj7Q. For decades, Stanford University has lent its prestigious fame to help … Continue reading
Posted in constructivism, Curriculum & Instruction, K-12, math, Mathematics
2 Comments
Academic Fitness
A few years ago I was at a conference of a few hundred History/Social Studies educators, consultants, etc. at the Center for the Study of the Senate in Boston. I was introduced, as The Concord Review and I had recently … Continue reading
Posted in Curriculum & Instruction, History, Humanities, K-12, reading, Will Fitzhugh
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Breaking the Spell of Math Reformists
by Ling Huang, Palo Alto, California In “My Childhood Schooling In The Soviet Union Was Better Than My Kids’ In U.S. Public Schools Today,” https://thefederalist.com/2019/08/27/childhood-schooling-in-soviet-union-better-than-u-s-public-schools-today/ Katya Sedgwick wrote, “Math was the dissident’s favorite in the Soviet Union. It was believed that … Continue reading
Posted in constructivism, Curriculum & Instruction, K-12, math, Mathematics
1 Comment
Here’s how Idaho can develop academically strong ELA and Mathematics Standards when it revises its current standards*
By Sandra Stotsky, Professor Emerita, University of Arkansas Idaho can develop effective non-Common Core standards for mathematics and English/reading if its Legislature requires the development of K-12 standards in mathematics and in English/reading with the following features and guiding policies: … Continue reading
Posted in Common Core, Curriculum & Instruction, Education policy, K-12, Mathematics, Reading & Writing, Sandra Stotsky
Tagged Idaho, standards
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K-12 is a land of mystery
Bruce Dietrick Price* For those who enjoy a good puzzle, K-12 education is more intellectually entertaining than most people imagine. Classrooms are full of convoluted theories and mystifying methods. Probably the teachers themselves can’t explain the reasoning behind approaches that … Continue reading
Who’s Telling the Truth about Alabama’s Constitutional Amendment One?
As a former member of the Alabama State School Board (2003-2019), I would like to share my concerns about the ballot language for Amendment One. When voters get a ballot on March 3, this is all that is printed in … Continue reading
Posted in Common Core, Curriculum & Instruction, Education Fraud, Education policy, information suppression, K-12
Tagged Alabama
2 Comments
Response to John Merrow’s advocacy of Project-based Learning
John Merrow has started a series of posts advocating project based learning. I just posted the following to his website: Last Week, Water. This Week, AIR. (The Series Continues) John, It’s disappointing to see you disparaging the teaching of factual information: … Continue reading
Should we switch from mandated “standardized” tests to mandated “performance” tests?
Sandra Stotsky, August 1, 2019 According to many education writers in this country, there are no tests in Finnish schools, at least no “mandated standardized tests.” That phrase was carefully hammered out by Smithsonian Magazine to exclude the many no- … Continue reading
Richard Phelps: Is our education system failing us? Critically Speaking
CriticallySpeak @CritiSpeak https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/013-dr-richard-phelps-is-our-education-system-failing-us/id1463016517?i=1000445232433 K12 is in trouble! Johnny can’t read, write or do arithmetic, even with a college degree. Interview with Dr. Richard Phelps CriticallySpeaking podcast Critically Speaking on Apple Podcasts @@string1@@ · 2019 podcasts.apple.com
Education Next, the Fordham Institute, and Common Core
In years of observing the behavior of staff at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and Institute I haven’t noticed much of the “open-mindedness and humility” claimed on its website.[1] More common has been a proclivity to suppress dissent, shun or … Continue reading
New “science and society” podcast
ANNOUNCING: Critically Speaking, a new podcast series hosted by Therese Markow, who writes: ” … we separate facts from fallacies at the intersection of science and society. “Every day we make decisions that affect our own lives, … Continue reading
