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The Once Great Junior Year, Ruined by Testing
Not so long ago, 11th grade was a great year of high school. The pre-adolescent fog had lifted, and the label of “sophomore,” literally “wise-fool,” gave way to the less insulting “junior.” Academic...
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The De-CAPT-itated Classroom in CT
As the 10th grade English teacher, Linda’s role had been to prepare students for the rigors of the State of Connecticut Academic Performance Test, otherwise known as the CAPT. She had been preparing...
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End of the Year: Phase Changes and Student Growth
As the school year comes to a close, the buzzphrase is “student growth.” All stakeholders in education want to be able to demonstrate student growth, especially if student growth could be on an upwards...
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Professional Development Can Address Data Rich-Analysis Poor Conversations
At the intersection of data and evaluation, here is a hypothetical scenario: A young teacher meets an evaluator for a mid-year meeting. “85 % of the students are meeting the goal of 50% or better, in...
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Blurring on the Spectrum of Assessment
Since I write to understand what I think, I have decided to focus this particular post on the different categories of assessments. My thinking has been motivated by helping teachers with ongoing...
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Annual Testing at the Expense of Instruction
Graphic by Christopher King that accompanied the editorial piece “In Defense of Annual Testing” My Saturday morning coffee was disrupted by the headline in the New York Times opinion piece, In Defense...
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Testing a Thousand Madelyns
My niece is a beautiful little girl. She is a beautiful girl on the outside, the kind of little girl who cannot take a bad picture. She is also beautiful on the inside. She is her mother’s helper,...
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The “So What?” Conundrum
This summer, I plan to spend time organizing question stems to spark critical thinking and post them on a number of slides to share with teachers. OR I could shorten the process and use just one slide....
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FYI, Jrs: CT’s CCSS SBAC DOA ; ^ SAT
Notice how I am trying to beat the character limit on headlines? Here’s the translation: For your information, Juniors: Connecticut’s Common Core State Standards Smarter Balanced Assessment...
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Is a Question about Character Change in Elementary Texts Worth Asking? Part 1
One of the first literary elements that students understand as they begin to read is character. They learn that a character is a person, animal, being, or thing moving the story along a plot line....
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