Large Image With Sidebar

13 Feb Teacher Evaluation: Soft Skills for Hard Moments

Posted at 20:59h in Education

Teachers: What can we learn from an evaluation? It has been truly exciting this year to be able to spend some time taking a hard look at the topic of teacher evaluation with Hope Street Group. I have learned a lot, participated in innumerable conversations, read...

12 Feb Our Visit to the U.S. Department of Education

Posted at 01:22h in Education

Dru Davison and I were invited to represent Hope Street Group to interview Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan about teacher evaluation. What an honor it was! It was a whirlwind tour and in a matter of hours, we had met with Secretary Duncan, his chief of...

30 Jan The State of the Union – Teachers Matter

Posted at 01:52h in Education

The most powerful words from the State of the Union? “Teachers Matter” and “teach with creativity and passion.” The creativity and passion in teaching has been leached out over the years by increasing emphasis on high-stakes testing. Everything seems to hinge on a single assessment....

24 Jan Whole Child Reform: The Easy to Follow Recipe

Posted at 01:52h in Education

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “Outliers,” he takes a close look at the many details behind successful people. In looking at highly successful people he defines as “outliers,” Gladwell cleverly reverse engineers three secret ingredients necessary to becoming a highly successful person on top of just...

18 Jan 2b or not 2b…That is the Question: But Are Standardized Tests Asking the Right Ones?

Posted at 02:00h in Education

Standardized testing has become a hot topic of conversation everywhere from the teachers lounge to local P.T.A. meetings. The news is filled with articles about teachers “teaching to the test” (see a few examples here, here and here). But are standardized assessments the best and...

10 Jan Dollars: It isn’t just a question of how much

Posted at 02:06h in Education

How does budget transparency, or the lack thereof, impact school and classroom level programming for students? Across states in our nation, property owners pay taxes to provide the youth in their community with an education. While there are many current debates about how much those taxes...