Ecology of Education

Master of Myth: What Arne Duncan Says and Does

Master of Myth: What Arne Duncan Says and Does The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. —John F. Kennedy U.S. Secretary of Education has been called the most powerful education secretary in history. With billions of dollars [...]

Evaluating Teachers with VAM: Variable Ambiguous Mistake

Anyone who has read this blog before is probably aware of my position on the use value-added measurement for teacher evaluation.  I have argued many times here, and in Teacher Magazine, that politicians, self-styled education reformers, and members of the general public are ill-informed if they believe that we can use state tests to determine [...]

Ed Reformers: Champions of the Wrong Theory of Learning

In alphabetical order: Mike Bloomberg, mayor of New York City. Eli Broad, financier and philanthropist. Jeb Bush, ex-Florida governor and possible 2012 presidential contender. Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education. Bill Gates, business magnate and philanthropist. Joel Klein, chancellor of New York City schools. In education issues, mainstream media sometimes call these gentlemen, “The New [...]

Dogs: An Unusual Guide to School Reform

Driving the country roads of Scotland, Ireland and Wales, I have sometimes been lucky enough to be blocked by sheep being moved from one pasture to another. I say ‘lucky’ because it allows me to watch an impressive performance by a dog – usually a Border Collie. What a show! A single, mid-sized dog herding [...]

A Teacher’s Field Guide to Parents

Teachers would be foolhardy to label parents as either good or bad. Not all parents are created equal and cannot be categorized on a single spectrum.  To do so would jeopardize a teacher’s ability to survive. Literally.  I mean, I’m talking life or death here. You see, when normally mild mannered and reasonable people become [...]

Pros & Cons of Summertime Daddy Day Care

Here are some (hopefully amusing) Pros & Cons of spending summer break as a full-time daddy.

Spill Happens: Education Reform & the Gulf of Mexico

There are a number of things we could arguably learn from the on-going Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico: These things are NOT fail safe. We should get off oil. MMS’s regulators are too lax. BP took too many chances. Corporations are to blame. Lobbyists are to blame. Politicians are to blame. We are [...]

Emerging Trend: Teachers as Advocates

(This piece was originally published at Cooperative Catalyst.) I keep waiting on the invitation: Who: Teachers What: Education Reform Policy Party Where: Wonk Circles All Over When: NOW! Why: We want YOU to help envision & shape the next generation of schools. The paradox, of course, is that as the reformation of education garners greater [...]

Education Reformers: Four Key Questions

Questions being ignored or inadequately addressed by the current business and industry-driven education reform effort: 1. Market forces in general, and merit pay in particular, are being promoted by leaders of business and industry as keys to improved school performance. In highly effective schools and school systems, educators see themselves as members of a team [...]

The Acronym’s Missing a Letter: W(riting)

I’m proposing something radical. I’m recommending we consider something that may not fit into a nifty acronym. For some time, educators and those interested in influencing schools’ curricular foci, have suggested significant instructional redirection, often with an acronym that supposedly creates education’s needed compass. The most famous of these, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), has [...]

Gulf Oil Spill Tracker

Oil Spill Estimate Pick your level of gush: NOAA’s super-conservative-we-just-publish-what-BP-tells-us or the Dr. Doom expert analysis. Either way, it’s not looking good. It’s looking goo.

Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the Learning Revolution

The next installment of Sir Ken Robinson’s take on schooling, learning, teaching, and the revolution (not evolution) of education.  He softens his deconstruction of our education system with humor, though he looses non of his poignancy.  Among the insights: We are building our education system around a fast food model, where everything is standardized, yet [...]

Creating the Optimal Learning Environment

This article was originally posted by George Couros on May 21, 2010 at his site, “The Principal of Change“. As I have talked about effective practices for teachers and administrators, I really wanted to shift the focus on what the best environment is for student learning. If we are to have students become leaders and [...]

Winning: the ultimate distraction

I was reffing basketball again this morning and I had a game where a player placed another in a headlock and took him to the floor as hard as he could. So I promptly gave him a disqualifying foul and he was removed from the game. The disqualifying foul was a no brainer – the [...]

Education Reform: 22 Problems, and a Proposal

The “standards and accountability” education reform effort begun in the 1980s at the urging of leaders of business and industry, is failing. The reform message, powerfully reinforced by mainstream media, is simple:

1. America’s schools are, at best, mediocre.
2. Teachers and students deserve most of the blame.
3. As a corrective, rigorous subject-matter standards and tests must be put in place.
4. Market forces must be brought to bear to pressure teachers and students to work to those standards.

Collaboration Agent

This post is cross-posted from www.joebower.org Collaboration is a very important skill to have. If you are a teacher or parent, you know how cumbersome group projects can be. Sometimes the project itself is the least of our concerns. But is it possible to collaborate too much? I took some class time to show my [...]

Coming Soon to a School Near You: Big Ed

Corporate America has given us Big Banks (banks too big to fail) & Big Pharma (a pharmaceutical industry too big to fight). Coming soon to a school near you, courtesy of corporate America: Big Ed

What Makes a Master Teacher?

This post was originally written by myself, George Couros, on my blog, “The Principal of Change”, on April 24, 2010.  I am honored to have been asked to cross-post this to the Ecology of Education blog.  Hope you enjoy it! The term “master teacher” seems to get thrown around a lot, but is something that [...]

The Problem with Infinity

In his book The Dip, Seth Godin writes, “the problem with infinity is that there’s too much of it.” He ends up talking mostly about business and markets, but his point is not lost on education. The trouble with focusing on content as the primary role of education is that there is an infinite amount [...]