Twitter for Educators: 3 Essential Starter Tips

Posted on March 14, 2013 by coreeducation

Have you ever wondered whether you, as an educator or someone in the field of education, should get on Twitter? And even if you did join Twitter, how would it be helpful to you and how does it work?

These are all questions that blogger Evan L. R. Hays addresses in a post for the Tioki blog. Tioki is a social media website for teachers. It bills itself as the “the online professional network exclusively for the education community.” The Tioki blog attempts to offer practical takeaways for its members and readers.

Here is a brief excerpt from the post that describes the utility of Twitter for educators:

The main utility of Twitter for educators is to help us all stay informed about the education climate surrounding us that is so rapidly changing. Moreover, Twitter allows us to easily stay up on news from a variety of types of sources, enabling us to have a more comprehensive view of the often partisan wrangling over education politics. With questions over standardized testing, Common Core, ESEA re-authorization, NCLB waivers, Race to the Top funding, and new technology in the classroom—to name only a few—all looming, staying abreast of changes is more difficult and essential than ever. I have it from a number of education PhD’s who have had their noses to the ground in education for a while that changes are coming much more rapidly in education than they have in decades past. This is where Twitter comes in.

The post then goes on to outline technology tools, etiquette, and search functions. Finally, the post concludes with the basics of who is on Twitter and how to know about good education Twitter accounts to follow.

If you are on Twitter, but don’t use it very much, or have thought about joining Twitter but haven’t quite taken the plunge, this blog post is a great place to start.

Following is the link to the post: http://blog.tioki.com/a-brief-primer-on-twitter-for-educators/?doing_wp_cron=1362593570.2928841114044189453125

New Ranking of Education Blogs Available

Posted on January 17, 2013 by coreeducation

Teach.com has recently launched what it calls “a first of its kind ranking of the 100 best and most influential education blogs and news sites.” Known as Teach100, and available here, the list, which is updated daily, allows users to “quickly see the education blogs their community is reading, explore topics the blogs are covering, and decide which blogs they want to follow or add to their existing reading list.” The list also functions as an excellent introduction to the education blogosphere.

Teach100 will consider any blog that focuses on education, ranging from early childhood to postsecondary education. “Blogs may feature topical issues such as teaching styles, education reform, the hard sciences or other education-related topics.” New bloggers may submit their blogs to be ranked, provided that they meet the criteria of at least half of the content pertaining directly to education, the blog being at least six months old, and the blog having more than 50 individual posts.

Teach100 ranks each education blog on the following factors:

Social (40%) – Engagement as determined through combined Facebook shares, Tweets and StumbleUpon visits to the blog. Ranking is also based on the number of shares pointing back to the blog’s 10 most recent posts and its main domain.
Activity (20%) – The frequency of a blog’s updates. The more frequently a blog is updated, the higher its activity score.
Authority (20%) – The overall authority and influence relative to the rest of the web as determined by the number of sites linking to the blog. This methodology is one of the foundations of the Google Search Algorithm and is a commonly used measure of a website’s authority.
Teach Score (20%) – This is the single subjective factor in the evaluation of Teach100. The Teach Score considers how media is used throughout a blog, how topics in education are discussed, the timeliness of blog content, the capacity to inform and the overall presentation of the blog

This blog is currently ranked 120^th.

For more information please visit the following website:

www.Teach.com/Teach100

How much do Americans trust the Obama Administration on Education?

Posted on December 31, 2012 by coreeducation

According to a recent Gallup/USA Today poll, Americans are 3% less optimistic about the Obama administration’s chances of improving the state of American Education.

All things considered, this very modest drop should be seen as proof of a favorable American attitude toward the Obama administration and education.

First, as the Gallup poll reminds us, “Americans were generally more positive about the potential of the new Obama administration’s ability to accomplish most of these goals in November 2008, just after Obama was elected for the first time. This optimism no doubt reflects in part voters’ hopes for any new president and the poor economic conditions that were extant in 2008.”
Second, at 68% positive, there are only two other issues about which Americans feel more positively than that of education: bringing U.S. troops home from Afghanistan (72%) and improving conditions for minorities and the poor (72%). These three issues are part of a total of 13 issues about which Americans were polled.
Third, when compared with the amount of drop in positive feeling of some of the other issues, a drop of only 3% represents an extremely modest drop. The percentage of Americans who felt that the Obama administration could help heal political divisions in the United States dropped by 21%.

When respondents were asked about the current priorities that they believe the Obama administration should have, the state of the economy, as might be expected, came out first. 95% stated that it was “extremely” or “very” important that Obama take “major steps” to restore a strong economy and job market. Next came working to ensure the long-term stability of Social Security and Medicare (88%) and preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon (79%). The only option out of 12 priorities related to education, making college education affordable, came in tied for fourth at 73%.

In short, Americans still believe education is an important issue for the administration to tackle, and they still trust the administration to do so.

For more information, please visit: http://www.gallup.com/poll/158843/americans-assess-obama-accomplish-next-term.aspx

Education Nation: Year Three

Posted on October 9, 2012 by coreeducation

In a recent blog post, John Merrow reflects on this year’s “Education Nation” summit, an annual conference organized and hosted by NBC News:

NBC News put on its third iteration of Education Nation earlier this week and did an even better job this year. I suppose that could be considered faint praise, because year one was pretty bad and year two was only fair-to-middling. I’d give the 2012 version a B or maybe a B- for “performance,” but NBC News deserves an A for effort, because no one else is even attempting to create a national dialogue about what has to be recognized as our country’s greatest challenge.

For those who weren’t there or following events online, on NBC, MSNBC or CNBC, here’s some basic information:

Three days of activities, including a couple of “Town Hall” meetings, dinner with General Colin Powell, interviews with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Governor Romney, the President on video, three former Secretaries of Education and the current Secretary; the premiere of “Won’t Back Down,” and dozens of short and generally tightly focused panel discussions.

A superb venue: the elegant New York Public Library.

Hundreds of eager and capable folks there to make sure we got to the right places.

In short, Education Nation is now a “must attend” event for wonks like me, and a lot of us were there.

To read Merrow’s full post and see video clips of the event, please visit http://takingnote.learningmatters.tv/?p=5926

75 Examples of How Bureaucracy Stands in the Way of Students and Teachers

Posted on August 26, 2012 by coreeducation

The Broad Center for the Management of School Systems released last week “75 Examples of How Bureaucracy Stands in the Way of America’s Students and Teachers,” giving parents, teachers and voters a critical resource for understanding the systemic crisis in America’s public schools.

This week’s release of the PDK/Gallup poll of the “Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools” showed that the number of Americans who expressed confidence in public schools as a public institution has dropped 5 percentage points since the last poll was taken five years ago, a drop Gallup calls “significant.”

“While Americans may not be able to point to one particular cause, an increasing number know instinctively that something is not right in our public schools,” said Becca Bracy Knight, managing director of The Broad Center, which runs The Broad Superintendents Academy and The Broad Residency. “They know too many students and teachers aren’t receiving the help they need to be successful.”

75 Examples of How Bureaucracy Stands in the Way of America’s Students and Teachers reports on challenges in large urban districts commonly encountered over the course of research and site visits associated with The Broad Prize for Urban Education, The Broad Center for the Management of School Systems and The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation’s philanthropic work over the past decade.

“Bureaucratic systems, policies and practices that have been built up over decades in inner-city school districts may in fact pose the single greatest challenge facing our teachers and students,” said Rebecca Wolf DiBiase, managing director of programs at The Broad Foundation, which funds The Broad Center. “Bureaucratic policies and procedures, which may have been originally well-intended to comply with laws and regulations, often don’t allow school systems today to pursue their core mission: advancing student achievement. As a result, fewer resources actually reach the classroom, teachers don’t receive the support they need to meet individual student needs, and many people in and around these systems are disheartened, with little faith that conditions will improve.”

“The sheer number of significant challenges facing America’s urban school districts demonstrates that if we are to ever meet modern student and teacher needs and catch up with the rest of the world in terms of academic performance, our school systems must be transformed,” DiBiase said.

As daunting as these challenges may seem, research shows some urban school systems are making strides in reducing bureaucracy and replacing it with effective administrative environments that support students and teachers.

For example, districts in Corona-Norco in Southern California, Houston, Miami-Dade County, and Palm Beach County have made efforts to reduce bureaucracy, push resources to the classroom and empower teachers. As a result, these school districts have demonstrated the greatest overall urban student gains and achievement gap closures in the nation.

In addition, Houston’s YES Prep Public Schools, which predominantly serves low-income and minority students, has eliminated nearly every income and ethnic achievement gap faced by urban schools nationwide-and closed gaps five times more often than their peers. Last spring, all of YES Prep’s college seniors were accepted to college.
To read the Bureaucracy report, please visit http://www.broadeducation.org/about/bureaucracy.html

The Irreplaceables: Understanding the Real Retention Crisis

Posted on July 31, 2012 by coreeducation

A study released yesterday finds that urban schools are systematically neglecting their best teachers, losing tens of thousands every year even as they keep many of their lowest-performing teachers indefinitely-with disastrous consequences for students, schools, and the teaching profession.

The study by TNTP documents the real teacher retention crisis in America’s schools: not only a failure to retain enough teachers, but a failure to retain the right teachers.

The Irreplaceables: Understanding the Real Retention Crisis in America’s Urban Schools, spans four urban school districts encompassing 90,000 teachers and 1.4 million students. It focuses on the experiences of the “Irreplaceables”: teachers so successful at advancing student learning that they are nearly impossible to replace. Schools rarely make a strong effort to keep these teachers despite their success-and rarely usher unsuccessful teachers out.

As a result, the best and worst teachers leave urban schools at strikingly similar rates. The nation’s 50 largest districts lose approximately 10,000 Irreplaceables each year. Meanwhile, about 40 percent of teachers with more than seven years of experience are less effective at advancing academic progress than the average first-year teacher.

The study attributes negligent retention patterns to three major causes:

Inaction by school principals. Less than 30 percent of Irreplaceables plan to leave for reasons beyond their school’s control. Simple strategies, like public recognition for a job well done, boost their plans to stay by as many as six years. Yet two-thirds indicated that no one had encouraged them to return for another year. Similarly, principals rarely try to counsel out low performers, even though replacing them with a brand-new teacher will immediately achieve better academic results 75 percent of the time.

Poor school cultures and working conditions. Schools that retain more Irreplaceables have strong cultures where teachers work in an atmosphere of mutual respect, leaders respond to poor performance, and great teaching is the priority. Turnover rates among Irreplaceables were 50 percent higher in schools lacking these traits.

Policies that impede smarter retention practices. A number of policy barriers hamper principals from making smarter retention decisions. Because of inflexible, seniority-dominated compensation systems, for example, 55 percent of Irreplaceables earn a lower salary than the average low-performing teacher.

The report notes that current retention patterns stymie school turnaround efforts and prevent the teaching profession from earning the prestige it deserves. It offers two major recommendations:

Make retention of Irreplaceables a top priority. Districts should aim to keep more than 90 percent of their Irreplaceables annually, monitor and improve school working conditions, pay the best teachers what they’re worth and create new career pathways that extend their reach.

Strengthen the teaching profession with higher expectations. Leaders at all levels should set a new baseline standard for effectiveness: Teachers who cannot teach as well as the average first-year teacher should be considered ineffective and dismissed or counseled out (unless they are first-year teachers). Policymakers should change teacher hiring and layoff policies that discourage schools from enforcing higher expectations.

To read the full report, please visit http://www.tntp.org/irreplaceables

Dear Data, Please Make Yourself More Useful

Posted on June 7, 2012 by coreeducation

In a recent commentary piece for Education Week, Brad C. Phillips and Jay J. Pfieffer reflect on data and how it is (mis)used in education. “Factions are setting up camp at two extremes: one for those who believe data is the Holy Grail, and the other for those who shun it,” they write. Phillips and Pfieffer’s view of data takes the middle ground: data is only useful if people can access and use it.

“Mountains” of data exist, but “there is little that busy people can use to make good decisions…the fixed and standardized ways that data are reported often do not strike educators as relevant or useful.” To win teachers over to the belief that data can be useful in better understanding their students at the individual level, the authors offer several guidelines to help data meet what they call the “usefulness standard”:

Engage teachers and decision makers in the design of the tools used to collect data. They observe that only 28 states make longitudinal student data available to teachers, and though 40 states offer feedback to teachers based on student performance data, few ask whether the data included are what teachers want and need. Currently, the emphasis is on collecting summative test-score data, which only measures what has been learned at the end of a course of study—it does not help teachers make midcourse corrections or revisions to help students as they learn.
Create regular opportunities to huddle around the data. Only 8 states require teachers and principals to be “data literate.” Statewide longitudinal data systems should create regularly scheduled opportunities “for teachers to gather and strategize about particular students who are struggling.”
Tailor reports to your audience. Data systems need to have the capacity to create multiple types of reports that can be pulled at different points of time—each stakeholder is going to want different information. The authors believe that part of the reason some educators are skeptical about the utility of data is because the tools they have available are not the right ones for the job.
“Useful” means many things and has many audiences. Currently, most data collection and reporting is narrowly confined to what is required by NCLB. Adding other types of data, such as prior coursework and grades, writing samples, participation in tutoring programs, etc. will improve the usefulness of data to classroom teachers, who can use it to tailor their lessons.
Continuously hone validity and accuracy. The focus on “accountability” and the way data is used for this purpose is often viewed as punitive and unfair. On the other hand, statewide longitudinal data systems “have the opportunity to become highly developed instrument panels that guide teaching with a host of information about students, not just test scores.” The daily practice of using data has been acknowledged by classroom teachers to improve their effectiveness, and thus the data produced.

In the end, the authors conclude that “the time is nigh for education data systems to make themselves much more useful. Just as electronic health records and disease registries are fueling greater discoveries and personalized patient care, education data must become a necessity of teaching.”

To read the full article, please visit http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/05/23/32phillips.h31.html?qs=dear+data

Shared Vision for the Next Generation of Teaching

Posted on June 3, 2012 by coreeducation

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan joined seven fellow national education leaders last month in signing a shared vision for the future of the teaching profession during the opening 2012 Labor Management Conference in Cincinnati.

“Lessons and best practices from talented teachers is the driving force behind this shared vision for transforming the teaching profession,” said Duncan. “The principles outlined in the document represent ways to strengthen and elevate teaching as one of our nation’s most valued and respected professions.”

The shared vision, Transforming the Teaching Profession, focuses on three main goals: 1) high levels of student achievement judged by multiple measures; 2) increased equity through narrowing achievement and opportunity gaps; and 3) increased global competitiveness. Seven core principles make up the elements of achieving these goals. They include:

A culture of shared responsibility and leadership;
Recruiting top talent into schools prepared for success;
Continuous growth and professional development;
Effective teachers and principals;
A professional career continuum with competitive compensation;
Conditions that support successful teaching and learning; and
Engaged communities

U.S. education leaders developed the shared vision following the 2012 International Summit on the Teaching Profession held in New York City in March. The event gathered teachers, union leaders, and education ministers from 23 high performing and rapidly improving countries and regions to share ideas and best practices for elevating teaching and improving student performance.

The 2012 Labor Management Conference brought together state and district teams nationwide to spotlight local work around the next generation of great teaching. Over a dozen state and district presenters showcased their work, which includes elements illustrated in the vision document such as collaborative working environments, career ladders, differentiated compensation, college and career ready standards, and community engagement to support classroom instruction.

For more information on the core principles, please visit http://www2.ed.gov/documents/labor-management-collaboration/2012-shared-vision.pdf

The Condition of Education 2012

Posted on June 1, 2012 by coreeducation

The National Center for Education Statistics released The Condition of Education 2012 last week, an annual publication mandated by Congress. The report summarizes important developments and trends in education using the latest available data. The report presents 49 indicators on the status and condition of education. The indicators are grouped under three main areas: (1) participation in education; (2) elementary and secondary education; and (3) postsecondary education. In addition, the report contains a closer look at high schools in the United States over the past twenty years.

This year’s report features a closer look at high schools in the United States and how they have been changing in recent decades. ”We have seen a lot of changes in high schools over the past 20 years,” said NCES Commissioner Jack Buckley. “The classroom is more diverse, far fewer students work, and more students are taking rigorous math and science courses. Schools are safer, and the use of distance education has rapidly expanded.”

The high school findings include:

GROWTH IN ENROLLMENT IN THE WEST AND SOUTH: From 1989 to 2010, public high school student enrollment increased by 52 percent in the West, from 2.4 to 3.7 million, and by 35 percent in the South, from 4.0 to 5.4 million.
MORE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS ARE TAKING SCIENCE AND MATH COURSES: Some 16 percent of 2009 high school graduates had taken calculus, and 11 percent had taken statistics, compared to 7 percent and 1 percent, respectively, of 1990 graduates. Similarly, 70 percent of 2009 high school graduates had taken chemistry and 36 percent had taken physics, compared to 49 percent and 21 percent, respectively, of students in 1990.
DISTANCE LEARNING IS GROWING RAPIDLY: In 2009-10, some 53 percent of school districts in the United States had high school students enrolled in distance education. In that year there were over 1.3 million distance education course enrollments, compared to .2 million just seven years earlier.
ONLY 1 IN 6 HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS WORK: Between 1990 and 2010, the percentage of high school students ages 16 and above who were employed decreased from 32 percent to 16 percent.
HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION RATES ARE IMPROVING: The overall averaged freshman graduation rate (AFGR) was higher for the graduating class of 2008-09 (75.5 percent) than it was for the graduating class of 1990-91 (73.7 percent).

This year’s report documents important indicators in elementary and secondary and postsecondary education, including:

CHARTER SCHOOL ENROLLMENTS RISE: From 1990-2000 to 2009-10, the number of students enrolled in public charter schools more than quadrupled from 340,000 to 1.6 million students; in 2009-10, some 5 percent of all public schools were charter schools.
TEN PERCENT OF PUBLIC SCHOOL STUDENTS ARE ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS: An estimated 4.7 million public school students in the United States were English language learners in 2009-10, compared to 3.7 million in 2000-01.
UNDERGRADUATE ENROLLMENT CONTINUES TO INCREASE: Between 2000 and 2010, undergraduate enrollment increased by 37 percent, from 13.2 to 18.1 million students. Projections indicate that undergraduate enrollment will continue to increase, reaching 20.6 million students in 2021.

To view the full report please visit http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/

Duncan: Ask the Teachers

Posted on May 15, 2012 by coreeducation

In a recent op-ed piece for the Huffington Post, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan discusses his views on how to improve the teaching profession by sharing conversations he’s had with educators across the country. He captures a sentiment common among educators: they “love teaching though they wouldn’t mind a little more respect for their challenging work and a little less blame for America’s educational shortcomings.”

The op-ed was written in conjunction with the Department’s announcement of a new initiative, “Strengthening and Elevating the Teaching Profession” (I blogged about it here). He reminds us that regardless of the measures taken to strengthen and elevate the teaching profession, teacher’s must be listened to, or the attempts at reform are “doomed.”

He summarizes some of the common themes teachers participating in the RESPECT Project concurred on: the lack of preparation for the classroom, lack of mentoring and support, and high-stakes testing and the results of which provide the bulk of most measures of teacher effectiveness. Compensation is not generally an issue for teachers, but Duncan argues that teachers are severely undercompensated compared to other professions.

The thing he has found most teachers to be enthusiastic about are “career pathways,” which have differentiated roles that do not require excellent teachers to leave the classroom, but compensate them for their excellence. However, what the teachers in the RESPECT Project have continually lamented is the lack of time—time for collaboration, lesson planning, professional learning, and for working with small groups of students. “Unfortunately,” Duncan observes, “we shoehorn schooling into a too-short school day and year.”

Duncan ends with a call to make teaching not just one of America’s most important professions, but also one of the most valued. “America’s teachers are hungry for comprehensive reform to their profession and they are ready to lead the change. Indeed, they are the only ones who can.”

To read the full article, please visit http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arne-duncan/ask-the-teachers_b_1490642.html

The "Core" of Education

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