Progress Report - still mediocre

 I wrote earlier about a school group appointing mediocre leadership (see below). Today, "the algorithm" (LinkedIn, not the other one) suggested I might like to follow this group, so of course I had a look. What did I see? All too predictable.

Equitable Grading

I once subscribed to Education Week and still receive regular updates on the topic du jour. One of these is what has been called "equitable grading"* which, as is so common, appears to be a new name for an old practice. As I scanned the article, a specific approach caught my eye, one which I used extensively and one which I recommend to this day.

Public media today

I listen to NPR every morning, while I am multi-tasking of course, and occasionally also during the day. I used to listen much more, but now not as much. Today, a long segment was devoted to the federal government's recision of funding for public media - specifically, NPR and PBS. While I disagree with the decision and the stated reasons, I was reminded of my own experience which I previously described elsewhere (see below).

AI reality

A couple of months ago, I asked a colleague to run an experiment for me. I asked her to give her students assignments and take-home tests with the regular admonitions about academic honesty but no real controls or checks. She then graded them as usual. At the end of the semester, she gave her students an in-class, supervised test on exactly those topics. I am sure you can see what's coming.

Any questions?

I know this is a small blip in what is read everyday, but according to Google my daily readership is typically 500 - 1000 visitors a day. As most enter the site and read the recent posts, rather than crawling through every one, I assume that most of these are real people and most of those are returners hoping to find some usefual nugget.

Happy Birthday

I had a coffee and dangerously delicious English muffin the other day with a former colleague. It was her birthday the day before and she showed me a video-text sent to her by former students, still at the school she left last year, wishing her a Happy Birthday and telling her she is the "best teacher ever" and that they "love" her. All very nice of course, but one thing troubles me.

Seeing the trees

A school nearby recently had to remove nearly all its trees because they were old and diseased and a risk to anyone nearby since they were likely to fall or to lose limbs at any times. They were nearly all planted at the same time so they all had to go together. When I saw all the piles of woody debris, I remembered the time I had a chance to plant a  number of trees.

Seeing color

I was in a foreign clime the other day (same state, but very different weather) and I drove past a school proudly displaying its school colors. Gates, fences, window frames - all were painted in bright, almost florescent yellow and equally bright almost florescent purple. Someone, somewhere made this decision and chose these colors which led to my pondering on this element of a school's image.

Pay Transparency

My generally weekly coffee and a catch-up with a former colleague last week turned to the subject of pay transparency. Like many (most?) people, I am troubled by employment announcements offering "market rates" or asking for "salary requirements" rather than just posting what is being offered. I find the idea that one can be terminated for discussing one's salary or compensation structure terrible. As we chewed on this particular bone, I was reminded of how pay iniquities first propeled me into educational leadership.

It's all words

I just put in a proposal for a coaching gig with a medium-size charter school to re-orient their English Language Arts (ELA) program to one based on and around vocabulary development. Why, you ask? Well, it's a good idea and it integrates all the important elements of ELA.