Down with exams

I had an interesting coffee morning the other day. Well, the coffee was pretty usual but the conversation was interesting. A former British Prime Minister has proposed eliminating terminal assessment, aka as final exams, in favor of continuous assessment. Many of his arguments are country or culture-specific, but the exam v continuous assessment topic is an important discussion.

School jenga

Current protests about and against public school boards bring two things to mind. Firstly, these are all public district schools which is of course the root of the problem. Public schools must by definition (and by law) be all things to all people, so including "a" will upset the supporters of "b" and excluding "c" will ignite the followers of "d". The second is the jenga-like nature of schools: it is rarely possible to change just one thing.

A cheap way to school improvement

 A few years ago I was approached by a student at the local college of education who wanted a group of stufents to complete a survey of some type. I immediately agreed as I believe that we as teachers have a professional responsibility to help form the next generation(s) of teachers. But this gave me a great idea - how to improve my school's program and its teaching with targetted interventions, for free!

One size fits all does not

Regular readers will know that I believe in developmentally appropriate teaching and learning which has a direct effect on grade or class placement. I disagree with putting children in classes based on random dates of birth which are unrelated to what a child can do and/or for whcih s/he is ready, leads to gaming the system through red-shirting and is a recipe for disaffection and a lack of engagement when a child is placed too "low" or too "high". So what is better?

Boy-friendly

I saw this graphic today and it reminded me of a number of conversations I had a few years ago with prospective parents when I was leading a school. More recently, I did some consulting for a group of parents who wanted to set up a specific type of school. All were women, many characterized themselves as hard-core feminists and some were in same-sex female relationships. The link? All were seeking a "boy-friendly" program, and all shared the view that teaching and learning today is weighted against boys.