Today on Schools and Tech we’ve got more controversy over teacher evaluations, gender bias in favor of girls and the fate of the complete book in the hands of generation text. Our main topic is service-learning. 

News of the Week:

1) Method to Grade Teachers Provokes Battle - NYT - CT the value-added modeling system calculates the value teachers add to their students’ achievement, based on changes in test scores from year to year and how the students perform compared with others in their grade.   
In value-added modeling, researchers use students’ scores on state tests administered at the end of third grade, for instance, to predict how they are likely to score on state tests at the end of fourth grade.       
A student whose third-grade scores were higher than 60 percent of peers statewide is predicted to score higher than 60 percent of fourth graders a year later.       
If, when actually taking the state tests at the end of fourth grade, the student scores higher than 70 percent of fourth graders, the leap in achievement represents the value the fourth-grade teacher added.

2) Experts caution against heavily relying on student test scores to evaluate teachers  TAT
Student test scores are not reliable indicators of teacher effectiveness, even with the addition of value-added modeling (VAM), a new Economic Policy Institute report by leading testing experts finds. Though VAM methods have allowed for more sophisticated comparisons of teachers than were possible in the past, they are still inaccurate...

3) Girls Think They Are Cleverer Than Boys From Age 4 & Teachers May Reinforce This Gender Gap - The Guardian - CT

4) Will the Book Survive Generation Text? Chronicle of Higher Education - KB
I am talking about the growing feeling among humanities professors—intuitive and anecdotal, shared over lunch like an embarrassing tale about a colleague—that for too many of today's undergraduates, reading a whole book, from A to Z, feels like a marathon unfairly imposed on a jogger.

Everywhere they turn, but particularly in mainstream, sophisticated venues—where middle-aged fogies desperately seek to stay ahead of the tech curve—young people hear, through the apotheosis of tweets, blog posts, Facebook updates, and sound bites as the core of communication, that short is always smarter and better than long, even though most everyone knows it's usually dumber and worse.

Reading a book, however, requires concentration, endurance, the ability to disconnect from other connections. You have to be there rather than not there. Hyperwired young people may be making it to age 17 without acquiring that ability, let alone losing it.

Main Topic:  Blurring the Line b/w School and Real Life - service-learning

see blog post - Minding the Hyphen

If you get a chance, watch this TED video before the podcast.
Kiran Bir Sethi shows her groundbreaking Riverside School in India - the “I Can” Approach
Aware - Enable - Empower

More info:
National Service-Learning Clearinghouse (www.servicelearning.org)

Endorsements:

Cammy: The Paradox of Time

Kevin: Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov

Tim: ExpertLabs - open programming for civic good

Permalink