testing
gregladen | October 29, 2013Can we replace Classroom Chaos with Learning-Centered Education?
K–12 education can be better. One of the most effective changes that could be made is to reduce the amount of chaos in the classroom and replace it with learning.
I spend several hours a year in various schools giving presentations on Anthropology, Evolution, Brainzz, and other topics. Plus, I know some teachers and have taught seminars specifically for teachers. For these reasons I have a sense of what happens in high school (and to a lesser extent middle school and elementary school) classrooms. What I am about to describe…
esiegel | May 1, 2013"The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are radical. Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality." -Hermann Minkowski
When it comes to gravity, you probably think you understand it pretty well.
Image credit: Heavens Above, via http://heavens-above.com/.
Everything with mass (or energy) attracts everything else with mass-or-energy, explaining everything from falling…
gregladen | January 23, 2013In a good way!
This is a very interesting story; I'm going to pass along the press release without modification:
NEA PRESIDENT SUPPORTS SEATTLE EDUCATORS WHO REFUSE TO GIVE FLAWED STANDARDIZED TEST
***Standardized test takes away from student learning***
WASHINGTON—National Education Association (NEA) members at Garfield High School in Seattle, Wash., voted to not administer the district-mandated Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) standardized test that is not aligned with state standards or the district curriculum. NEA has long urged for the careful consideration of the fact that these…
esiegel | June 20, 2012“If you end up with a boring miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it.” -Frank Zappa
Inside of every student I've ever taught lives a passionate, curious mind that can either flourish or stagnate, both inside and outside the classroom. The teachers that get it -- that get you -- are the ones that help bring you there, but that is not all teachers, not by any means. I think everyone, by this point in their life, has had experience with at least one teacher that stands out…
milhayser | April 7, 2011
The science portion of The Nation's Report Card was released on February 24th, with test scores from school districts in seventeen urban centers. Almost every district performed below the national average. Greg Laden explains, "Poverty determines the outcome of the results, and this is probably exacerbated in urban zones where private schools siphon off the small number of higher-income kids." Although Department of Education officials were firm in their stance that "correlation does not equal causality," Greg plots test scores against poverty level in the cities surveyed and reveals a very…
bioephemera | May 7, 2009An interesting perspective from education professor John Kitchens:
President Obama, you must understand that mandating standards without equitable funding creates punitive systems of education, and current forms of high-stakes testing too often pit student against student, and eventually citizen against citizen. The struggling economy will likely renew the sense of competition and education for the sake of occupational gain, while a sober look at the number of jobs available in the near future will reveal the futility of these motivations. However entrenched these ideas about education are in…
laelaps | November 2, 2007Mark of SB's own Denialism Blog has asked other science bloggers who use animals in their research to speak up and discuss what they do either in their own posts in the comments. I do not participate in lab research involving animals, but I have taken an interest in the subject, especially when non-human primates are used. While I don't doubt the importance of animal testing, I do have reservations about the ethics of using non-human primates in medical research. This is not to say that I advocate the acts of terrorism by extremists as related in Mark's posts, but I do have concerns about…