14 things that are obsolete in 21st century schools

Saying that it has always been this way, doesn’t count as a legitimate justification to why it should stay that way. Teacher and administrators all over the world are doing amazing things, but some of the things we are still doing, despite all the new solutions, research and ideas out there is, to put it mildly, incredible.

Education should be individualized, students should work in groups regardless of age and their education should be built around their needs.

 Posted by ingvihrannar | February 26, 2014
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Educational Summit Update

Any interested community member are invited to the January 9th Educational Summit Update. The summit will be held in the Maple Hill High School Auditorium from 6:30 - 8:30. 

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Atlanta Cheating Scandal Leads To 3 Dozen Indicted

FILE - In this Feb. 20, 2009 file photo, then Atlanta superintendent of public schools Beverly Hall smiles. Hall and nearly three dozen other administrators, teachers, principals and other educators were indicted Friday, March 29, 2013, in one of the nation's largest cheating scandals. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)

ATLANTA -- Juwanna Guffie was sitting in her fifth-grade classroom taking a standardized test when, authorities say, the teacher came around offering information and asking the students to rewrite their answers. Juwanna rejected the help.

"I don't want your answers, I want to take my own test," Juwanna told her teacher, according to Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard.

On Friday, Juwanna – now 14 – watched as Fulton County prosecutors announced that a grand jury had indicted the Atlanta Public Schools' ex-superintendent and nearly three dozen other former administrators, teachers, principals and other educators of charges arising from a standardized test cheating scandal that rocked the system.

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High stakes exams raise questions for parents

Parents have questions of their own about tests

By Scott Waldman

Published 8:38 pm, Saturday, March 30, 2013

Max Powers is worried that one test will keep him from graduating from fifth grade.

The 10-year-old from Albany now dreads school, worrying about the standardized exams he will take over a few days next month. That's when schoolchildren across the state in third through eighth grade will sit for their English and math standardized exams. And even though low scores won't keep them from graduating, the anxieties of many children, like Max, have parents questioning the values of the exams.

Chicago teacher strike poses test for unions

The district proposed a 16 percent raise over four years and the two sides have essentially agreed on a longer school day. But job security and a new teacher evaluation system remained in dispute.

EG BOE Appoints Daniel Garab as Goff AP

Long-time Red Mill teacher Daniel Garab was appointed assistant principal for Goff Middle School at the May 23rd Board of Education meeting after an exhaustive search through an exceptional field of candidates. Garab, a life-long resident of the East Greenbush Central School District, looks forward to contributing to the ongoing success of the district.

“Middle school is an exciting time and a challenging time for kids,” Garab said. “I look forward to helping them make the transition from elementary to middle school.”

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Study: Merger means ICC tax hike

    
Written by EMILIA TEASDALE  
Thursday, 24 May 2012 11:53

Districts many steps away from decision to combine

KINDERHOOK--The Ichabod Crane School Board met this week to review the data collected by the merger study team looking into the feasibility of a merger with Schodack Central Schools. What the team found was a 33% difference in the current property tax rate between the two districts, which would mean lower taxes for Schodack residents and higher taxes for ICC residents if the districts merge.

The study team, made up of three former superintendents who conduct merger studies for districts in the state, worked with community members from both districts to create a “road map” for a merged district with a budget of $57 million.

Standardized Testing....Pineapples don't have sleeves

When Pineapple Races Hare, Students Lose, Critics of Standardized Tests Say

A reading passage included this week in one of New York’s standardized English tests has become the talk of the eighth grade, with students walking around saying, “Pineapples don’t have sleeves,” as if it were the code for admission to a secret society.

The passage is a parody of the tortoise and the hare story, the Aesop’s fable that almost every child learns in elementary school. Only instead of a tortoise, the hare races a talking pineapple, and the moral of the story — more on that later — is the part about the sleeves.

In the world of testing, she said, it does not really matter whether an answer is right or wrong; the “right” answer is the one that field testing has shown to be the consensus answer of the “smart” kids. “It’s a psychometric concept,” she said. 

In the original version a rabbit races an eggplant, and children speculated Friday that the eggplant had been changed to a pineapple because some kids might not know what an eggplant was. Why the rabbit was changed to a hare was harder to explain. There is no mention of sleeves.

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

A story by the children’s book author Daniel Pinkwater, above, was adapted for an English test in a way that baffled students 

and caused officials to say that the questions wouldn’t be counted.

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