2012 VAAA – Boones Creek Elementary School

First Place, East Division, Elementary Schools Teresa Leonard, Principal 348 Christian Church Rd. Gray, TN 37615 Washington County Schools Visit website Reporting on the Award: Johnson City Press Recipe For Success: The Recipe for Success at Boones Creek Elementary involves various aspects of the student academic program and learning environment. Boones Creek Elementary fosters the following practices in order to align the classroom curriculum: teachers prepare an individual Pupil Learning Plan (PLP) for every student in grades K-4 with … Read More

Parents and School

The 150-Year Struggle for Control in American Education The following material was excerpted from Chapter 2. Parents and Schools is not available online.   The Peripheral Parent: Making the Most of Marginality In the 1920S, there was widespread support in the United States for the idea that parents and teachers should work together. However, Americans were still uncertain about the nature and extent of this cooperation. It remained unclear to what degree parents should join in the education … Read More

Value-Added Achievement Awards Initiative

The Value-Added Achievement Awards and School Performance Charts   Introduction Every citizen has a stake in school quality, especially parents. The purpose of these awards is to make school quality visible to all and to give those who are responsible for producing it the recognition they deserve. All states collect, analyze, and report mountains of school performance data. However, most of this information is not easily accessed or understood by non-educators. Our aim is to strengthen the public’s … Read More

The Free and Happy Student

posted in: Briefings & Reports |

“The Free and Happy Student” By B. F. Skinner Phi Delta Kappan, 55(1), pp 13-16, 1973. The natural, logical outcome of the struggle for personal freedom in education is that the teacher should improve his control of the student rather than abandon it. The free school is no school at all. His name is Emile. He was born in the middle of the eighteenth century in the first flush of the modern concern for personal freedom. His father … Read More

The Free and Happy Student

(click here for full article) (Click here to download the PDF of this article) By B. F. Skinner Phi Delta Kappan, 1973 55(1), pp 13-16, 488     Briefing In a widely read article written more than 30 years ago, the famous behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner predicted disastrous consequences if schools adopted teaching methods based on the child-centered educational philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His critique was remarkably prescient. The theories that troubled Skinner have influenced a generation … Read More

Are Tennessee’s Children Learning to Read?

posted in: Data Scoreboards, Graphic Tools Used in Tennessee, Tools for Rating Schools |

Reading is the most essential skill that children learn in school. It is taught over a 4-5 year period that begins in preschool or kindergarten and extends to 3rd grade. Beyond 3rd grade, schooling turns from learning to read, to reading to learn. Promoting children to the 4th and subsequent grades without sound reading skills not only reduces their chances of success, it misleads their parents about the child’s progress, it unloads poorly equipped and discouraged learners on … Read More

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