Teachers & Teacher Preparation

Disconnected and Unaccountable Teacher Training is at the Heart of Schooling Failure Evidence from the few states where such data is collected indicates that many elementary and secondary school students fail to make adequate progress because they too frequently encounter ineffective teachers, i.e., teachers whose students’ achievement growth is significantly less than one year of achievement gain per school year. Part of the problem is that many school districts are only now beginning to systematically monitor or address the problem … Read More

Aligning Teacher Training with Public Policy

posted in: Briefings & Reports |

by J. E. Stone Stone, J. E. (2000). Aligning teacher training with public policy. The State Education Standard, 1(1), 35-38.   The American Council on Education (ACE) recently issued a report calling for colleges and universities to either embrace independent assessment of the quality of their teacher education programs or to close them.[1] The Council, which represents American colleges and universities, fears that the weak academic standards maintained by teacher education programs will damage the reputations of their … Read More

Home Environments for Learning

Walberg, H.J. & Paik, S.J. 1997. Home environments for learning. In: Walberg, H.J. & Haertel, G.D., eds. Psychology and educational practice, p. 356-68. Berkeley, CA, McCutchan Publishing. This chapter emphasizes the influence of the home environment on learning within and outside school. It summarizes research on the home environment including home-based reinforcement, home instruction, homework, and other educational and psychological activities in the home. This work suggests that alterable features of the home environment may be changed to … 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

Needed: Truth in Grading

posted in: Education Research |

It is a disappointment when a child does poorly in school.  It becomes a tragedy, however, when a child and his parents are not told the truth. Every year, hundreds of thousands of primary and secondary school students are tested and found to lack minimum skills despite having been promoted from grade to grade. Many have been socially promoted, i.e., moved ahead despite poor marks. Most, however, are the victims of grade inflation: They were awarded letter grades … Read More