For something that sounds like a good idea, No Child Left Behind has been pretty much universally loathed by educators. I’ve covered schools in both good districts and bad for a long time and pretty much every educator all along the spectrum just really hates that law, which requires schools to show adequate yearly progress based on test scores, among other things.

Now the Obama administration is proposing huge changes to No Child Left Behind.The proposed laws would be based closely on Race To The Top, the competitive program 40 states are pursuing that administers stimulus money to schools. It’s already spurred many states to change education laws, since states that don’t allow test scores to be used in teacher evaluation can’t get the money. It also encourages more charter schools, and requires states to evaluate teachers based on improving test scores and how well they raise student achievement. Continue reading »

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Hey, ladies, are you bad at math? Know who might be to blame? Mrs. Rutledge, your second-grade teacher, because she was bad at math too!

(A nice break for your mother, who is to blame for all of your other shortcomings.)

A new study shows female teachers who are scared of math teach their girl students to fear it as well. The result? A gender gap.

The study looked at elementary school teachers — specifically females — who said they struggle with math and have math anxiety. Researchers found such teachers were more likely to believe that boys are hard-wired for math and that girls are more skilled in language.

They passed on this belief to their female students. Continue reading »

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Lots of kids and lots of schools depend on doing well on tests to get ahead and get funding.  But when those tests are scored arbitrarily by people without adequate training and without a background in education, the results can be less a measure of the person taking the test than they are of the person scoring the test.  That’s the contention of Todd Farley, whose book Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry is now available.
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A high school secretary has taken helicopter parenting to a whole new level—a criminal one. Carolina Maria McNeal decided that she’d better her daughter’s future not by helping her study or by helping her become a well-rounded, happy young women—rather, McNeal decided to tamper with public records. Continue reading »

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