Dropout rates are deceiving. They fail to tell the entire story but they make great headlines for folks that don’t want to get too deep.
Here is the story from my last year as Superintendent of Schools when one of the state’s major newspapers was prattling on and on about dropout rates. At the commencement ceremony [...]
Entries from May 28th, 2009
Why dropout rates are deceiving.
May 28th, 2009 1 Comment
Tags: commencement · dropout rates · dropouts · graduation
Belated Mother’s Day Tribute
May 26th, 2009 1 Comment
I post this each year in honor of Mother’s Day. Unfortunately I realized a few days ago that I had forgotten to post it this year.
My mother passed away in 2000, leaving behind a wonderful tribute and family legacy. It seems appropriate to remember her even though Mother’s Day has passed by already.
When I was 8 [...]
Tags: Mother's Day · tribute
Setting goals and conferencing with students pays off!
May 24th, 2009 No Comments
When I was superintendent we did a neat little piece of action research on our Reading program. We were training/educating teachers on several different critical teaching behaviors in Reading. We then had our instructional coaches rate each teacher on these critical teaching behaviors and then put all the individual student reading achievement scores into Excel [...]
Tags: goal setting · goals · poverty and student achievement · Students · teachers
If you could start your own school…what would it look like?
May 20th, 2009 2 Comments
I have often heard frustrated principals and teachers say, “I wish I could just start my own school! I think I know how to create a high performing school with motivated teachers and students, but getting there from here is just not possible. It would be so much easier to start from scratch.”
So here is [...]
Tags: administration · schools · Students · teachers
U.S. students show flat or declining growth (Really?)
May 19th, 2009 No Comments
US lags behind all of the civilized world!
This has been the newspaper headline for so long none of us can remember it any other way. The sky has always been falling. Those with a more understanding view are just shouted down.
The LA Times says Democrats like to yell, “The sky is falling!” because they can [...]
Tags: assessments · SAT scores · Simpson's Paradox · test scores · US students
Merit Pay?
May 15th, 2009 7 Comments
As part of the debate over how to reform education, the term “merit pay” keeps coming up. This is a very divisive term and it can mean many different things to different people. Here are a few of my observations:
I don’t like “merit pay” but I do believe that we should pay teachers more who [...]
Tags: educational pay · incentives · merit pay
Final thoughts on state licensure exams for administrators
May 13th, 2009 1 Comment
Coming soon at a state near you. An entrance exam for school administrators.
Every state has a process for licensing their school administrators. Seventeen states use the State Leaders Licensure Assessment (SLLA) by the Educational Testing Service (ETS).
I mentioned a few previous thoughts about this process in blog posts here and here.
After observing the cut score [...]
Setting cut scores on the SLLA
May 12th, 2009 6 Comments
I am here in St. Louis, Misery at the cut score setting meeting. (No problem with Missouri I was born here! Just commenting on my tail bone. It has become one with the chair.)
ETS is launching a new State Leadership Licensure Assessment (SLLA) this coming fall. It consists of 100 multiple choice questions and around 7 [...]
Tags: data · school administrators tests · state licensure for administrators · testing
