The state is failing the students who can’t pass its tests
By Inda Schaenen for the St. Louis Beacon
The state school board is paying a consultant to tell it why failing school districts are failing. The author offers a diagnosis and treatment plan for free and notes that the state bureaucrats keep doing the same things over and over, not seeing that the system might be at fault.
Transfer-related metaphors are harsh, even in context
By Inda Schaenen for the St. Louis Beacon
Talking about taking a gun to the heads of children and shooting them dead tacitly compares teachers, coaches and administrators to people who shoot other people in acts of violence. A lack of education may horribly restrict students, but teachers who are trying to reach those kids aren’t the vehicle of destruction.
Evaluating performance, transferring students
By Inda Schaenen for the St. Louis Beacon
Looking at numbers — which do not prove causation in any direction — the data provide some contextual facts: There is a strong correlation among extreme segregation by racial identity, poverty, region and lack of stable accreditation.
Driving Miss Data — or is Big Data driving schools?
By Inda Schaenen for the St. Louis Beacon
In writing about Big Data last month, I was referring to market-driven processes and discourses determining what and how people teach and learn in schools. Teachers are very busy pulling data that other people will, in turn, use on them. Dutiful data delivering is not teaching.
Common Coredom
By Inda Schaenen for the St. Louis Beacon
One goal for all is not likely to be an equitable system. We should push back against the Common Core imposition with teacher professional development, socio-culturally responsive curricula, and project-, performance-, and portfolio-based assessments work at the most local level.
Putting guns in context
By Inda Schaenen for the St. Louis Beacon
Before Newtown brought more attention to the AR-15, a 9-year-old boy explained that this gun was special and was part of a system of protection set up by his father for their family.
Say ‘No’ to standardized testing
By Inda Schaenen for the St. Louis Beacon
Teachers are paying out-of-pocket for the stuff kids need, and power brokers are meeting to discuss ways to remove every last shred of dignity from the classroom teacher in the name of accountability. Education “reform” is upside down.
Chicago teachers’ movement: Kids enter, stage left
By Inda Schaenen for the St. Louis Beacon
Having lived through a teachers’ strike when she was a 3rd grader, the author thinks through what kids might learn from a strike as well as some of the issues that are at stake here.
No factory for ‘super teachers,’ but UMSL is developing a system
By Inda Schaenen for the St. Louis Beacon
Faculty and administrators have been redesigning the undergraduate teacher education curriculum so it more responsively connects with the larger metropolitan community in which the students of their students – the children of this region — are living. By “larger metropolitan community,” I mean us. We are the K-12 context.
‘Advanced technology for data-driven schools’
By Inda Schaenen for the St. Louis Beacon
Millions of taxpayers who support our schools, as well as families of independent schools who have bought “Accelerated Reading” package, are are paying customers of Renaissance Learning. What does this mean for quality education?
What gets reformed in education?
By Inda Schaenen for the St. Louis Beacon
How do we make the people who spend the most time in schools better at what they do? Testing, measuring and punishing do not address resource inequality or provide for quality professional development.
Let’s Pretend: A thinking game and mini-quiz for Missouri legislators
By Inda Schaenen for the St. Louis Beacon
Imagine that you are a doctor, a basic internal medicine physician. Your job is to help people stay well if they are well, and to help them get well if they are sick. Instead of seeing your patients one at a time, though, you see them in groups of 25.
Overcorrecting for abusive teachers
By Inda Schaenen for the St. Louis Beacon
Inda Schaenen says that too many limits on digital contact bewteen teachers and students will hinder education.
What grade would fourth graders give education and what’s up with Imagine schools
By Inda Schaenen for the St. Louis Beacon
Inda Schaenen describes her own quest to find out what’s going in Missouri schools one fourth grader at a time and talks about the less than “fun” results at local Imagine schools.
Retrenchments in the Trenches: Occupy Schooling!
By Inda Schaenen for the St. Louis Beacon
Inda Schaenen looks at a study of public school conditions in the Depression and sees too many parallels to today.
Local (Self) Control
By Inda Schaenen for the St. Louis Beacon
Inda Schaenen discusses why a principal might cheat on attendance records and the implications of such an act.
Cheating takes the shine off
By Inda Schaenen for the St. Louis Beacon
Inda Schaenen reflects on adults changing standard test scores to protect themselves and a custodian who understood how to teach important lessons.
Lining up
By Inda Schaenen for the St. Louis Beacon
Inda Schaenen looks back at her first elementary school. She notes that its form would have been recognized 4,000 years ago and that it was perfect for her. But how does education develop a form that is perfect for others?
‘Scientifically valid and reliable’
By Inda Schaenen for the St. Louis Beacon
Inda Schaenen examines the NEA’s new teacher assessment policy.
As we teach, we have to learn
By Inda Schaenen for the St. Louis Beacon
Inda Schaenen outlines four basic things about learning.
Educating as a personal art
By Inda Schaenen for the St. Louis Beacon
Inda Schaenen asks you to image what might happen if legislators, and business analysts, and hedge fund managers, and publishers of text books, and test-prep-material vendors focused on improving the student-teacher relationship.
The world won’t end
By Inda Schaenen for the St. Louis Beacon
As with most good teachers, Inda Schaenen listens to her students. And she ponders what’s behind the questions she hears. Recently, amid tsunamis and revolution, the thoughts were apocalytic.