September 17, 2012
Local News
The News Journal
STEM lessons come to life through robotics
Call it robotic serendipity. When Taylor Webb transferred to John Dickinson High School in Pike Creek last year, the principal signed her up for the school’s new Robotics I class. “I was actually more interested in computers and everything, but when I took it, I fell in love with robotics, and now I’m a full-on, I guess, robotics geek,” the 16-year-old junior, now in teacher Shawn Bowser’s Robotics II class, said.
Charter announcement coming next week
The state’s top-ranking education officials will announce changes next week to the framework used to monitor charter schools. The changes are two years in the works and come after a study showed that the state Department of Education could do more to support and monitor charter schools. The state’s charter school law is nearly two decades old, and recent conversations have turned to revamping it.
National News
NPR.org
Teachers’ expectations can influence how students perform
In my Morning Edition story today, I look at expectations — specifically, how teacher expectations can affect the performance of the children they teach. The first psychologist to systematically study this was a Harvard professor named Robert Rosenthal, who in 1964, did a wonderful experiment at an elementary school south of San Francisco. The idea was to figure out what would happen if teachers were told that certain kids in their class were destined to succeed, and so Rosenthal took a normal I.Q. test and dressed it up as a different test.
Education Week
The strike over student ‘growth’: Chicago teachers’ protest reflects a national feud
Striking teachers in Chicago are fighting a contentious education reform that could overhaul how teachers are paid and evaluated, highlighting the difficulty of judging teachers by student performance. According to National Center for Teacher Quality data, new evaluation systems have been changed in at least 33 states since 2009 and more than two dozen states are relying on observations and student test scores.
Education Week
Most states providing Common Core instructional materials
Nearly all states are developing instructional materials to help districts and schools implement the Common Core State Standards, according to a report by Achieve. Just four states said they are requiring districts to use materials aligned to the standards. Furthermore, 39 states say they have developed a coordinated plan for professional development aligned to the common core
Related Topics: Common Core, STEM