Sunday, September 12, 2010

More on technical change

Last week I posted a number of resources that examine the common core standards, assessments and the teacher accountability.  In the New York Times Room for Debate, several nationally known education experts examine teacher assessment and the role value added testing plays in the process.

On the surface, value added seems like a pretty good solution to the question of how to hold teachers accountable.  Yet, effective evaluation systems, most likely need multiple measures best illuminate both student progress and teacher contribution to that progress.

Complicating the matter, is the question of how to delivery high-quality instruction and the role of teacher in this process.  In this TED talk, Sugata Mitra presents his research where he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching.  My favorite quote from the presentation:  "If children have interest, then education happens."  So, why don't we simply let students do interesting things?  

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