Educational reform desperately needs reform. Reform in education today is in the hands of Federal programs including the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and the Race to the Top Fund of 2009. Although states can submit “flexibility requests” to receive waivers on some aspects of the NCLB, the reforms that have been affecting American schools have based everything on testing students to “measure” their achievement in math and reading, as well as science and social studies.
States are now using student test scores to not only evaluate the students, but to determine whether teachers are good or bad, school are successful or failures, and how much funding schools will receive in the future. Don’t you think this is an awful lot of pressure on students? Students as young as 9 years old are held accountable by means of these achievement tests, and indeed many of these students might sit for three-90 minutes sessions in one content area.
Something is wrong with this picture of reform.
This Art of Teaching Science cornerstone landing page is designed to share with you up-to-date articles and research that questions the current corporate and foundation reform of American education. We hope to shed light on some of the important issues facing parents, students, teachers and principals, the core of our educational system.
Letters to the President
- Dear Mr. President: Take the Risk and Try and Humanize Teaching and Learning
- Educational Reform: A letter to President Obama
Testing, Testing and more Testing
- A Letter from a Teen in 2053 About High-Stakes Testing
- The Testing Games: How America’s Youth are being put at Risk
- The Social Emotional Consequences of High-Stakes Testing
- High-Stakes Testing = Negative Effects on Student Achievement
- Test-Based Reform: What Values are we Adding?
- NCLB = RTTT = MOT (More of the Same)
- Obama Says Stop Teaching to the Test; Teach with Creativity and Passion
Race to the Top
- The Race to the Top: Some Thoughts
- The Race to the Top: Hold on There!
- Race to the Top Finalists: A Map View
- The Race to the Top: Climbing Mt. PISA
- Anthony Cody Writes At the Department of Education, Warm Snow Fall Up
Evaluating Teachers
- I Dare You to Measure the “value” I Add
- Quality Teaching: We’re Looking in the Wrong Places
- Shameful and Degrading Evaluations of Teachers by Politicians
Some Ways Out
- Are Reformers Willing to Involve Students in Cultivating a New Culture of Accountability?
- If Science Courses Were Optional, Would Students Sign Up?
- Experiential Science Education: The Real Core of Teaching
- Engineering as a Way to Humanize Science Teaching
- Progressive Science Teaching
- 5 Education Reform Posts not to Ignore
