From EdTech Magazine ..... Reading and responding to students’ emotions could help boost engagement levels and academic performance. Love it or hate it, Big Data is changing K–12 education. Collecting and analyzing student data — including grades, attendance, disciplinary issues and test scores — gives schools and districts new, valuable insights into student performance and behavior. For example, after my colleagues in Washington helped Spokane Public Schools set up a virtualized data warehouse, the district began using an in-house data analytics system to determine predictors of dropping out and to monitor at-risk students. As a result, graduation rates improved by nearly 8 … [Read more...]
A warning to college profs from a high school teacher
From an article in The Washington Post ....................... For more than a decade now we have heard that the high-stakes testing obsession in K-12 education that began with the enactment of No Child Left Behind 11 years ago has resulted in high school graduates who don’t think as analytically or as broadly as they should because so much emphasis has been placed on passing standardized tests. Here, an award-winning high school teacher who just retired, Kenneth Bernstein, warns college professors what they are up against. Bernstein, who lives near Washington, D.C. serves as a peer reviewer for educational journals and publishers, and he is nationally known as the blogger “teacherken.” … [Read more...]