#1062; The Terrible Sea Lion

http://wondermark.com/1k62/

There have been many moments in the debate over Common Core where I have seen someone make a claim that is either untrue or unfounded. On occasion, I have been tempted to press people -- politely -- for explanations, in the hopes that they will admit the error in their claim, thinking, or belief. As most of us know, that's not usually how debates on the internet play out, and to that other person I'm little more than a typical internet troll. Well, maybe a little more: I'm a *sea lion*. The term comes from this Wondermark comic and it's become a meme all its own, with the verb "sea-lioning": http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sea-lioning. I'm not exactly sure how to resolve differences on the internet, but I do not plan on making sea-lioning my primary tactic.

How to Introduce a Young Scholar to Twitter

http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/how-to-introduce-a-young-scholar-to-twitter/59747

Some pretty good tips for academics learning to use Twitter. I still find it curious when academics, who build their careers by publishing publicly, either don't see the relevance or are nervous about using a public social network.

Lessons And Directions From The CREDO Urban Charter School Study

http://www.shankerinstitute.org/blog/lessons-and-directions-credo-urban-charter-school-study

The latest big charter school study looked at urban charters and found, on average, that charter schools in 42 urban areas are having a positive impact on test scores when compared to traditional public schools in those areas. Depending on how you interpret effect size, "positive" can look rather big (a charter student shows an additional 40 days of learning in math) or rather small (a charter student is at the 52nd percentile in math instead of the 50th). Perhaps more importantly, there's a lot to tease apart in the phrase "on average." There is still a wide range of performance seen in charters, as there is in public schools, and these large-scale studies don't tell us much of the story. For that, writes, Matt Di Carlo, we should really be looking more closely at *why* some schools perform better than others, and avoid the typical charter vs. public debate that often fails to actually look at what's happening inside the schools.

10 Arguments Against Common Core that Presidential Hopefuls Should Avoid

http://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/2015/03/10-arguments-against-common-core-that.html

I like this list of arguments to avoid regarding the Common Core State Standards. I particularly like the analogy made in #4 regarding the CCSS not being "research based." Standards are goals, and Shanahan's comparison to goals for unemployment rates is useful. #9 is good, too. Implying you support a federal mandate that tells states what they can't do (like adopt common standards) is a funny way to say you support local control.

Iowa Lost Schools

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/topic/cca0dde2-d6a2-4899-859d-ea519e48f6a3/iowa-lost-schools/

Rural school district consolidation is a huge issue in my home state of Iowa. What used to be thousands of school districts are now down to a few hundred, some stretching across multiple counties to boost enrollment and raise revenues in the face of tough funding futures. In the process, buildings go empty and people struggle with what it means to be a community. The Des Moines Register's coverage looks to be excellent, although I don't see it changing what is inevitable for many small Iowa communities.

A Des Moines Register's yearlong project documenting the changes that Iowa communities face as they lose their school districts to declining enrollment and financial strains. Readers can follow the story online and participate in an interactive documentary project of Iowa's closed schools at DesMoinesRegister.com/LostSchoolsShare or on social media using the hashtag #LostSchools. Read the coverage at DesMoinesRegister.com/LostSchools

An Open Letter to My Students: I Am Sorry For What I Am About To Do To You

https://crawlingoutoftheclassroom.wordpress.com/2015/03/01/an-open-letter-to-my-students-i-am-sorry-for-what-i-am-about-to-do-to-you/

It's standardized testing season, and while I try to understand the position taken in this post, I could never see myself writing it. I've interacted with many other teachers and students who didn't like standardized testing, but down deep I always enjoyed the experience -- the challenge of the test, the navigation of multiple-choice answers, and the rewards for doing well. Testing for me was cathartic, a way to perform and express myself in a way I was good at. Some people can relax with a crossword puzzle. I can relax with the ACT. I know it's not like that for most people, but the more I realize and understand my biases the better I'll be at understanding what strikes me as odd when I read posts like this.

Recent Study Shows Our Teachers Make an Impact

https://www.teachforamerica.org/blog/recent-study-shows-our-teachers-make-impact

If you only read this post, you'd think the study Teach for America is referencing showed TFA teachers were heads-and-shoulders above the rest. But dig just a little further -- really, just a little -- and read the brief of the Mathematica report (http://mathematica-mpr.com/~/media/publications/pdfs/education/tfa_investing_innovation_ifbrief.pdf) and you'll find that in almost all the cases, TFA teachers performed about the same as other teachers in the study. Only in lower elementary reading did the study find students of TFA ahead of those of other teachers. TFA might brag that this study used "gold standard" research methods, but they sure didn't do a "gold standard" job of honestly interpreting the results.

Put to the test: Derek Briggs of CU on PARCC

http://blogs.denverpost.com/coloradoclassroom/2015/03/12/put-test-cus-derek-briggs-parcc-expectations/4567/

Derek Briggs is on the technical advisory committees of both PARCC and Smarter Balanced, the two testing consortia attempting to create a new generation of assessments to measure student understanding in English language arts and mathematics. (Derek is also my boss this year and taught a few of my classes.) Here Derek talks openly about PARCC, the test now being administered in Colorado. I've seen Derek in action long enough to know that he's not afraid to take a stand when he knows the evidence is on his side. But when it comes to PARCC, however, Derek knows that most of the evidence is yet to be collected. I found his thoughts here hopeful and realistic without being overconfident, and I hope people appreciate the challenge of creating tests that are noticeably better than ones used in the past.

Half Century

http://mathteachermambo.blogspot.com/2015/03/half-century.html

I only taught full-time for six years, well short of my 50th birthday. Here Shireen Dadmehr reflects on teaching after 18 years, having learned a lot of lessons along the way. A lot of these are familiar to me. Some I got. Some I was getting. Some I was looking forward to.

State Board blows up science, social studies test scores

http://co.chalkbeat.org/2015/03/11/state-board-blows-up-science-social-studies-test-scores/#.VQMav454qU8

Colorado policymakers can't decide where to set cut scores for science and social studies tests given last fall, and they won't release the scores until they come to some agreement. I'd love to see other kinds of score representations, like histograms showing the distribution of scores, but I'm pretty sure cut scores are baked into NCLB reporting requirements. Stories like this are a reminder that it's not the *test* that's potentially invalid, it's the *inferences* we make about the test that we have to worry about. There may not be right and wrong places to put cut scores, but some choices would be more sensible than others, and those choices do influence how people interpret scores.

$10 million rural aid bill advances one step

http://co.chalkbeat.org/2015/03/09/10-million-rural-aid-bill-advances-one-step/#.VQMW9I54qU8

104 of Colorado's 178 districts have fewer than 1000 students, and 38 have only one administrator. If passed, a new bill would allow those districts to partner with boards of cooperative educational services and share services.

New Teachers' Academic Ability on the Rise, N.Y. Study Shows

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/03/04/more-top-students-join-teaching-ranks-in.html

The average combined math and verbal SAT scores of new teachers in New York state schools rose over the last decade, a new study finds.