A warning to college profs from a high school teacher

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, the Washington Post reports. 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.” His e-mail address is kber@earthlink.net. This appeared in Academe, the journal of the American Association of University Professors…

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How online class about online learning failed miserably

In the you-can’t-make-up-this-stuff category, here’s an amusing piece about the failure of a MOOC (massive open online course) that was designed to teach more than 40,000 students the fundamentals of how to create an online course, the Washington Post reports. It was written by Jill Barshay, a contributing editor to The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, non-partisan education-news outlet affiliated with the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media, an independently funded unit of Teachers College, Columbia University. She has been a radio and print reporter for two decades.This appeared on The Hechinger Report’s Digital blog

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Peace Corps releases ranking of colleges that produce the most volunteers

The universities of Washington and Florida boast the largest number of alumni currently serving in the Peace Corps, with 107 graduates-turned-volunteers each, according to rankings the organization plans to release Tuesday, the Washington Post reports. In the D.C. region, three schools made the Peace Corps’ top five lists: American University, George Washington University and the University of Mary Washington. For the past decade, the Peace Corps has released an annual ranking of the top large, medium and small schools that graduate students who then serve overseas for a little more than two years. The organization, an independent U.S. government agency that has been around for more than 50 years, has more than 8,000 volunteers in more than 75 countries…

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The Vietnamization of public education

Here’s an interesting look at the false metrics of success that characterized the Vietnam War, and now, school reform, by Steve Cohen, a senior lecturer in education at Tufts University, says the Washington Post. I have been reading a new book, “The Generals,” by Tom Ricks, says Cohen. He looks at individual American military leaders from World War II until the present day and offers thumbnail sketches of their successes and failures. Ricks also made some interesting points about the changes in personnel policy in the military over time. One of his arguments was a critique of common practice in the late 1950s and leading into the Vietnam Era when the Army decided to rotate officers to provide them with more and varied experiences…

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Opinion: How University of Virginia cheats great students

Last spring, Washington area students took more than 750 unnecessary Advanced Placement exams, the Washington Post reports. At least 2,250 hours of effort and $67,000 in test fees were wasted because department heads in many of our finest colleges and universities haven’t a clue about what is happening in high schools like ours. The students who took the unnecessary AP exams were enrolled in the International Baccalaureate program, a system of college-level courses and tests similar to AP, although better at teaching writing. In a sensible world, good scores on IB exams would be enough to earn college credit, as good scores on AP exams do. But most colleges and universities don’t give credit for successful completion of some IB courses and tests. The Washington area students who took a one-year IB course and did well on the IB final exam also had to take the one-year AP course exam in that subject, even though they did not take the AP course. Otherwise, they would not get college credit…

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Catholic U. starts a business school—without MBAs

Catholic University announced this month the creation of an unusual business school in which every course touches on morality and ethics, the Washington Post reports. Interestingly, none of the business degrees offered at the D.C. university will include the traditional staple of business schools: a master’s in business administration. Instead of an MBA, graduate students in the School of Business and Economics will be able to choose from four master’s degree programs: business analysis; accounting; international political economics; and integral economic development management. The school also offers several undergraduate degree programs. And every course, officials say, will tackle questions of business ethics…

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Martin Luther King: ‘Intelligence is not enough’

Martin Luther King Jr., was prescient on a lot of things, including education. Here are some things he wrote decades ago that sound contemporary, the Washington Post reports. Here’s an excerpt from “The Purpose of Education,” a piece he wrote in the February 1947 edition of the Morehouse College student newspaper, the Maroon Tiger:

…As I engage in the so-called “bull sessions” around and about the school, I too often find that most college men have a misconception of the purpose of education. Most of the “brethren” think that education should equip them with the proper instruments of exploitation so that they can forever trample over the masses. Still others think that education should furnish them with noble ends rather than means to an end…

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Column: Why schools used to be better

It’s one of the ironies of education reform that despite wave after wave, schools are seen by many as in worse shape as before all the changes, says the Washington Post. Here’s a look at why from Marion Brady, who was a classroom teacher for years, has written history and world culture textbooks (Prentice-Hall), professional books, numerous nationally distributed columns (many are available here), and courses of study. His 2011 book “What’s Worth Learning” asks and answer this question: What knowledge is absolutely essential for every learner? His course of study for secondary-level students, called Connections: Investigating Reality, is free for downloading here. Brady’s website is www.marionbrady.com

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Georgetown to offer free online courses

Georgetown University is joining one of the most prominent ventures in online higher education, a Web platform known as edX that provides courses from elite schools to a global audience free of charge, the Washington Post reports. The addition of Georgetown to edX, which officials plan to announce Monday, marks the latest development in a fast-growing movement that aspires to connect the ivory tower to the world. Millions of people have signed up this year on various Web sites for massive, open online courses, or MOOCs, which offer self-paced learning through video lectures, tests, homework, discussion boards and other digital interfaces. Advocates say MOOCs will democratize higher education and spark a teaching revolution on campuses. Skeptics call it little more than brand promotion. EdX, which Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched in May, hosts MOOCs from those schools and the University of California, Berkeley. The University of Texas system joined in October and Wellesley College last week. Like Georgetown, they plan to add MOOCs to edX next year…

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Colleges agree to recruit KIPP alumni

Twenty colleges and universities, including some of the nation’s most prestigious, have pledged in the past year to recruit more students from a prominent charter school network that focuses on educating the rural and urban poor, the Washington Post reports. The latest are Georgetown and Trinity Washington universities in the District. On Tuesday, they plan to announce partnerships with the charter network called the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, in an effort to help more disadvantaged students get college degrees. The signed pledges, unusual in the competitive world of college admissions, set recruiting targets and establish a detailed framework for cooperation, seeking to create a pipeline to college for KIPP’s mostly black and Latino students. There are no admissions guarantees or enrollment quotas for KIPP alumni, but the pacts suggest one path colleges could use to diversify at a time when racial affirmative action has come under question in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court…

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