A guest post I made over on eduwonk.com today, in its entirety: Part way into my second year teaching, I was struggling. I felt like I was giving my kids everything I had each and every day. But I was…
Monthly Archives: August 2013
Student Savings Accounts: Put College in Our Children’s Future
by bced13 • • 0 Comments
I notice a trend whenever I talk to students I teach about college. The conversation almost always starts with questions about parties and sports. But it quickly moves on to much more weighty questions such as “how much more will…
Tennessee Gets a D in Transparency: Edlinks 8/28
by bced13 • • 0 Comments
Slow few days for news on the education policy front. Here are some highlights: Cato institute: The Cato institute gives Tennessee a “D” in school funding transparency. From the article: While Tennessee has years of data on per-pupil costs, it…
Why Good Teachers Go Bad
by bced13 • • 0 Comments
A former Memphis City Schools teacher, Brian Palmiter and his blog, The Arrogant Aristotelian, reflects on his experience with bad vs broken teachers and how the current system of evaluations fails to discern the difference between the two: From the…
Tennessee ACT Scores, Graduates Drop: EdLinks 8/21
by bced13 • • 1 Comment
Updated ACT score reports came out the other day. Hightlights from Tennessee were that while the number of test taking graduates increased by 33.8%, the number of graduates in TN dropped by 2.2%. Our average score dropped from 19.7 to…
Ken Whalum Gets a Second Chance: Edlinks 8/19
by bced13 • • 0 Comments
Lots of stories from Memphis, Shelby County and around Tennessee today. I’ll refrain from long textual quotes and let y’all click the links you want yourselves. Here are your edlinks for 8/19: Kevin Woods and Ken Whalum will square off…
Why States Are Pulling Out of Common Core: EdLinks 8/17
by bced13 • • 0 Comments
Common Core Pullout: Interesting take on why both low and high performing states are considering pulling out of common core standards. I suppose that we in Tennessee would fall into the “lower” category. Never having taught in a state in…
Leader of Merger Push Would Do It Again: EdLinks 8/14
by bced13 • • 0 Comments
If he had to do it all over again, Martavious Jones would still push for the unified school district. “I would do it if, considering what we were facing at the time, what we were facing is the threat of…
The Future of Common Core Up for Debate in Tennessee: EdLinks 8.12
by bced13 • • 0 Comments
Three key news items today. 1. The Tennessee Senate Education Committee has announced it plans to hold hearings on Common Core implementation September 19th and 20th. (Question: why didn’t this happen BEFORE we decided to adopt the standards?). Regardless…
Memphis School Choice and The Importance of Information
by bced13 • • 4 Comments
The news today was that former Mayor Willie Herenton will be forced to shutter some of his charter schools for this year due to poor enrollment. According to the commercial appeal, Herenton was only able to register 42 students for…