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Historical Book About DC Hits Home for the City’s Students

5/27/2014

Credit: Amazon.com

A book that chronicles the history of the District of Columbia has turned out to be a powerful tool for engaging teens in the controversial past of the nation’s capital.

Dream City: Race, Power, and the Decline of Washington, D.C., written by long-time journalists Harry Jaffe and Tom Sherwood, examines the complicated mayoral tenure of civil rights activist and drug abuser Marion Barry during the 1980s to mid-1990s. The book, originally published in 1994, was recently released as an e-book and includes a new afterword on what’s changed in the District in the last 20 years. Teachers and students came out this month to participate in a book discussion hosted by the Center for Inspired Teaching, where they engaged with the authors and shared their own classroom experiences around Dream City.

Bill Stevens, a history teacher at the SEED School in southeast DC, said Barry’s rule struck a personal chord with some of his students. "One of my students realized his relative's first job was with Marion Barry," said Stevens. His students were all the more engaged in class during Dream City discussions, he added, as they discovered their own historical connections to the city.

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3 lessons from polls on the common core

5/20/2014

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In March, when Indiana became the first state to drop the Common Core State Standards, supporters of the reform became concerned the political ground was shifting under their feet. The conventional wisdom is that moderates broadly support the reforms while those on the far left and right stand opposed, but the reality is far more complicated and murky. A pair of recent polls offer valuable lessons about the future of the standards:

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Every Child a Graduate Means Every Child in School

5/13/2014

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We have reason to celebrate. The national high school graduation rate has reached 80 percent, the highest in American history.

But don’t put on your party hats just yet. There’s still work to do.

Credit: GradNation.org

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Achieving Depth in Social Studies, Science Instruction

5/6/2014

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Credit: Minneapolis Public Schools

Creating a national curriculum for social students and science is an extraordinary challenge. Both are rich with controversial curriculum debates that strike at a foundational political disagreement over the role of state and the federal government. But it’s a debate worth having, if we’re to create an education system that encourages students to think critically and analytically about the world around them.

The Common Core State Standards already drive much of this much-needed and long-overdue change, forcing a depth-over-breadth approach to instruction in reading, writing, and math. But to be meaningful and fully-effective, this approach must extend beyond those skill standards and into content areas like social studies and science.

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3 Things That Deserve More Attention in Ed Reform

4/29/2014

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Spend enough time writing and thinking about education policy and it’s easy to forget that policymaking is just as dependent on what doesn’t get discussed as what does. But if we step back from the conversation and think about what we should talk about, rather that what we should think about the things we’re already talking about, the shortcomings of our current discussion become a bit clearer. Here are three important ways to refocus the ed reform conversation now:

#104821312 / gettyimages.com

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Soft Skills and the Path to Independent Learners

4/8/2014

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Credit: cccfs.com

The term “soft skills” has been thrown around a lot in education lately, but if you ask someone what “soft skills” mean, you’re likely to get just about as many answers as people you ask — and they’re more likely to refer to technical skills, like typing or other computer abilities. But as industry surveys often show, employers’ highest priorities are not these types of technical skills, but life skills (think: collaboration, initiative, critical thinking, problem-solving, and organization).

Knowing that serious career and life preparation requires a commitment to soft skills in our schools, teachers must begin to take the lead by observing, teaching, and assessing soft skills in the classroom.

The first thing teachers can do is take an active role in monitoring, noting, and informing students of their soft skill strengths and weaknesses.

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Veterans Teach At-Risk Youth How to Succeed in School

4/1/2014

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In Britain, students ages 16 or older who drop out of school or college are called NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training). More than 16 percent of 16- and 17-year-olds in the country fall into this category. But a national charity, more than a decade in the making, is starting to change that.

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What the SAT Overhaul Teaches Us About Standardized Testing: Fix It, Don’t Scrap It

3/17/2014

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Let’s be honest: There’s a lot going wrong with standardized testing. I remember as a teacher, sitting in the back of our gymnasium during a pep rally in anticipation of state tests and thoroughly dismayed at the implicit message that success on tests was just about being motivated enough on test day. (And there are, of course, the more sinister cheating scandals.) Add to that the number of students with test accommodations that go unmet and the degree to which standardized tests often fall short of putting all demographic groups on equal footing, and these challenges leave many arguing that “no such measurement exists” to provide a “a simple, accurate measurement of student potential.”

This is what is so refreshing about the recent SAT overhaul. Rather than conclude that these challenges are evidence of the fundamental unworkability of standardized testing, David Coleman and the College Board have decided, instead, to build a better test. This is an attitude normally missing from discussions around the value of standardized testing. Too often, the shortcomings of many of our current tests polarize those in education to simplified positions both for and against testing that see it either as a panacea or a poison. But the truth is somewhere in the middle. Standardized tests do face real shortcomings, but those shortcomings shouldn’t be confused as evidence for abandoning testing altogether. They should be reasons to fix the tests.

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Is the Common Core Working in the Classroom?

3/11/2014

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The Common Core State Standards are a reality now for teachers in Maryland and DC, while Virginia is one of six states to omit the standards from their state education approach. YEP-DC asked local educators how the Common Core is playing out in their classroom. Are the standards increasing student understanding or presenting obstacles? What’s changed in pedagogical approach, and how are students are reacting to the shift?

Three teachers gave us a peek into their new Common Core worlds, and here is what they had to say:

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#YEPchat with Common Core Testing consortia

2/12/2014

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Below is a rundown of the questions and answers tweeted during Tuesday's #YEPchat with PARCC and Smarter Balanced, the two testing consortia with assessments aligned to the Common Core State Standards. Flip through the slideshow or click on the title to see the complete Storify.

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about

YEP-DC is a nonpartisan group of education professionals who work in research, policy, and practice – and even outside of education. The views expressed here are only those of the attributed author, not YEP-DC. This blog aims to provide a forum for our group’s varied opinions. It also serves as an opportunity for many more professionals in DC and beyond to participate in the ongoing education conversation. We hope you chime in, but we ask that you do so in a considerate, respectful manner. We reserve the right to modify or delete any content or comments. For any more information or for an opportunity to blog, contact us via one of the methods below.

Bloggers

MONICA GRAY is co-founder & president of DreamWakers, an edtech nonprofit. She writes on education innovation and poverty.

LYDIA HALL is a legislative aide in the U.S. House of Representatives, where she works on education, civil rights, and other issues. Lydia is interested in helping to bridge the gap between Capitol Hill and the classroom.

MOSES PALACIOS is an advocate for student rights and works as a Research Manager for the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS) - a coalition of urban school districts across the nation. He writes on issues regarding the children of immigrants and students learning English as a second language. His views are his own and not representative of CGCS.

PATRICIA RUANE is a
research associate at an education nonprofit. She is an editor of Recess.

LESLIE WELSH is a high school social studies teacher in DC. She is an editor of Recess.

Historical Book About DC Hits Home for the City’s Students

3 lessons from polls on the common core

Every Child a Graduate Means Every Child in School

Achieving Depth in Social Studies, Science Instruction

3 Things That Deserve More Attention in Ed Reform

Soft Skills and the Path to Independent Learners

Veterans Teach At-Risk Youth How to Succeed in School

What the SAT Overhaul Teaches Us About Standardized Testing: Fix It, Don’t Scrap It

Is the Common Core Working in the Classroom?

#YEPchat with Common Core Testing consortia

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