If some students, families, and communities begin the game having written the rule book, others having access to it, and others being ignorant of it, then some students, families, and communities will win, others will pass, and still others will loose.

Why is there only one rule book and only some winners?

Continue reading Can’t win the game if you don’t know the rules →

More often than not the assessments used to measure the academic achievement of schools (firstly) and students (secondarily) measure students receptive competencies through multiple-choice questions/extremely short responses. When these assessments measure a students productive competencies through extended response, their marking rubrics privilege content at the expense of structure, crafting and text features.

Being standardized, these assessments are cheap to develop, administer, and score.

Let’s assume that this model embraces and prioritises the wellbeing of students and teachers.  Let’s further assume that teachers teach five classes and that each of the classes consists of 30 students and meets five times a week for 60 minutes.  Continue reading Multiple Choice: A) Funding B) Ranking C) Economy D) Time E) All of the above at the expense of teaching and learning →

Politicians and government officials make their appearances at community centers and churches.  They show up routinely during their 2 or 4 -year election cycles.

University researchers arrive in ‘low-income, multi- lingual, multi-cultural’ communities and schools saying they’ll gather the necessary data to affect change and social policy. Continue reading Whose story is it? →