Last week the Obama administration developed a new "Testing Action Plan" that - according to them - is supposed to reduce the mandates on standardized testing and allow teachers to do what they do best: work with students (not proctor exams). 

As some may remember, it was President Bush in 2002 who introduced the No Child Left Behind Act that authorized the use of Title I federal funding to be distributed amongst states that pushed their students to become proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014. The assessment of that proficiency came in the form of standardized tests mandated in grades 3-8 and once during high school. It has been highly controversial due to different states having different standards, overwhelming amounts of testing in schools, test preparation replacing standard curriculum, etc.

​For the first six years of his administration, President Obama has not done much to change this mandate, drawing much skepticism from teachers all over the country.

As the Philadelphia Public School Notebook notes, the Obama Administration has "spent the last year encouraging states and districts to make sure that assessments are of high quality and don't take up too much instructional time." The new Action Plan, in fact, requires that testing take no more than 2% of the yearly instructional time. I very much hope that this desire comes into some kind of fruition. 

I am, however, skeptical of some of the timing of this. They state as an example, New York:

Since we have standardized tests from the state for over six days in the year, I'm not sure how this qualifies (6 days / 180 days = around 3%). 

I look forward to hearing more but am watching with a careful eye.

Since I work at a very collaborative school I am sometimes asked to participate in professional development workshops that will help myself and my colleagues better understand certain aspects of our jobs. Today was one of those days: I attended a workshop run by EL Education (formerly Expeditionary Learning on October 27th) about crafting Learning Targets (different from objectives).

Through the day's activities we talked about some of the framework of learning targets and why they are important for us to use as educators but also important for our students to use as well. Every day I read through the learning target with my students so they understand what they should be able to do at the end of the lesson. If the target is, "I can differentiate between different types of functions" then I want my students to know that we will be analyzing different graphs, tables, and equations to figure out what the differences are. 

The most important aspects of today for me, though, were two documents: the Verbs to Use in Learning Targets and the Target-Method Match.

Using these documents one can figure out what phrases to use for a particular skill or piece of content you want to teach. Most likely if I want students to differentiate things my learning target will not include anything about calculation. That may be involved in the lesson itself but the focus - the learning - should be the differences between the functions. When I am ready to assess my students on these skills, I will want to make sure that the tool I use matches the skill in a strong way. Differentiating involves a lot of explanation so a multiple choice assessment would not be as good as a short or long answer question.

The information we discussed today is truly helping me hone my craft. I feel better suited to make lessons and decisions over the coming months since now I have written all the learning targets from important sections of our text. I look forward to using them!

A good friend recently received his PhD in sleep research for University of Colorado at Boulder and so I have been in constant discussions with him about the importance of sleep in relation to processes in the body. Both adults and adolescents (really, everyone) need enough sleep so that the brain can function well and ensure bodily concerns are not an issue. 

Unfortunately, according to the recent article mentioned above, few students get the recommended daily allowance of sleep in order to be at full-functioning capacity during school hours. Not only do we find differences between ethnicities, we also find differences within an ethnicity with respect to age.

As one can see above, the amount of students receiving between 7-8 hours of sleep per night hovers around 52-55% of the total. When race is taken into consideration, fewer Black and Hispanic students get that kind of sleep in comparison to their White compatriots. Additionally, one can see that as age increases, the amount of hours slept per night decreases. This is truly unfortunate as the need for high grades and full potential is at its utmost in 11th and 12th grades.

I am lucky to work at a school that begins at 8:45am so that students can get a bit more sleep each night. It doesn't always work, however, as in New York City students can travel an hour to get to school (as happens with some of our students) and so they have to get up early anyway. 

I hope this data is continued to be taken into consideration in future policy decisions.

This year has been very busy and so I haven't posted here as much I would like. But, to recap, here are few details of things that have gone on thus far:

Expeditionary Learning Thursday

Since my school is a part of the Expeditionary Learning network, we piloted a program last year wherein every core class organized a day filled with visits out "in the field" as it were. We planned two trips last year and will be doing the same for this one. Our first trip was to analyze patterns in the real world on October 1. Our Algebra 1 students were sent to museums and a data lab to document their findings on patterns in the world and came back to compare them with each other. It was not as good a trip as what I had planned last year but was still meaningful.

Focusing on Algebra 1 only

Since I am only teaching one academic subject this year - Algebra 1 - I have been able to really focus on its content, difficulties, and make sure certain students understand the material even better than before. I find myself spending more time reflecting on lesson plans and spending more time working with individual kids to make sure they feel supported in our classroom. While we have had some issues with recurring students or just the run-of-the-mill disruptive kid, it has not been unsurmountable.

Math for America Flex Funds

I spent a first but of the Flex Funds I receive as part of Math for America on some small supplies like golf pencils to give to students without a writing implement, some staplers to recoup the loss of whatever ones used to be in my room, and a new power supply for my printer. I had a fun experience taking the printer apart and replacing the power supply and hope that it breathes new life into a printer that cost $500 when I bought it. I'd rather not spend more of the Flex Funds on that.


Otherwise, things are generally good. I look forward to a full week of classes next week and a weekend at home for once in a while.