I hesitate to write this for two reasons. First, I am going to second guess someone who is a lot smarter, seasoned, and more articulate than I am; that is generally a bad idea. And second, I want to wish that he is completely right and I am not. But my gut tells me otherwise. [...]
After several days of brain-wringing over the implications of the death of bell curve evaluations, I have caught a dose of Bo Adams’ “What If” series, flavored by constant reminders of how effective our species is at “getting ‘er done” when we interact with purpose. And add a big dollop of “I never have enough [...]
Yesterday’s NPR report on the research by O’Boyle and Aguinis regarding the potential death of the bell curve standard has already started to provoke important conversation. Yesterday I took a first stab at how this research might impact how we view student performance and the structure of classes and assessment. Those are huge topics that [...]
A new study may disprove the bell curve. For educators, both those who teach and assess students and those who care about the ability of our intuitions to innovate, these findings may have epic implications. Today I will focus on the potential impact on student learning; tomorrow I will try to catch up with thoughts [...]
Seth Godin last week: “When smart people who care get frustrated, something is wrong.” I had a discussion the other day that should be a wake-up call, if not a bone-chiller, to school leaders. I have started talking to a lot of teachers and administrators about how we can leverage collaboration to more quickly embed [...]
Bo Adams, in his incredible blog series 60-60-60 refers to the idea of The Ten Commandments and asks: Wouldn’t it be interesting to engage in a faculty exercise of recording ten such expectations, one each on a Post-it note, and affinity mapping the commonality and differences among a school’s tribe of practitioners? Shouldn’t we have [...]
First, thanks to all who have started to follow my blog. I will try to mine important sources that are helpful and might be outside your radar screen. If you find these posts useful, please pass along the blog link to members of your PLC, PLN, Critical Friends Group, or department. Hopefully some of the [...]
This morning on NPR there was a short story about a new start-up company out of Stanford that has piloted offering FREE university-level courses with full assessment of student performance, for free. University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and University of Michigan are also participating. The new company is called Coursera and venture capitalists have put in [...]
After leading two successful summer workshops on my Falconer seminar for West Point cadets, the faculty mentor and president of our Francis Parker School Upper School ASB (student government) asked me to tailor a set of classes for the ASB leadership team. They could only give me about 8 hours over a couple of months, [...]
I had the good fortune to have breakfast a week or so ago with a young Parker alum who works for Kahn Academy. By now, you all know the basics about Kahn, an incredible story of great young people doing the right thing with determination and imagination. So just a few tidbits following that breakfast: [...]