2012 Video Medley #1

Merit Pay and Value Added Measures,
Diane Ravitch on PBS, Finland's Success,
Saving Baby Elephants.

VALUE ADDED MEASURES

Merit Pay, Teacher Pay, and Value Added Measures

Value added measures sound fair, but they are not. In this video Prof. Daniel Willingham describes six problems (some conceptual, some statistical) with evaluating teachers by comparing student achievement in the fall and in the spring.




DIANE RAVITCH INTERVIEW

Diane Ravitch: Overheard with Evan Smith

Ravitch: ...every woman who becomes pregnant [needs] good prenatal care...
Smith: That's not really an education issue, but...
Ravitch: Yes it is! It is an education issue because when women have babies born to them and they have not had decent prenatal care, very often those children are born with developmental delays, cognitive deficiencies. They then become special education [students] and we pay hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars for each one of those children for the rest of their schooling when we could have just provided them prenatal care in the beginning and make sure that the children were born healthy.

Smith: Not every kid shows up at the school door equal...
Ravitch: We have 25% of our kids living in poverty. The schools didn't cause that. There is no other advanced nation in the world that has 25% of its kids living in poverty....what the tests are is a mirror of socio-economic disparity. The rich kids...are overpopulated at the top and the poor kids...at the bottom...all these tests have the same disparity. Poor kids at the bottom, rich kids at the top.
Smith: If you want to fix education you might do well fixing the poverty problem.

Watch Diane Ravitch on PBS. See more from KLRU.

HIGH ACHIEVING COUNTRIES: FINLAND Finland's education success

• In Finland success is not measured by winners and losers...learning is more like a team game.
• Giving pupils extra help is standard practice.
• Children here do the least number of class hours per week in the developed world and get the best results.
• There's no such thing as a failing Finnish school.
• Parents know they have a key role to play, too.
• ...relaxed schools...free from politicians...where nobody gets left behind.

NEUROSCIENCE and LEARNING Dr. Janet Zadina - Using Brain Research To Energize School Reform Why do we expect all students to be at the same place at the same time? How does stress affect learning -- particularly in students who live in poverty or under stress? What does the effect of stress have on learning? Understanding what's happening to your students' brains can help. A neuroscientist who survived Hurricane Katrina examines some ways to improve learning. OFF TOPIC: ELEPHANTS ATE team rescue another baby elephant from a well

Amboseli Trust for Elephants Amboseli National Park - Kenya

"We rescued this young eight months old calf early this week. Luckily the report came in early in the morning and we were able to get there quick before the mother was forced to leave by herders arriving to water their cattle. It was a happy ending as we were able to reunite the calf with her mother, Zombe."

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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