In an editorial I read tonight, the columnist notes “Our schools reflect society more than they shape it,” an idea I have promoted on this blog numerous times. I steadfastly believe this statement but was more interested in the next line, Read More...

Washington State’s students r anked near the top in ACT scores again! Despite all of the bad publicity our schools receive, our students have once again performed very well. The SAT scores were high as well. In fact, Washington’s “average Read More...

Since the 1970s some aspects of students and their lives are relatively unchanged according to a study by the Foundation for Child Development. Reading abilities, graduation rates, and suicide rates have basically remained the same for teenagers since Read More...

According to a cited study in an LA Times article, overweight students average a half point lower grade point average and score almost 10 percentile points below their peers on other tests. Other findings are that overweight students: are five times more Read More...

At a meeting in June my principal discussed the efforts of our school in narrowing the achievement gap (such a cliched term nowadays). Specifically, the gains of the lower end students were highlighted. An obvious upward trend could be seen. But, the Read More...

During my student teaching my mentor teacher asked a seemingly straight-forward and simple question: why did you give a test after reading that novel? My response, an obviously silly and meaningless one (even after some thought), was “because it Read More...

One of my criticisms of NCLB is that it causes too many schools to focus all of their attention on the bottom 25% of a school’s population while ignoring the middle- and upper-level students. Some of the effects of this focus in my school are: fewer Read More...

Washington State’s mandatory test, which needs to be passed to receive a diploma, is called the WASL. Recent articles have noted the recent announcement that 91% of the students passed—if you do not count the students who dropped out. By my Read More...