“The task of the excellent teacher is to stimulate ‘apparently ordinary’ people to unusual effort.  The tough problem is not in identifying winners:  it is in making winners out of ordinary people.”  ~K. Patricia Cross Thirty five years ago, I was one of those “apparently ordinary” people who had the good fortune of being mentored […]

By [email protected] May 5, 2014 Uncategorized 6 Comments It’s been said often that a picture can be worth 1,000 words. I’m not sure how many words the following YouTube video is worth, but its silly portrayal of teaching consultants and value-added models (VAMs) is priceless! In yesterday’s post, I shared my list of predictable consequences […]

By [email protected] May 4, 2014 Uncategorized 4 Comments This is my first significant incursion into the issue of Value-Added Models (VAMs). Since there have been entire books and many research studies devoted to this complex issue, it is difficult to capture the intricacies of VAMs, particularly their role in teacher evaluation, in a shorter blog […]

By [email protected] May 2, 2014 Uncategorized 6 Comments In today’s Daily Oklahoman, we learned that the new John Rex Charter Elementary School in OKC will likely not have any trouble recruiting teachers to work in their school. Read the story here: They have yet to be hired, but first-year teachers who go to work for […]

By [email protected] April 22, 2014 Uncategorized 19 Comments First, I must provide a disclaimer: I don’t watch “Dancing with the Stars.” It’s not that I don’t like ballroom dancing. I’m just not any good at it. Therefore, using middle school reasoning, dancing must be stupid right? If you’ve met me, you know that I am […]

Confucius once said, “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” Obviously, standardized testing was going on in ancient China as well! The recent move towards online testing is an obvious example of trying to complicate what should be a relatively simple and stress free process. I have a brilliant idea. Let’s […]

At the close of my last post, I posed an important question: “Does Howe Public Schools represent an innovative model that other districts should seek to emulate or, on the contrary, is Howe a failing school district as evidenced by the State A-F Report Card?” I wonder how Superintendent Barresi would respond to this seeming contradiction. […]

In part one of my series on Howe Public Schools, you were introduced to the innovative, paradigm-shifting leadership of Superintendent Scott Parks. Over the past fifteen years, Scott and his leadership team have brought creative solutions for the integration of technology to a small, rural district in southeastern Oklahoma. Through their efforts, they have been successful in tearing […]