Here’s a heart-warming story I’ve just picked up from kitchen table math in the USA.Catherine Johnson co-founded the Irvington Parents Forum in 2006 with the aim of providing an open forum for the discussion of public school quality and spending in Irvington, New York.One of the schools in the Mendham School District has as its… Continue reading ‘Every student, every day’
Two stories on the blogosphere worth browsing are: John Bald’s response to attacks on phonics in the TES (17 06 2011). One such condemnation can be found in a letter from Professor Colin Richards, Spark Bridge, Cumbria, entitled ‘One man’s jihad is just another man’s phonics’. Who is the humorist Colin Richards and I wonder… Continue reading Doing the rounds
The reverberations from the PISA bombshell continue with the New York Times picking up the story. The relentless improvement of education results in countries like China, Singapore and South Korea are undoubtedly exercising the minds of our politicians.The NYT article quotes Andreas Schleicher, director of the OECD’s testing programme, as describing Britain’s performance as ‘stagnant… Continue reading PISA has Gove leaning Eastwards
Following the publication of performance tables by the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) today, the blogosphere in the USA is a-buzzing with debate about the decline in standards over there too.‘Your child left behind’ is one of the latest postings on Kitchen Table Math, a clearly ironic response to the US government’s ‘No… Continue reading “The countries that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow.” Barack Obama
I’ve just seen this rather fascinating video, originally posted on the irvingparentsforum. I picked it up on the kitchen table math blog, posted by the inimitable Catherine Johnson, and it’s certainly worth sharing.The context for the interest in this subject relates back to a story, reported by npr, that broke into the news earlier this… Continue reading Money, money money? Or autonomy, mastery and purpose?
Catherine Johnson from kitchen table math is reporting that the number of students in the USA identified as having a ‘specific learning disability’ has declined over the past ten years from 6.1% in 2000-2001 to 5.2% in 2007-2008. The figures come from the U.S Department of Education’s 2009 Digest of Education Statistics.As is the case… Continue reading Decline in SpLD numbers in the USA