Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

As I did in last year’sThe “Best” Articles About Education — 2008 and in the previous year’s The “Best” Articles About Education — 2007, I’ve put quotes around the word “Best” in the title of this list since I’m sure there are many, many articles about education I have not read and posted about this year. I’m particularly interested in hearing people’s suggestions for additions to this list.   This list, as the title says,  focuses on education policy issues.  I’ll have another one coming-up titled “The Best Articles (And Blog Posts) Offering Practical Advice To Teachers — 2009.”  I’ll also be writing “The Best Reflective Posts I’ve Written About My Teaching Practice — 2009.”

Unlike in previous year’s, though, I could not bring myself to rank them in order of preference — they all were just too good.

Where the titles of the articles or blog posts are self-explanatory, I haven’t included any additional description.

Here are my choices for The “Best” Articles (And Blog Posts) About Education — 2009:

Diane Ravitch wrote an excellent post titled What’s Wrong With Merit Pay.

Crazy Talk is the title of a great piece Doug Noon wrote for Change.Org a few months ago. It offers an excellent critique of Secretary Duncan’s plans.

Slate Magazine published what I think is an exceptionally insightful critique of KIPP Schools written by Sara Mosle.  It’s called The Educational Experiment We Really Need: What the Knowledge Is Power Program has yet to prove.

Claus von Zastrow has wrote great blog post titled Taking the Easy Way Out. He talks about the recent tendency of journalists (who really should know better) to claim there are easy answers to some of the challenges facing our schools.

The Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning’s blog shared the results of two pretty interesting surveys. In one, 500 recent drop outs were asked about the reasons they decided to drop out of school. The other survey collected data from over 23,000 3-5 minute visits around the country.

How can we close the achievement gap? You can read the answer to that question from my favorite writer on education reform issues, Richard Rothstein.

Does Slow and Steady Win the Race? A Conversation with Top Researcher Russ Whitehurst offers an exceptionally well-balanced perspective on school reform — one that’s well-worth reading.

Anthony Cody wrote an excellent post titled National Standards A Wild Goose Chase.

Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success is a study released by The Great Lakes Center For Education Research and Practice. It details “out-of-school” factors that affect learning success.

A Textbook Example of What’s Wrong with Education is an excellent article by a former textbook editor. It tells, in horrifying detail, how publishers develop the textbooks our school districts buy.

Alice Mercer wrote an absolutely great post at our group blog, In Practice. It’s titled “Why Not Cure Poverty Instead?” and is outgrowth of a conversation about Ruby Payne.

The National Journal ran a piece  on paying students for increased test scores.  I was pleased to see a number of thoughtful responses criticizing the idea, and disappointed to see what people said in support.  I was particularly pleased with the response by Bob Peterson (from one of my favorite magazines, Rethinking Schools).

Extreme School Makeover: Creating the Conditions for Success is a blog post by Claus von Zastrow that is one of the best, and most reasonable, descriptions of what it might take to “turnaround” a troubled school.  He highlights the key elements of a successful strategy and makes it clear that there is no one single answer that will provide a solution — no matter what some “expert” school reformers might think.

David Cohen, a teacher from Palo Alto whom I know through the Teacher Leaders Network, co-wrote a great op ed piece in the  Sacramento Bee. It’s called “Test scores poor tool for teacher evaluation.”

Earlier in the year, there was quite a bit of commentary in the educational blogosphere about a not particularly helpful or insightful op-ed piece in the New York TImes by Nicholas Kristof.  In it, he touts the mythical figure that:

A Los Angeles study suggested that four consecutive years of having a teacher from the top 25 percent of the pool would erase the black-white testing gap.

There are three posts about Kristof’s column that I think are particularly thoughtful that I want to include here:

In Search Of The Top 25 Percent Teacher from Public School Insights

The Miracle Teacher, Revisited by Diane Ravitch at Bridging The Differences

We Need Schools That ‘Train’ Our Judgment by Deborah Meier, also at Bridging The Differences.

Larry Cuban wrote Fixing Urban Schools: Sprinters or Marathoners?. It’s about superintendents, and I shared it with our new one here.

State’s exit exams deserve a failing grade is an op ed piece by the late education researcher/author Gerald Bracey that appeared in the Sacramento Bee.

Education researcher David Berliner wrote an excellent guest post in The Answer Sheet, a Washington Post education blog. It’s called Why Rising Test Scores May Not Mean Increased Learning.

Blinded by Reform is an exceptionally well-balanced and reasonable critique of some of the questionable strategies Education Secretary Duncan and the Obama administration is pushing on schools. It’s written by Mike Rose, who is on the faculty of the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and the author of “Why School?: Reclaiming Education for All of Us.”

Do You Want To “Build Influence”? is not specifically about education policy, but does provide some ideas for those who want to change it.

The late education researcher Gerald Bracey published his last “Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education.”

And, lastly, I’m going to include the piece I wrote at Public School Insights titled Parent Involvement or Parent Engagement? It’s an excerpt from my recent book, Building Parent Engagement In Schools.”

I’m also adding a short post I wrote about federal funding for literacy programs titled “I just thought it would end differently this time.”

Compasses Or Road Maps?

Suggestions and feedback, as always, are welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at previous “The Best…” lists and also consider subscribing to this blog for free.

Richard Rothstein, who is my favorite writer on education reform issues and who I have often quoted in this blog, just wrote a very thorough and insightful perspective on the future of No Child Left Behind. It’s worth a look.

In it, Rothstein also links to a very interesting article by John Irons called Economic scarring: The long-term impacts of the recession. Irons says:

“Unemployment and income losses can reduce educational achievement by threatening early childhood nutrition; reducing families’ abilities to provide a supportive learning environment (including adequate health care, summer activities, and stable housing); and by forcing a delay or abandonment of college plans.”

Even more importantly, he goes on to provide a sizable research base for these comments, and this article, too, is worth a look.  These are more reasons why schools need to connect with parents to organize for community improvement issues.

Thanks to This Week In Education for the tip.

You can read the answer to that question from my favorite writer on education reform issues, Richard Rothstein.

He last paragraph reads:

“If we want to narrow the achievement gap as well as raise student achievement, we have to… combine school improvement with narrowing the socioeconomic inequalities that influence children’s development outside of school.”

His response to that question is one of fifteen that were invited by the National Journal blog.

None of the invitees were K-12 teachers.

Crazy Talk is the title of a great piece Doug Noon wrote for Change.Org a few months ago. I just realized I never posted about it here.

Here’s a short excerpt:

“Sec. of Education Arne Duncan believes that standards, incentives, and accountability will bring us to the educational promised land….His program is doomed. It’s doomed because it’s aimed at the wrong target, and it can’t be fairly implemented. With test scores as the standard of excellence, very few teachers will be “incented” to apply themselves. We know that standardized tests measure students’ backgrounds more than real learning. And we know that students with special needs require more time and attention than the achievers. We also know that, due to the fact that poor and affluent people tend to live in different neighborhoods, some schools serve more challenging populations than others. None of that is a matter of chance. No amount of education will improve economic opportunities for people until they can look forward to good-paying jobs, health care, and decent places to live when they leave school.”

He goes on to highlight a paper by my favorite education writer, Richard Rothstein. That paper, Holding Accountability to Account: How Scholarship and Experience in Other Fields Inform Exploration of Performance Incentives in Education, is available to be downloaded for free.

EdWeek’s blog “Inside School Research” has an interesting post today titled New Papers Grapple With Impacts of School Mobility. It focuses on studies exploring the effect on students of their changing schools.

This kind of mobility has a clear impact on students at our school (which is one of the many reasons I share Richard Rothstein’s analysis about how to most effectively address the achievement gap).

In an unofficial analysis of data at our school, teachers and administrators determined that the “achievement gap” was substantially reduced for students who had been with us for all four years of their high school career.  In this analysis,  African-American students not only were the most mobile group, they also moved more multiple times.  Latino students had the next largest number of moves, followed by our Asian students.

Every month I’ve begun to make a short list highlighting my choices of the best resources I shared through Twitter, but didn’t necessarily include them in posts here on my blog.

I’ve already shared in earlier posts this month several new resources I found on Twitter — and where I gave credit to those from whom I learned about them.  Those are not included again in this post.

Here are my picks for May’s Best Tweets (not listed in any order):

The High Cost Of Being Poor is a good Washington Post article on how the “poor pay more in time, exhaustion & hassle”

A very good infographic showing the impact of inflation over the past forty years

An Intriguing Alternative To No Child Left Behind is a good Washington Post column on Richard Rothstein, one of my favorite education writers.

“TV Review: Glee” is an interesting blog post about a new television show on schools.

“Voices From The Great Depression” is good audio slideshow interviewing those who went through that time.

Testing: Stereotype Thread and the Perversion of Incentives, Part III is a not-to-be missed post by Alice Mercer.

A sign in an English classroom: “Follow your dreams – except for that one where you fly. That never ends well.” (thanks to MagistraM for the tip)

“Health Visualizer” is a great infographic on health issues facing Americans.

“Wonders Of The World” is a good multimedia overview from Channel One on both ancient and modern “wonders.”

Odyssey Online is an extremely well-done & accessible interactive on ancient Greece.

“Our Impoverished View of Educational Reform” is an exhaustive report on poverty & school achievement.

Signitific Lab has got to be one of the most fascinating online multi-player games out there & the most educational, but it’s hard to explain and I’m not even going to try….

New Study – Merit Pay does NOT work

The Importance of Teaching Critical Thinking

“Teachley’s Amazing Talking Brain” is an interactive with practical ideas on brain-based education

“Poverty and Brain Development,or, I Worry: If Poor People are Stupid, Why Bother?” is an important commentary on a recent study.

Instructions for how to “jigsaw” a lesson in ten easy steps (thanks to Suzanne Whisler for the tip)

Anthony Cody is publishing a four-part interview with Richard Rothstein, one of my favorite writers on education issues, on his blog, Living In Dialogue.

It’s well worth a visit.

Thanks to John Norton for the tip.

Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success has just been released by The Great Lakes Center For Education Research and Practice. It details “out-of-school” factors that affect learning success.

The report is similar to what Richard Rothstein (whose articles I’ve included in The best articles about Education 2007 and The “Best” Articles About Education — 2008) writes about a lot.   Rothstein, and the report, talk about how schools can narrow the achievement gap, but not get rid of it unless a number of these social inequities are addressed.

I’m planning to write a longer post about this in our group blog, In Practice, but thought that readers might like to learn about the report now.  Who knows when I’m going to get around to that In Practice post!

A column in the Sacramento Bee today highlights a couple of recent studies questioning how education funds are spent in California to support many “”economically disadvantaged” students.”

One of the studies cited, from the State Legislative Analyst’s Office, has what I think is a surprisingly accurate critique of the present system (though, of course, it’s one that has been made for years by many educators and writers like Richard Rothstein):

“…the focus largely revolves around targeting more resources to ED students rather than addressing underlying issues likely to be affecting academic performance. For instance, students from ED families may lack health care, be in single–parent homes living on public assistance, have absent parents or parents with little formal education, have parents in jail or addicted to drugs, be parents themselves, live in unsafe neighborhoods, lack nurturing relationships with adults, speak a primary language other than English, be influenced by gang pressures, and/or need to work long hours outside of school. By focusing so much attention and resources on a student’s economic status, the state is missing opportunities to address the root causes of achievement problems.”

Guess what the study’s first recommendation for actionsis?

Allot $500,000 for another study on what to do about this problem.

Perhaps they could just read a few articles and books by Rothstein and others who have been researching and proposing how to respond to attack these root causes for years….

As I did in last year’s The “Best” Articles About Education — 2007, I’ve put quotes around the word “Best” in the title of this list since I’m sure there are many, many articles about education I have not read and posted about this year. I’m particularly interested in hearing people’s suggestions for additions to this list.

Here are my rankings for the five “best” articles about education this year:

Number five is an article I heard about from Middle Web’s newsletter called “Of Particular Interest.” Quoting John Norton, Middleweb’s editor: “A recent “practice guide” from the federal National Center for Education Research distills what its panel of scholarly authors believe are seven of the best research-based instructional strategies teachers can use to improve student learning…Don’t be put off by the lengthy scholarly introduction — skim and skip to page 4.” It’s well worth looking-at. I’d also encourage you read an excellent summary of the report that was written by Karen Janowski.

Number four is (are?) actually three articles — all written by my favorite writer on classroom management issues, Marvin Marshall. The three are:

* “About The Question ‘Why?’” where he shares how pointless it is to ask that question of a student about his/her behavior, and how critical it is for us to consider that same question when we reflect on, and explain about, the content we are teaching.

* “No Child Left Behind and Evaluating Teachers.”

* Working With Discouraged Adolescents

Number three is A Broader, Bolder Approach To Education. It’s an excellent statement that focuses on the importance of working on inequalities outside the schoolhouse door, such as economics and health, to promote academic achievement, as well as calling for a broader interpretation of what “academic achievement” is. You can also access summaries of important research backing-up the statement.

Number two is by one of my favorite writers, Paul Krugman, called Poverty Is Poison. In it he highlights, among many things, a new study that shows poverty’s negative effect on the brain development of children. It particularly impairs language development and memory.

And, now, my pick for the number one article about education in 2008 is… Whose Problem is Poverty? by Richard Rothstein, the former education writer for The New York Times. He gives a good summary in this most recent article of one of his main themes — that a lot of the reasons behind lower academic achievement are non-school related, and that if our society is serious about helping students improve we need to deal with issues like the lack of affordable housing and adequate health care for low-income families.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at previous “The Best…” lists and also consider subscribing to this blog for free.

Brian Crosby at our group blog, In Practice, just alerted readers to a new article by Richard Rothstein, called Whose Problem is Poverty?

Rothstein is one of my favorite education writers. In fact, on one of my “The Best…” lists I named an article he wrote last year as The Best Article About Education — 2007.  He’s the former education writer for The New York Times.

He gives a good summary in this most recent article of one of his main themes — that a lot of the reasons behind lower academic achievement are non-school related, and that if our society is serious about helping students improve we need to deal with issues like the lack of affordable housing and adequate health care for low-income families.

The Goals Of Education is the title of a great article by Richard Rothstein and Rebecca Jacobsen that appeared in the December, 2006 issue of the Phi Delta Kappan.

I just happened to find it in some research I was doing.  It gives a excellent historical perspective about what the purposes of schools have been in this country, and the effect of standardized testing on these original goals.

The article is particularly helpful to me by its description of the original intent of “civics” instruction, which is more in-line with what I teach in my Government class than what is typically done in most classrooms today.

I thought I would put the number-one ranked sites from all thirteen of my Websites Of The Year into one list of their own. Links to each entire list are also included in this post.

Even though this is going to be my last list for this year, I’ve decided to try to prepare similar lists in new categories once each month during 2008. Since I have over 8,000 categorized links (and growing) on my website, I figure regularly reviewing them and their features would be beneficial to my students, other teachers, and me.

These new monthly lists, however, won’t displace another regular feature I post called Websites Of The Month. There, I point out my picks for the “Top Ten” new posts I’ve written during that month. I use that list primarily for the large number of readers who have requested a monthly newsletter instead of daily blog posts.

You can get all these lists, and my daily posts, by subscribing to this blog via email or RSS Reader.

Here, now, are the best of the best for 2007:

Best Web 2.0 Application For Education:

Tumblr — This “micro-blogging” site upgraded their service this year. It’s a great place for students to easily post a whole lot of their work. Students can have individual or group “Tumblrs.” A student can also share their password with a small number of students who can leave comments.

The Best Web 2.0 Application For ESL/EFL Learners:

VoiceThread — You can upload pictures and create an audio narrative to go along with them. In addition, audio comments can be left by visitors. VoiceThread also provides a great deal to teachers by allowing them to get their premium services for free, including allowing them to create a zillion VoiceThreads for free. Happily, they’ve finally incorporated the feature of allowing you to include images off the web just by inserting its url. It’s that new feature that made me choose VoiceThread as number one.

The Best Online Learning Game:

Wordmaster — A great game from the BBC. In it, you’re shown a sentence with a word missing (indicated by a blank). Then you have to click on an on-screen keyboard to type the correct word “hangman” style. You can ask for clues, and you’re competing against the clock. You can also choose various levels of difficulty, and the game has thousands of words. And after you’ve either guessed the correct word or the timer is up, you can have the sentence read to you.

Best Internet Site For English Language Learners:

Henny Jellema’s Online TPR Exercises — You’ve got to see this site to believe it. I can’t imagine the amount of work that went into creating the exercises. However, as he cautions, it’s critical to combine using his online activities with physical TPR lessons.

Best Social Studies Website:

Here, there was a tie.

One is HippoCampus. It has great (and complete) online and accessible textbooks for many subjects, including History and Government. Their resources include extraordinary multimedia presentations.

HippoCampus tied for first place with The Virtual Smithsonian. It’s a fantastic multimedia window into the artifacts, and their stories, held by the Smithsonian Institution.

Best Search Engine For ESL/EFL Learners:

Pagebull — When you enter a search term, the results that come back are not text. Visual images of the pages are actually shown on the screen. This can help students more quickly identify which sites might be accessible to them. (Unfortunately, it appears that Pagebull went out of business a few months after this list appeared. However, a new search engine called Exalead is very comparable).

Best Science Website For Student & Teachers:

California Science — It’s from MacMillan/McGraw Hill and has some great online activities. However, what makes this site stand-out (and my ESL/EFL bias is clear here) is that it contains translations in many languages (including Hmong!) of the science concepts taught in the textbooks.

Best Math Site For English Language Learners:

It’s actually three sites, all from the extraordinary Learn Alberta organization. The three math sites are Math Under The Sea, Math 5 Live, and Spy Guys Math. Instead of explaining each one, I’m going to suggest that they’re definitely worth the time to just go and check out.

Best News/Current Events Site For English Language Learners:

BBC Learning English – It was a tough choice between this and the Voice of America, but the BBC won out because its design is much more attractive and has images.

Best Article About Education:

I’m ranking Richard Rothstein’s great article in the latest issue of The American Prospect as number one. It’s called Leaving “No Child Left Behind” Behind. The title says it all.

Best Reference Website For English Language Learners:

There are several winners from this list.

Dictionaries:

The Language Guide For Beginning English Language Learners.

Harcourt’s E-Glossary for students just entering the Intermediate stage.

Answers.com works best for Intermediate and Advanced English Language Learners. Once you type in the word you’re looking for, click “Word Tutor” and it will provide audio to a sentence using the word in context.

Thesaurus:

Visuwords is a unique, and fun, way to find synonyms in a visual display. It’s free, and it also functions as a dictionary.

Encyclopedia:

Simple English Wikipedia

Information On Countries & States:

A tie between Fact Monster & Infoplease.

Best Place To Learn Web 2.0 Basics:

It’s a three-way tie.

One is Sue Waters’ Mobile Technology In TAFE Wiki. Another is Vicki Davis’ Cool Cat Teacher Wiki. And the third great site on my list is Russell Stannard’s Teacher Training Videos.

Best Blog For Sharing Resources/Links:

It’s a thirteen-way tie. Everyone on the list is great.

I hope this list, and the others, have been helpful. I’ll look forward to sharing more resources in the coming year.

More Best of the Best For 2008

I’ve continued to post new lists in the new year, and will try to (though I’m about thirty lists behind) periodically update this summary with more top-ranked sites:

Best Writing Website For K-12 Writing Instruction/Reinforcement:

BBC Bitesize Revision for Writing — Admittedly, it’s geared towards a younger audience (and perfect for English Language Learners), but their multiple activities are just great and deserve to be in first place.

Best Health Site For English Language Learners:

Medline Plus’ Interactive Health Tutorials from the National Institutes of Health. These excellent slideshows provide images, text, and audio support in accessible English explaining scores of diseases, treatments, and prevention measures. Plus, they’re all available in Spanish, too.

Best Website For Learning About Civic Participation & Citizenship:

It’s a tie for number one between US Citizenship, which provides a great online self-access course to prepare people for the Citizenship test; and EL Civics For ESL Students, which a wonderful site that provides preparation for the Citizenship test and an introduction to the U.S. and daily life.

Best Website To Help Beginning Readers:

Starfall — Starfall has been helping people learn to read for years, and is still the best out there. I’d recommend their I’m Reading section for older readers.

The Best Websites For Beginning Older Readers:

Reading Skills Stories 1 and Reading Skills Stories 2 — Marshall Adult Education in Minnesota has many leveled, high-interest accessible stories on these sites, with several follow-up activities for each one. They also have a great Student Lessons section, too.

The Best Website For Intermediate Readers

Into The Book — This is an absolutely incredible resource designed to help students learn reading strategies — visualize, predict, summarize, etc. For the past couple of years it had only been partially completed. In the course of examining sites for inclusion in this list, though, I found that all its exercises were finished. Users are led through the process of learning each reading strategy with interactive exercises.

The Best Music Website For Learning English

The Sims On Stage — This wonderful site lets users easily record themselves singing karaoke and hosts the performances on-site. If students don’t want to sing, they can listen to countless others who have while the lyrics are streaming across the screen.

This list will certainly be one of the last, if not the last, in my “Best of…” series for this year.

I’ve also put quotes around the word “Best” in the title of this list since I’m sure there are many, many articles about education I have not read and posted about this year.  I’m particularly interested in hearing people’s suggestions for additions to this list.

Here are my rankings for the five “best” articles about education this year:

Number five is really two articles.  Both of them appeared in Rethinking Schools and both are about Ruby Payne, whose “deficit” perspective on low-income people continues to grow (unfortunately) in popularity among School Districts and teachers.  The first article, called Savage Unrealities and written by Paul Gorski, provides a good critique (though it’s sometimes a little too polemical for my taste).  The second, titled Revisiting Ruby Payne and written by Anita Perna Bohn, gives a good rejoinder to a nauseatingly fawning article about Payne that appeared this year in the New York Times Sunday Magazine.

Number four is an article that appeared in Scientific American titled The Secret To Raising Smart Kids. It highlights the importance of “effort” over “intelligence” or “ability.”

Number three is Collaboration — Rather Than Competition by Marvin Marshall.   Of all the different class management “systems” I’ve read and seen, I’m most impressed by his positive approach.

Number two is Changing The Way We Think About Learning by Linda Hammond-Darling.  It appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, and compares our testing systems with how other countries measure student learning.

I’m ranking Richard Rothstein’s great article in the latest issue of The American Prospect as number one.  It’s called Leaving “No Child Left Behind” Behind.  The title says it all.

Again, I’m looking forward to hearing other people’s suggestions to add to this list.

You can see all my lists at Websites Of The Year.

I learned from Reading Today Daily about Richard Rothstein’s great article in the latest issue of The American Prospect.  It’s called Leaving “No Child Left Behind” Behind.

Check it out…