WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Did I say that?

Blogger Sherman Dorn with Moses at his back, responds to my tweet which read: 

"In tightly-controlled AFT convention, Weingarten made sure that no anti-Race To Top resolution made it to the floor."

Dorn in defense of suppressing the RTTT resolution:

"Moses did not return with tablets requiring debate of all motions."

All motions? Did I say that?

Underachiever

Bill Gates knows something about the power of good teaching. He used to be an underachiever. (Tom Marshall, St. Pete Times)

WaPo's Jay Mathews has his eyes opened (a little) wider

I was vaguely aware that the consortium assessed students like that because I knew its connection to Meier, whose Harlem school I had visited and with whom I have exchanged many emails. What escaped me was the fact that the consortium schools were producing better results than similar schools being assessed by standardized tests. ("Intriguing alternative to rating schools by tests").

Nice going Monty Neill for pointing JM to “Keeping Accountability Systems Accountable” by Martha Foote, published in the Phi Delta Kappan, January 2007. Funny, he had to read a 3-year old article to realize benefits of authentic assessment even though he visited Deb Meier's school in person. He's like the Grand Canyon tourist who's only awed after reading the canyon's dimensions in the guide book.

Another Texas "Miracle"

After a couple of examples in which a school got to count a student as "passing" with depressingly low scores, Hochberg asked Cloudt and an associate to see how many correct answers a fourth-grader with barely passing math and reading scores at Benavidez Elementary in Houston needed to be counted as "passing" the writing test. The unbelievable answer Hochberg had reached himself was confirmed by Cloudt: The child needed zero correct answers for his or her teachers and administrators to get credit for his or her "improvement." (Rick Casey, Houston Chronicle)