Education philosopher & instructional leadership author. Creator of Repertoire, the professional writing app for instructional leaders.
Heber Springs, AR
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People furiously attack me any time I defend the status quo. How dare I object to innovation?
Here’s the thing: innovation has to actually be BETTER, and we have a long history of going big on ideas that aren’t better. 🧵
*Public schools* are better and they already exist. Nothing new needs to be built.
New ideas in mature fields are usually worse, as in this case, where the real trick is selecting for wealth.
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Amazing how much of the discourse around community college classes focuses on enrollment…but not learning.
Just taking a class, by itself, doesn’t automatically have any benefit.
The class has to result in learning, or any credential value it confers will erode to zero.
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Learning is cumulative.
Nothing the teacher does can make up for learning the student hasn’t done.
The teacher’s only option is to help students learn the content in roughly the right order.
There are no tricks.
This is a good article and I mostly agree, but “support” and “scaffolding” can fall into the same ✨magical thinking✨ trap as “differentiation.”
Kids who are behind often need prerequisite knowledge and more time, not “support.”
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This is a good article and I mostly agree, but “support” and “scaffolding” can fall into the same ✨magical thinking✨ trap as “differentiation.”
Kids who are behind often need prerequisite knowledge and more time, not “support.”
Kristen McQuillan argues that "differentiation"—giving struggling students easier texts—backfires, trapping them in permanently lower-level work instead of catching them up. She recommends "teaching to the top": give all students the same challenging material, but add temporary supports like vocabulary help or read-alouds. Unlike differentiation, these scaffolds should fade away as students improve. kristenmcquillan.substack.co…
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If your AP classes were harder than your actual college classes, I have some bad news
I always thought AP unnecessarily difficult, and always harder than real courses. No one ever talks about a pass rate. Or no one takes a test over that kind of time period until after college graduation. Just take the real college class.
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So many great comments—it’s clear the level of rigor and the extent to which these are really “college” classes varies a ton.
I’m just gonna say it: dual credit is destroying high school with crummy off-campus versions of high school classes, for college credit of dubious value.
High schoolers should take high school classes (including AP for college credit) at high school.
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I think this is pretty common—high school-level classes masquerading as college classes.
High school should take 4 years and college should take 4 years, and rushing or blurring them makes the experience worse.
“Early college” in my county, they take General Ed courses at the community college for college credit, free.
Guess what?
Most of the high-schoolers end up in the same class which gets watered down & the few actual college students there get a high school class all over again.
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I’m just gonna say it: dual credit is destroying high school with crummy off-campus versions of high school classes, for college credit of dubious value.
High schoolers should take high school classes (including AP for college credit) at high school.
What if more students could begin earning college credit while still in high school? Savvas CEO Bethlam Forsa joined @CNBC's @jonfortt to discuss dual enrollment & how earlier access to college & career pathways can expand students’ options. tinyurl.com/44zw2e7y
#CareerTechEd
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It doesn’t really matter if students are interested in what school teaches.
Our job is to GET them interested in the content they need, not waste their school time on interests that won’t serve them.
#1 mistake the K-12 education system gets wrong is starting with "our content" without considering the student's interest. Now some high schools have specific tracks (medical, business, accounting, etc.) that kids can follow and I think that is a step in the right direction. I wonder if the students are more engaged in these high schools where the student chooses a certain track?
#studentmotivation
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It is unlikely that we can realistically bridge student interests with the content they need to learn.
Mostly a losing game we should not play.
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Every school needs to offer accelerated classes and extra time. We shouldn’t go back to tracking—instead, accelerated classes paired with extra time can give everyone what they need and maximize learning.
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Justin Baeder, PhD retweeted
I recommend the book Range by David Epstein for perspective on why high-achieving students are in a wider array of activities.
There’s tons of research on the drawbacks of overspecializing.
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This has a simple solution: stop writing IEPs you don’t believe are in the best interests of the student.
Don’t just throw an IEP at every challenge.
So many people writing both about whether we should discipline misbehaving students and fail ones who don’t do work don’t seem to understand that 1) schools are facing a rapid growth in students w/IEPs, and 2) IDEA imposes strict limits what schools may do with those students.
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