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Crowded classrooms mean fewer student needs are met, they say

The abolition of GCSEs and a return to the leaving certificate of the 1950s would stop the academic rot, writes Ken Boston.

By SAM DILLON - The Department of Education, preparing to give hundreds of millions of dollars in grants, estimated how long it should take each state to prepare its proposal: 681 hours.

Two students collected 217 samples they encountered daily and found mislabeled food and at least one surprise: hot dogs actually made of beef.

Gov. David Paterson is calling on school districts to dip into their multimillion-dollar reserve accounts to soften the blow of budget cuts.

The title of the blue, orange and white artwork -- a combination of paint and broken glass on canvas -- is "I Will Survive."

Florida is taking part in a high-stakes competition with the other 49 states to bring up to $700 million in national education funding to the state.

School mergers might divide neighbors or drain the life out of towns left without schools, but they don't hurt students, new University of Northern Iowa research shows.

In what appeared to be a diplomatic gesture by the Democratic Party of Japan, a new instruction manual for high school social studies classes does not mention the territorial dispute with South Korea over the Takeshima islets.

A dozen childminders a day are quitting the profession because of Labour's 'nappy curriculum'.

For the past year, I’ve been on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Technology Literacy Assessment planning committee. (See my post NAEP Technology Assessment 2012.) The first phase of writing the framework (which is where my committee contributed) is now complete. At the last meeting, we recommended to the NAEP Governing Board that the name be changed to better align the assessment with the common vocabulary and conventions used in K-12.

Simply put, calling the assessment “Technology Literacy” didn’t really capture the breadth of the planned assessment, which will cover technology as anything in the “designed world.” That term includes engineering principles, design and systems in a wide variety of contexts. It goes well beyond the much narrower K-12 use of the term “technology literacy.” In K-12 schools, districts, and state departments of education, “technology literacy” typically means the knowledge and ability to use computers and technology with fluency, efficacy, and safety in schools.

This post outlined some of the issues inherent in the previous name “technology literacy” THE Journal: NAEP Gets It One-Third Right.

But now, the name has been changed to the NAEP 2014 Technology and Engineering Literacy Assessment. I think this aligns better with both the scope of the assessment and the conventions of K-12 schools across the country.

One other change, the date has been pushed back to 2014. This change is due to the time  needed to develop computer-based items for this assessment. For the first time, this assessment will be 100% computer based.

You can take a look at the framework at www.naeptech2012.org.

Eventually this will move to a new domain, www.naeptech.org, but this is not up yet (as of 3/10/10).

As someone who is both an engineer and works in technology education in schools, I believe this is a good compromise. I think it will help people better understand the results of this assessment as we move forward. And in the long run, I hope it will spur the design of innovative and diverse learning opportunities for students that combine engineering, IT, programming, math, science, collaboration, communication and many, many different types of technology.

Sylvia

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