Pay for performance scale coming to Charlotte

In his State of CMS Schools Speech, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Superintendent Dr. Peter Gorman laid out a plan to pay teachers for performance rather than years experience and advanced degrees.

This comes as a result of a few studies, mainly the Brookings Institute work that effective teachers in the top quartile of their colleagues could close the achievement gap between below and on grade level children, regardless of ethnicity.

Under this new system teachers that get move their students more than one year of growth during 1 academic year would make more money than their colleagues who don’t make as much growth. Gorman claims it won’t happen without teacher buy-in.

thoughts?

Give them an opportunity…

This morning at the North Carolina Council for Teachers of Mathematics conference, Kathy Richardson provided a PK-2 keynote address about the importance of understanding children’s development of number sense. She talked about her notion of critical phases of learning, i which learners need experiences and time to process and think about their development.

In many of her examples, Richardson discussed students’ understanding of decomposing two-digit numbers into tens and ones and the need for students to see tens as discrete units.

An example would be the idea that the task 8+6, students need to be able to think about the idea that if you have 8, 2 more gets to 10 and you have 1 ten and 4 ones left over, which is 14. Students without this concept, tend to show issues when adding larger numbers.

Students must have an opportunity to work in discovery-oriented learning environments and have time to process the concepts that they are learning.

Assessment…rubrics

In the midst of working with some school districts on creating some rubrics for high-level mathematical tasks. We’ve posted some online using the elementary mathematics Investigations curriculum. Would love some feedback.

Teaching Mathematics with Power (TMaP) PD

I’m wrapping up a great week with K-4 teachers in Kannapolis City Schools as part of our NC Quest grant, Teaching Mathematics w/ Power (TMaP). It’s been a great week w/ lots of great dialogue among teachers from various schools about mathematical tasks, questioning and discourse.

Here are some resources for those interested.

A National Curriculum?

Interesting thoughts…

Common Core website

Reports published by Common Core about America’s problems in schools

Education week article about content-area organizations wanting a voice

Can school districts dictate teachers’ after hour actions and online presence?

Edubloggers  Miguel Guhlin recently posted questions about teachers’ privacy and whether or not school districts have authority about what teachers do after hours and post online.

Clif Mims followed this by posting the following questions…

• Do/Should schools districts have any say about what staff members (Secretary, custodian, cafeteria staff, bus driver, mechanic, maintenance, etc.) do after hours? Post online?
• Do/Should parents and the community have any say in these matters?
• How does this translate to higher education?
• If the answers to these questions are “yes” then is the same true for individuals in other professions (Nurse, news reporter, radio DJ, police officer, elected official, unelected government employee, or store clerk)?

Thoughts?

Reexamining our work through data-driven planning: PDS Presentation

Ball State University, one of the leading universities in professional development school work shared with conference attenders their resources that they have used to collect data from multiple stakeholders to inform and reshape their program. Materials are available freely on their website.

Specifically, their PDS leaders surveyed K-12 faculty who work with student teachers, K-12 administrators and university faculty about how well the Ball State PDS network aligned with the NCATE PDS Standards and the NAPDS Nine Essentials of PDS‘. Summaries of their survey data and other demographic data is featured on their website.

One of the questions that struck me as very potent was the idea of, “in 10 years what do we want this PDS partnership to look like?” I think so quickly in education we are quite short-term minded, but rather need to focus on the longer-range, more long-term goals and how we can incrementally get there.

Snow!!!!

Up late working and I saw some flakes late night….and this morning…. about a half inch of snow and lots of school closings!

Here are 2 pics from 2 years ago…I’ll upload pics from this year in a few hours!

The College of Education sign at UNC Charlotte

Professional learning over break: NECC video archives

Interested in some professional learning opportunties during the next few weeks before school starts up again? Here are some links to some archived Webcasts from NECC 2007 and 2008.

NECC 2008

NECC 2007

Enjoy!

Celebrating the life of a friend and a great educator

While this blog is intended to be for professional use, and related to only education, I’m breaking that here to celebrate the life of Sue Casto, a colleague and friend of mine that taught with me in Williamsburg, VA. Sue passed away last Friday after a battle with cancer.

For 37 years, Sue epitomized the persona of great teaching. During the four years that i worked with her, Sue was a reading intervention teacher, responsible for teaching reading to small groups of children who were below grade level and struggling academically. Her rapport with students was phenomenal- she laughed, joked and enjoyed being around children. Yet, at the same time, she challenged them to work and gave students the hope that they could be successful in school.

Her impact on my career was immeasureable. I finished student teaching early to take over a 3rd grade classroom. Since I wasn’t licensed at first, Sue spent the day teaching her reading groups in the back of my classroom. Sue always kidded that the Principal had put her in there to make sure I was on track. A lot of my teaching materials- activity sheets, bulletin board materials and ideas about how to teach effectively came from my group of mentors- one of which was Sue.

When I needed something, Sue was always there to help- covering classes, providing resources, giving ideas or just being a great listener on days when I needed someone to talk to. Even when I didn’t need help, Sue was there to lend a hand-I missed a week of school with back surgery one year, and when I had returned, Sue and a few other teachers had cleaned my room, made it spotless, and helped me get everything organized.

Her sacrificial demeanor and servant’s heart are what will stick with me the most. No matter how much we want to serve with an open heart, life and various things get in the way. In Sue’s case, day in and day out, she served her students and colleagues, and left no doubt that every one of her actions was a result of the fact that she loved and cared for everyone around her.

Sue, you’ll always be remembered!