It was a working weekend for yours truly as I spent my Friday through Sunday listening to education professors and journalists discuss the state of schools (K-12, two- and four-year colleges) in the West (states west of the Mississippi River, actually). The seminar was sponsored by the National Education Writers Association and the Hechinger Institute at Columbia University.
The common theme throughout the workshops was the western states, especially California and Texas, are seeing more English learners coming in (this is not groundbreaking, I know) and educators need to do a better job of reaching these students.
No Child Left Behind was not overly criticized, although one superintendent from Nebraska said he would be in therapy for the rest of his life because of the stress. One testing official said that too often, policymakers use a test for multiple purposes (i.e. graduating from high school and for assessment) and they shouldn't. Also, if you don't give students the inspiration to do well, they will not do good on the exams.
There are a lot of stories related to schools that should be covered. Besides good and bad teaching stories, I think a better story is how teachers look at testing data and what they do with it. Sometimes, I allow statements such as "we're looking at the data and are discussing what to do next" in my stories and I shouldn't do that. If students are taking these exams then the teachers and administrators need to show me that something in the classroom will change. Just like parents need results, I need to see them too.
