School Leader

Schmoker lambasts complex teacher evals (like KY's)

This week students in my Administration of School Personnel class (EDAD 590) have been exploring Kentucky's new proposed system of teacher evaluations. Kentucky's efforts are, in part, a response to the requirements of the federal Race ...

Instructional sensitivity: Why teachers intuitively know standardized assessments aren't good measures of student learning

The annual Primary Sources report by Scholastic and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation examines teacher attitudes on a number of topics. Recent headlines from this year's report focused on teacher perceptions of standardized testing. ...

News and Resources Roundup: Kentucky gets NCLB waiver, more

Here's a roundup of some important developments in education, and other resources and helpful items: Focus author Mike Schmoker is coming next week! Kentucky is one of nine states to receive a waiver for NCLB. This means that the ne...

"Focus" author Mike Schmoker to visit WKU

I'm delighted that Western Kentucky University's College of Educational and Behavioral Sciences will host Dr. Mike Schmoker, author of Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning, on February 13 and 14. I've us...

Kentucky soars on Ed Week's "Quality Counts" report; lots of work still to come

Education Week released its 16th annual Quality Counts report yesterday, which grades states on educational quality in six key areas. This year Kentucky's rank rose from 34 to 14, earning a grade of C+ (no states received an "A"). Read...

Getting It Done: Going for "Deep Implementation"

Last week I had the privelege of attending a talk by Karin Chenoweth and Christina Theokas, authors of the fortchoming book, Getting it Done: Leading Academic Success in Unexpected Schools. The event was co-sponsored by the Green River...

Budget cuts and student learning

Earlier this week, on his Ed Week Straight Up blog, American Enterprise Institute education policy scholar Rick Hess offered some thoughts on how superintendents and principals should not respond to a budget crisis. As anyone reading th...