by DianneSalerni | May 13, 2015 | education, teaching, testing
If you want a funny and yet completely on-the-mark and disturbing look at standardized testing in our country, you should skip my post and watch this John Oliver clip instead. It’s long, but worth watching all the same. (Hey, my post is long too.) I’m going to...
by DianneSalerni | May 11, 2015 | education, teaching, testing
I haven’t written much on my blog about why I left teaching last year. I meant to. I even have a document in my blog file labeled Why I Had to Leave with a long list of topics to write about. I was furious about being driven out of my profession by the choices made by...
by DianneSalerni | Mar 10, 2010 | education, testing
Yes, Homer Simpson is an exemplary model of doing something really stupid and realizing his mistake only when it’s too late to fix it. I hope that’s what Diane Ravitch is feeling these days – not that it will do any good for the rest of us.Ravitch served in President...
by DianneSalerni | Feb 20, 2010 | education, Sourcebooks Fire, teaching, We Hear the Dead, writing
Anyone who is a teacher will be familiar with Process Writing as taught in the classroom. It consists of steps labeled Pre-Writing, Drafting, Conferencing, Revising, Editing, and Publishing. These steps are often recursive, as writers may conference several times,...
by DianneSalerni | Feb 13, 2010 | education, PSSA, reading, testing
Reading in today’s society tends to be a social activity. People share books, recommend them, discuss them, blog about them, and list them on virtual library sites. However, across the nation, NCLB requires states to test reading in isolation. Students must make sense...
by DianneSalerni | Feb 7, 2010 | education, PSSA, reading, teaching
I asked my students: “What did Natasha say about men walking on the moon?”Chad had an answer. “She said it never happened. She told Toughboy that his teachers were lying, because it was impossible for men to walk on the moon.”“Were you surprised by what she said?”...
