Tracy Jan’s article in yesterday’s Boston Globe indirectly quotes Brighton High School basketball coach: To boost attendance, alertness, and academic achievement, Mahoney said, high schools should start later. High schools around the Bay State are considering the idea because federal… Read More ›
Weston
Not yet reading
Yesterday we held our regular first-Wednesday-of-the-month professional development activity. This time it was a planning session for an event three months hence — a day based on Tracy Kidder’s latest book, Mountains Beyond Mountains. (This book comes with two slightly… Read More ›
Irrationality considered harmful
“I refuse to deal with irrational numbers until they’ve calmed down,” says one Jeff Schult, who claims that math is a cult. Read the whole article. I hope it doesn’t represent what Weston students think about math. We shouldn’t use… Read More ›
Should honors classes be open to all?
At least on political grounds, it’s tempting to argue that honors and AP classes ought to be open to all who wish to enroll in them. It’s also tempting to argue it on educational grounds. We believe in giving everyone… Read More ›
Charging what the market will bear
The folks at TechFusion must be good guys, right? After all, their company is one of WBUR’s underwriters. And they advertise “No Job Too Large or Too Small.” Of course I was suspicious in the first place when I heard… Read More ›
Principal search
We’re looking for a new principal, as our previous one moved to Georgia over the summer to become an Assistant Superintendent in the Cobb County district. This year we have an interim principal at Weston, as we search for a… Read More ›
Robert Noyce and Bringing Down the House
Usually I’m in the middle of reading two books at once — typically a novel and a non-fiction work. But for some reason I’m currently reading a biography that’s definitely non-fiction and a former best-seller that purports to be non-fiction…. Read More ›
Merit pay
Our distinguished governor, Mitt Romney, advocates merit pay for teachers, based on the standardized test scores of their students. Vivian Troen and Katherine C. Boles wrote an op-ed piece about this idea in the Boston Globe on 9/28. I was… Read More ›
Back-to-school night
Yesterday evening we held our annual Back-to-School Night at Weston High School. You know the drill: the parents come to school, arrive late at their first-period class because they can’t find a parking space, go to one ten-minute class after… Read More ›
The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics
If you look at almost any set of modern standards for mathematics teaching — such as the NCTM’s or the Massachusetts curriculum frameworks or Weston’s own standards — you will see a prominent role for applications of mathematics. This is… Read More ›
Standards-based Education, Part III
One key tenet of standards-based education is the observation that some students take more time than others to master any given skill or concept. No one can disagree with the observation, but the conclusions to be drawn from it are… Read More ›
Standards-based Education, Part I
Several years ago the entire faculty of the Weston Public Schools participated in a series of workshops on so-called Standards-based Education (SBE). There were actually a lot of good ideas in these workshops. In fact, I estimated that I had… Read More ›
Late to class
“Fed up with students routinely strolling into class well after the bell rings, high school principals across the region plan to crack down on excessive tardiness,” according to an article in today’s Boston Globe. It’s not clear to me that… Read More ›
Standardized tests
In yesterday’s Boston Globe there’s an interview with Bob Sternberg, psychology professor at Yale, president of the American Psychological Association, and newly appointed dean of Arts and Sciences at Tufts. Globe correspondent Peter DeMarco asked him about the use of… Read More ›
Doing something about stress
Be sure to read Anand Vaishnav’s article, headlined “Suburban high schools try to ease up on teen stress,” in today’s Globe. My favorite paragraph quotes former Lincoln-Sudbury colleague Charlie Ruopp, now principal of Wayland High School: Wayland High School tried… Read More ›
What's wrong with UMass?
Many — probably most — of my Weston students look down on UMass Amherst. Certainly it’s not the choice of our most successful students. I heard one junior disparaging it to the extent that he would consider his life ruined… Read More ›
Adequate Yearly Progress
A Boston Globe article on October 3, 2004, included Weston High School among the schools cited by the Department of Education for failure to make Adequate Yearly Progress on the No Child Too Far Ahead Act. Sorry, I mean the… Read More ›
The Achievement Gap
Yesterday I wrote about the pressure to take honors math, but I didn’t even consider the reasons for this pressure. The implied one — which I tried to debunk — was that honors math is necessary in order to get… Read More ›
Honors math courses
Weston, of course, is really Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average®. Weston’s only public high school has just two levels of math courses: the higher level is called honors, the lower level college-prep. Everyone is above average…. Read More ›
Casual Fridays
David Allen rants about Casual Fridays. Many of his readers’ comments concern seeing clients in business settings on Mondays through Thursdays. But what about school settings? At Weston High School we’ve had Casual Fridays for many years (though there have… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 