EricHoefler.com

Testing Teachers

Thursday, February 15, 2007

From the CNN article “Commission urges tracking of teacher progress,” notes about a “special commission” involved in the revision of NCLB: Teachers should be evaluated annually based on progress in the test scores of their students, the panel said. Reviews by colleagues or school principals also would be part of the equation for determining teacher quality. My [...]

Super Bowl Holiday

Sunday, February 4, 2007

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I think all schools should be closed tomorrow, the day after the Super Bowl, but not to honor the sporting event. Instead, it might bring some tiny level of awareness to how seriously we, as a nation, take entertainment as opposed to how seriously we, as a nation, fail to take education. (This [...]

Never Anti-Safety, Always Pro-Empowerment

Monday, January 29, 2007

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I’ve been invited to sit in on my county’s “Internet Safety Committee,” whose purpose is to revise the Acceptable Use Policy. I hope the revisions will improve safety without severly restricting access, but I’m worried. I’ve written before about some of the problems I have with denying access to (and thus preventing instruction about) the [...]

Dan and I are Having a Moment

Sunday, January 28, 2007

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This is exactly what’s great about blogging. Until a few days ago, I’d never heard of Dan Meyer. Now, thanks to my aggregator and the “edublogosphere” community, we’re in a pretty intense conversation about NCLB. I hope others will join the conversation. It’s always easy to think you’re right when you’re the only [...]

Response to “In Defense of NCLB”

Saturday, January 27, 2007

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I found Dan Meyer’s blog post “In Defense of NCLB” through Chris Lehmann’s post “A Smarter Mind than Mine Takes on NCLB.” I wasn’t planning on writing a blog post today (I have a pile of essays, stories, and scripts to read), but I just couldn’t not respond. Originally, I had planned on [...]

Rampant Stupidity

Sunday, January 21, 2007

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I don’t mean to be negative. I am, in general, a happy person who enjoys life and tends to prefer the optimistic perspective. Unfortunately, I stumble upon stupidity far more often than I’d like, and then I get angry. Here’s a recent example … One potentially valuable source of funds for reform are [...]

This is Getting Ridiculous

Monday, January 15, 2007

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As if we needed more reasons for people to avoid the teaching profession and shy away from the use of technology: Norwich, Conn seventh grade teacher, Julie Amero has been convicted of four counts of risk of injury to a minor after her classroom PC displayed pornographic pop-ups in class. Slashdot | Teacher Found Guilty of Endangering [...]

Freedom of Bigotry

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

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Arguments against the existence of the Holocaust are nothing new, but an officially sponsored “conference” where the issue is “debated” only among those already in agreement takes bigotry and intentional ignorance to a new level. From The New York Times: Iran held a gathering that included Holocaust deniers, discredited scholars and white supremacists from around the world [...]

Jay Points to Some of the Dumb

Wednesday, November 8, 2006

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I don’t always agree with Jay Matthews, and definitely don’t agree with his ranking system that relies almost exclusively on test scores, but I do agree with this comment from his recent article in the Washington Post: Governors, as well as school board members, do have the power to make schools better, but very few have [...]

Define Neutral for Me

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

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Wired News recently published an articled entitled “Neutral Net? Who Are You Kidding?” which called into question the idea that the net is currently a “neutral zone,” arguing instead that the internet has always been subject to the control of those companies with the most money/customers/bandwidth. This is true, but the proposed regulations (conveniently [...]