Blog Title: Joanne Jacobs

A Christmas Carnival of Education

Learn Me Good is hosting A Christmas Carnival of Education, featuring Ebenteacher’s adventures with the ghosts of bloggers past, present and future.

Thinking critically about content

Twenty-first century skills, the subject of three recent reports, require deep understanding of subject matter, writes Dan Willingham on Britannica Blog. Shallow understanding requires knowing some facts. Deep understanding requires knowing the facts AND knowing how they fit together, seeing the whole. It’s simply harder. And skills like “analysis” and “critical thinking” are tied to content; read more..

Four years abroad

American students are heading overseas, often to Scotland, Canada and Ireland, to earn college degrees, reports the New York Times. For American students, a university like St. Andrews offers international experience and prestige, at a cost well below the tuition at a top private university in the United States. But it provides a narrower, more specialized read more..

On the road again

I’m hitting the road next week. On Dec. 8, I’ll talk about special education at charter schools as part of the National Charter School Research Project’s Hopes, Fears and Reality 2008 event starting with a noon lunch at the Urban Institute, 2100 M Street, NW, Washington, D.C. If you can make it, RSVP to Karina Klepach read more..

Schools cut service hours

Private schools are requiring fewer “community service” hours, reports the New York Times. They’re hoping for more quality service. Through the holidays and beyond, high school students will be working feverishly to serve the needy — packing food baskets, ladling meals at soup kitchens, collecting toys for children in hospitals — all in the name of read more..

Carnival of Homeschooling

Po Moyemu is hosting this week’s Carnival of Homeschooling.

Will the Obama girls learn math?

Barry Garelick is OK with the Obamas’ decision to send their daughters to private school. But he fears the girls won’t learn math at Sidwell Friends. . . . Sidwell uses Investigations in Number, Data and Space, one of the NSF-sponsored atrocities that passes as a math course and grossly underprepares students for math. . . read more..

Carnival of English Learning

It’s Carnival time for English-language learning blogs. Mary Ann Zehr of Learning the Language is the host.

Nationalizing education

Abolish local school districts (except for the 20 largest cities and the 50 states), advocates former IBM CEO Lou Gerstner in the Wall Street Journal.  Then establish national standards for reading, math, science and social studies with a test to match. Gerstner also wants to set national standards for teacher certification, pay teachers based on read more..

Everybody’s doing it

High school students lie, cheat and steal, they admit on a Josephson Institute survey. _Cheating in school is rampant and getting worse. Sixty-four percent of students cheated on a test in the past year and 38 percent did so two or more times, up from 60 percent and 35 percent in a 2006 survey. _Thirty-six percent said read more..