Pure Manaʻo

Education Secretary Arne Duncan is on a summer tour to hear ideas about "how we can accomplish President Obama's goal of providing every child in America a complete and competitive education, from cradle through career." He is not coming to Hawaii, however, that doesn't mean that we are out of the conversation. As Duncan prepares for reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, he wants to hear from classroom teachers and other educators, parents and students, business people and citizens. He wants to hear what's working and what's not working. This is our chance to share our mana'o from the trenches. He has set up a blog where he will post questions and read your responses. This link will take you to a question about standards, but please continue to follow his listening tour and put in your mana'o. So to the first set of questions: Many states in America are independently considering adopting internationally-benchmarked, college and career-ready stand...

Kevin Hodgson shares his mana'o on literacy and writing. Now that Hawai'i schools are out for summer and as the workshops and writing projects start next week, take some time to read his post , reflect on your year and think about the essentials and big ideas in your own curriculum. I lā maikaʻi!

Deborah Meiers, on her Edweek blog Bridging Differences writes about "test scores and reinforcing the wrong connections." We need more people willing to have a "conversation" on slow change and long-term solutions. Not everything can be fixed quickly. As long as we use test scores as our primary evidence for being poorly educated we reinforce the connection—and the bad teaching to which it leads. If by some course of action we could get everyone's score the same—even by cheating—I’d be for it, so we could get on to discussing the interactions that matter in classrooms and schools: between “I, Thou, and It.” I’ve spent 45 years trying, unsuccessfully, to shift the discussion to schools as sites for learning. Such a “conversation” might not produce economic miracles, but it would over time connect schooling to the kind of learning that can protect both democracy and our economy. Because that’s where schools are (or are not) powerful.