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Cracking the Code: The New Education Revolution |
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Cracking the Code: The New Education Revolution is an initiative
of Basics Project that empowers parents by affording more transparency
to the educational process; prospective and practicing teachers by
providing comprehensive information about the field not covered in
education schools; and finally, anyone who cares about education reform
by providing a web based reference site explaining the “eduspeak” which
confounds those not versed in the field of education. Lack of
Communication between parents and educators results in parents being
unable to truly participate in the education of their children. The goal
of
Cracking the Code: The New Education Revolution is to empower
parents and people concerned with the education of our children by
providing them the tools to make the best educational choices for their
their communities and our country. |
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Ideology |
Delivery Systems |
Ideology
simply means, a set of beliefs. Everything that a person
learns goes to determine his or her ideology. As children or as adults,
what we are formally taught or what we intentionally learn forms only
part of our total education. We learn from all our experience.
What set of beliefs influence our education system and student learning?
Competing interest groups influence and shape education policy. Because
of this, the education system is in constant flux. Three categories of
special interests exert their influence:
▪ Government (politicians,
school boards, and the courts)
▪ Special interest groups (unions, foundations, parents, and
business)
▪ The knowledge industry (funding agencies, researchers,
knowledge brokers, and testing and publishing industries)
More Information
- Viewpoints: From the Statehouse to the Classroom: Governing America's
Schools Is Politics in Education Here to Stay? |
How will information be presented? The way the delivery system is
planned and organized reflects specific educational purposes or
objectives. Research has shown that learners need and want to receive
information, experience information, and be supported and reinforced in
the learning process. It is a job of the provider to build a bridge that
allows learners to assimilate or integrate the new information with
knowledge they already possess. When deciding on a delivery system,
several factors should be considered These factors are:
▪ The targeted audience
▪ The educational objective
▪ The type and content of the
message being provided
▪ The characteristics of the
delivery method
▪ The usefulness of the
method in providing desired learning support
More Information - Program Delivery
Methods |
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Teaching Styles |
Schools of Education |
There are four different recognized styles of teaching:
▪ In Teacher-centered
classrooms, information is presented and students receive knowledge.
▪ In a Teacher-centered
approach, modeling and demonstration is emphasized. This encourages
students to observe processes as well as content.
▪ In a Student-centered
model, teachers design activities, social interactions, or
problem-solving situations that allow students to practice the processes
for applying course content.
▪
A teacher acting as a
Facilitator places the onus of learning on the students by providing
complex tasks that require student initiative, and often group work, to
complete.
More Information - How To: Adjust
Your Teaching Style to Your Students' Learning Style
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All 50 States and the District of Columbia require public school
teachers to be licensed. Licensure is not required for teachers in
private schools in most States. Usually licensure is granted by the
State Board of Education or a licensure advisory committee. Teachers may
be licensed to teach the early childhood grades (usually preschool
through grade 3); the elementary grades (grades 1 through 6 or 8); the
middle grades (grades 5 through 8); a secondary-education subject area
(usually grades 7 through 12); or a special subject, such as reading or
music (usually grades kindergarten through 12).
Requirements for regular licenses to teach kindergarten through grade 12
vary by State. However, all States require general education teachers to
have a bachelor’s degree and to have completed an approved teacher
training program with a prescribed number of subject and education
credits, as well as supervised practice teaching.
Excerpt from - U.S.
Department of Labor Occupational Outlook Handbook |
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Classroom Variables |
Benchmarks |
Classroom variables are the reasons some students in some classrooms
might learn more than students in the same or another classroom. The
reasons can be classified into four categories.
▪ Context: All those factors
outside of the classroom that might influence teaching and learning.
▪ Input: Those qualities or characteristics of teachers and
students that they bring with them to the classroom experience.
▪ Classroom Processes: Teacher and student behaviors in the
classroom as well as some other variables such as classroom climate and
teacher/student relationships.
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Output: Measures of student
learning taken apart from the normal instructional process.
More Information - A
Transactional Model of the Teaching/Learning Process |
Education is a lifelong experience — from birth to death. Many residents
spend one-third of their lifetime in formal education — public
education, technical college, university and education for employment
and advancement. There are many benchmarks along the education
continuum.
A benchmark is a marker along the way... a measure of where we are...
an indicator of how we are doing. School readiness is the first
indicator of how children will perform academically in school.
More Information - Standards &
Benchmarks |
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Assessments |
Publishers |
Assessment is simply evaluating progress or achievement in the
development of a particular skill, or in the understanding of a
particular area of knowledge. With young children, informal assessment
is based on observation by a parent/guardian or early learning
practitioner.
In primary school, informal observation is supplemented with assessment
tools, such as teacher-designed tests and tasks, project work and
portfolios across the curriculum and standardized tests.
Assessment feedback alerts the student and teacher to strengths and
weaknesses, and helps them both identify next steps and strategies for
improvement. Teachers use this information when planning lessons,
choosing resource materials and in meeting the different needs of
different learners. Assessment information is used to provide parents
information about their children's academic progress and ability.
Screening or diagnostic assessment is useful if a parent or teacher
suspects that a child may have a learning difficulty, or if the child is
not progressing as well as their peers.
More Information -
Assessment |
Textbook adoption has been hijacked by pressure groups. The textbook
adoption process has been a feature of American education since
Reconstruction, when former Confederate states issued guidelines
for school materials that reflected their version of the Civil War. In
the present day, special interest pressure groups from the politically
correct left and the religious right exert enormous influence on
textbook content through bias and sensitivity guidelines and reviews
that have dumbed down textbook content in an attempt to render them
inoffensive to every possible ethnic, religious, and political
constituency.
Excerpt from - The
Mad, Mad World of Textbook Adoption |
