Today’s ASCD Express featured a link to a “new voice,” Ken O’Connor, on grading for learning.

Ken is not exactly a new voice. He wrote his first grading piece for the NASSP Journal (National Association of Secondary School Principals) in 1995, and I had the great fortune to take a two-day ASCD Institute on “grading for learning” from Ken in Albuquerque, NM, in 2000.

Here is Ken’s summary of grading concepts that will help more students succeed in school.

Ken’s new 3rd edition of his comprehensive book on grading for learning is pictured above. It’s available from Assessment Training Institute (ETS) in Portland, Oregon, or Amazon.com.

Ken’s grading and assessment concepts should be part of every teacher’s toolkit.

Read “State of Mind,” an article about teacher job satisfaction that appeared yesterday online in Education Week.

Are you happy with your profession? Why or why not? What’s to be done?

What would you like to tell your Superintendent or local Board of Ed about the state of teaching in your district/school?

I first heard the word “Ning” from The Science Goddess a while back. I’m not sure I understand the full potential of nings, but from what I can see, there’s plenty of opportunity for collaboration and learning. I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more of them.

I’ve added a new link category, “Nings,” to my sidebar for folks who visit here and would like to be pointed in new, helpful directions.

My first ning link is to The English Companion Ning, a meeting place for English/Language Arts teachers. Jim Burke, the administrator of the ning also has a web site called English Companion. And he is seriously published. Check out his books.

If you want to create your own Ning, go here.

(A few clicks later…)

I’m in the exploration mode here, in real time. Mr. Burke has a blog also. I’ll be looking at that for a while!

Additional Note (October 4, 2009): I just viewed a bunch of education-related nings using the search term teacher ning. There’s lots out there. Surf’s up!

I’m not just talking about me…I’m talking about you, too.

Let me know if the blog name change is too much, or whether it’s more in line with what I hope to achieve, which is exploring education topics that defy universal agreement, but demonstrate a commitment to caring and professionalism.

Why didn’t I call it The Reflective Teacher? I’m thinking that the word  “reflective” is overused jargon, don’t you? The ideal reading level for understanding and being understood is around eighth grade. That’s what newspapers shoot for, and I’m thinking they have a good idea.

Okay, I’m becoming part of the world rave for EVERNOTE.

I don’t have a policy against making recommendations to my peers that will improve the quality of their personal and professional lives, but somehow, I rarely get around to it. Even when I got an iPhone 3G for my birthday last November, I didn’t tweet, face, or mention it here. And I love my iPhone.

But I have to talk about Evernote. It’s that good. In fact, it’s one of those apps that’s worth buying an iPhone for.

“Your External Brain” is the company’s catchphrase. And right they are. This app is a radical departure from the average note-taking app, e.g., Appigo’s Notebook, which I like because it syncs to the net (Toodledo) and my phone, and is accessible from any computer. So is Evernote. And that’s not all…

Evernotes can be photos, voice, text, paste, drag and drop, or you can snatch entire web pages from the net, or just parts. Evernote has character recognition (in addition to tagging and attributes), so it will search for words you input even in pdfs and legible handwritten notes you’ve photographed or scanned in.

This thing even has geographic search that works off the phone’s gps. If I take a photo of my parking spot row sign at LAX, I can search for it by asking for all notes made within a mile of the parking lot (although I think I’d tag it “LAX”).

Evernote is easy to use and so versatile that I’ll still be finding new uses for it next year.

Oh, and did I mention that a full-service version is free. After I figured out how to use it, though, I got the guilties and signed up for the Premium account (just $5 per month) that features more storage than I’ll ever use, along with high-end encryption algorithms, and a few other features.

Check out the Evernote web site, the blog, the podcasts (talky, but informative), and sign up. Mac and Windows clients are available, and the Windows Mobile phones and others will handle it too. A BlackBerry app is in the works.

Evernote was not designed to be a GTD (Getting Things Done by David Allen) app, but functions as a companion program to any of them. You can’t make good lists of things to do if you can’t remember what it was you needed to do in the first place, right? I use Evernote along with Toodledo, a task app.

As a teacher or administrator, can you imagine being able to capture and catalog all the cool ideas you’d like to implement to improve student achievement? Now you can, easily.

I still use my own brain, but it’s getting more rest now.

I don’t know how long this link will be available, but Eric Schopmeyer, a Portland, Oregon music teacher speaks about, not the impossibility of instituting merit pay fairly across the board, but of the disrespect to our profession by pushing the issue.

Right on, Eric!

For another view on merit pay, which highlights how the federal government (a government that intrudes on the constitutional right of the states to handle public education) views the issue, check out Larry Ferlazzo on In Practice.

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Should Eric’s link become history, here’s the text from “The Stump,” opinion from The Oregonian online.

Education, In My Opinion, Sunday Commentary »

Merit pay for teachers

By George Rede

March 21, 2009, 6:46AM

Eric Schopmeyer

Count instead on real incentives to help kids achieve

Implicit in the idea of merit pay is the notion that teachers would work harder at their jobs if only they were motivated by the promise of more money. This misapplication of market principles is utterly disrespectful to our nation’s educators. At best, it reads as a dark, satirical joke.

A scene in such a black comedy might open thusly: A classroom of 32 second-graders struggles in a futile attempt to complete an assignment while a teacher leans back lazily in her chair, ignoring them, counting out a neat stack of twenties thinking, “No, still not enough. Oh, if only someone would make it worth my while, I could easily get all these kids to pass the test. But until then … .”

Any cursory examination of our education system will turn up a group of serious and dedicated professionals who pour their hearts and souls into their jobs, working countless hours of unpaid overtime, dipping into our own pockets for needed supplies and tirelessly shepherding children toward academic success.

We do all this in an environment of essentially untenable conditions caused by the toxic dichotomy of ever-increasing demands and ever-diminishing resources. And it shouldn’t come as news to anyone that people don’t go into teaching for the money. We work our hardest every day not for the promise of the dollar but for love for the children and a deep belief that education is the key to a healthy society. You could give us a million dollar bonus every year, but it wouldn’t make a difference without a substantial investment in improving the fundamental conditions under which we are made to work.

A parallel scene might take place on the battlefields of Afghanistan. A small battalion, outnumbered and unarmed, is deployed behind enemy lines. Their commanding officer promises each of them bonus pay should they reign victorious. They’ll fight because they have to. They’ll fight for survival. They’ll fight out of loyalty. But without proper weaponry and ample reinforcements, the battle (and their survival) is a lost cause. The motivation of bonus pay is moot.

If you want to spend money to improve teaching and learning in the classroom, spend it on reducing class size, spend it on the resources and materials that we desperately lack, spend it on upgrading our crumbling facilities, spend it on programs to end the poverty that prevents so many of our kids from succeeding.

Sure, teachers deserve more pay — all teachers do. That’s a simple matter of respect for an extremely challenging profession that is so vital to our society and our economy. But I’d take a reduction in class size over an increase in pay any day.

Eric Schopmeyer is a music teacher at Marysville Elementary School in Portland.

Today a fly fishing friend of mine who volunteered at the OHS museum and research library from 1979 to 2000 clued me in that the research library may be shut down for lack of funding. That would be a disaster.

Please visit the petition site to weigh in on the matter, and then let everyone you know about the opportunity to keep Oregon history available.

This resource must remain accessible to keep Oregon history alive. One of the first steps to obliterating a culture or a people is to cut them off from their history. We can’t have that happening in Oregon. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

Anyone else have any ideas on how to get the word around? Please comment here and I’ll do my share to spread the word.

As of tonight, only 20 people had signed the online petition. Surely more of us must care.

‘Nuff said. Now the work begins…

Over Christmas Vacation (Winter Break to my PC friends), I read a thriller that put forth the idea that Einstein actually had succeeded in developing the necessary equations to explain the physical universe in its entirety, his Unified Field Theory.

The novel was written by a well-informed science historian with a knack for suspense. If the equations fell into the “wrong hands,” the result could be a weapon more devastating and sinister than the A/H bomb.

Long story short, I began to think about how unbearably complex the field of education has become. I wondered if there are, perhaps, a few simple principles we could discuss, validate, and practice, that would forever serve every student well. How powerful would that be?

Think about it…a Unified Field Theory of Education.

What would be some of the characteristics of such a theory?

I’ll suggest one, then I’d like to see some ideas from the rest of you. The simpler, the better. (No need for “research validation.” Follow your intuition.)

Here goes: “Every student is a genius, and our job is to help them discover that fact.”

Join me on the adventure.

For all the rest of you semi-erstwhile and faithful bloggers caught up in the holidays…Happy and Blessed New Year to you, your families, and friends!