You will shift towards the bias in AI

 From recent research from Cornell: 

In every experiment, the researchers found that participants’ views shifted in the direction of the AI bias. The biggest surprise, Naaman said, was that mitigation measures did not work.

“We told people before, and after, to be careful, that the AI is going to be (or was) biased, and nothing helped,” Naaman said. “Their attitudes about the issues still shifted.”

The research itself is here.  
It cannot legitimately be used as a "thought partner" or even to "clean up writing" as I've heard people say even in the last day.

Don't use it. 

No long comp MCAS for grades 4 and 7 this spring

I just saw this today, though I'm told it was part of DESE's update to districts on November 30: there will be no long composition for grades 4 and 7 this spring.
From that announcement (highlighting added):

• In ELA, one of the PARCC items will require students to write in response to text. The Department suggests that districts familiarize themselves with PARCC items by utilizing PARCC practice tests and released items from the 2015 administration.
• Because of this change for ELA, the Department has decided to eliminate the ELA Composition in grades 4 and 7 in spring 2016. Schools and districts may release these prescribed dates on their calendars. The ELA Composition for grade 10 will continue to be administered.

Young Writers' Conference at St. John's

Details are here! 

Writing program at WAMS

there's a bit in the grant here about this being scaled up to the whole district; asking for some more information prior to citywide implementation.
Ms. Biancheria asking for a Friday letter on which schools are doing it this year; also, asking for an update ahead of budget. Some question as to that being possible (or meaningful), as the year won't be done.
Dr. Rodrigues clarifies that it's an opportunity, a choice, for the district, should it come to scale.

Teaching, Learning, and Student Supports meets at 5:30 today

My apologies for not doing an agenda rundown earlier; you can find it here:

http://worcesterschools.org/modules/cms/pages.phtml?pageid=269547

I do plan to attend, and I'll do some blogging while I'm there. 

A bit more on last night's meeting

Sorry, I am realizing in  retrospect that I did a pretty atrocious job of live-blogging last night's meeting.
 It wasn't a heavy agenda: a number of items were held (including all of Miss Biancheria's, as she wasn't there due to her mother's illness), and much of what we did have were approvals and requests for reports.
There were two amendments on referrals:
Mr. O'Connell, speaking of Mr. Monfredo's item regarding the Providence Reads program requested that administration specifically look at the "Making Learning Visible" program when reporting back to TLSS on this item.
Mr. Monfredo, speaking of the approval of the Staples' grant to Worcester Arts Magnet, requested that the materials created be shared across the district for more writing in the classrooms.
Beyond, as Ms. Reis reports this morning, grant approvals, those were the big items.

And  reminder that we meet AGAIN next week, as it's the first Thursday of March.

Summer reading is up!

If you check the front page of the Worcester Public Schools website, the summer reading is now posted! Remember, there are no specific assigned books in Worcester; the lists of authors are for your information.
And be sure you check our the new writing assignments!

PARCC assessment update

Perda: PARCC has grown out of some of the RTTT program from the federal government
(the other is SMARTER Balanced..almost all states are part of one or the other)

Hope on the Board of Ed

Over the weekend, Professor James E. McDermott, former South High and University Park English teacher, current professor at Clark, and, not-so-incidentally, current member of the Massachusetts Board of Education, gave the keynote address at the Western Massachusetts Writing Project. I have, with his permission, posted the whole of his address here. I'd highly recommend the whole thing, particularly for any who have given up on any in Malden having any idea on how education actually functions in a classroom; an excerpt to pique your interest:

Uncommon teachers understand that the MCAS test is misnamed; it is not comprehensive assessment system.
They shake their heads at the Orwellian notion that the MCAS Growth Percentage Profile demonstrates actual growth of a real human being.
Uncommon teachers’ souls often seem way out of sync with educational policy. To them policy seems overly politic, meticulous, cautious, trite, and common– directly in contrast with fantastic learning that requires openness, imagination inspiration, innovation, wonder, whimsy, and wit.

 Thanks for your service, Professor McDermott. You give the rest of us hope.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist,

'though maybe being an astronaut helps, in seeing that we're overdoing it with yet another education acronym:

...mention the odious and increasingly pervasive term “STEM education,” and instead of cheerleading gear, I reach for my ... pistil. In my disgruntlement, I am not alone. For readers who heretofore have been spared exposure to this little concatenation of capital letters, or who have, quite understandably, misconstrued its meaning, STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, supposedly the major food groups of a comprehensive science education...
The term also sounds didactic and jargony, which is why Sally Ride, the former astronaut who now travels the country promoting the glories of science education to girls and other interested parties, said she consciously avoids it.
“With my NASA heritage, I’m perfectly capable of speaking entirely in acronyms, including the verbs,” she said. “But this is not very helpful when talking to the public.”

Yes, please. And could we please rid ourselves of "ELA" (English Language Arts, which is itself an abuse of the English language) while we're at it?

Professor James McDermott: interview

You may remember that back in July, Governor Patrick named two new members to the state Board of Ed, among them Professor James McDermott of Clark University. The newest issue of The Backpack (from Citizens for Public Schools) has an interview with Professor McDermott. You'll want to read it all!
On teaching and urban education:

LG: How does your background working with urban schoolchildren and teaching writing inform your goals as a new member of the Board of Education, and what are those goals?



JD: Kids, especially those written off by others, have taught me that, no matter their background or perceived abilities, they can compete with anyone anywhere. The key is their having amazing teachers who love their discipline so well they want to share the love they have of their content with younger others. My goal then is to help the bureaucracy provide amazing support for these amazing teachers – to free them from the constraints that institutions often impose. Good teachers understand the importance of designing thinking classrooms, respecting youngsters as the thinking and feeling individuals they are. They know that the end of education cannot be to produce narcissists whose only reason for schooling is to earn higher paying jobs to satisfy their yearning for instant gratification. They understand that they who follow a program or a text or a curriculum without understanding why perform an injustice on young minds.

On writing:

To me, writing is the best academic tool we have to probe thinking. I like to talk about two broad types of writing: writing to learn and writing to show learning. Writing to learn is the low-stakes writing—timed, messy, zany, brainstorming—used to quickly reflect on what you think might be going on as you try to figure [something] out…We do not use enough of this low-stakes writing in classrooms. Indeed, we do not use thinking enough in our classrooms today.

On the MCAS:

Look, I worked on the frameworks and on MCAS. MCAS is a misnomer. The Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System is not comprehensive and it is not a system. I call it MT – Massachusetts Test. ...


I had many ways to assess my kids. I knew my kids better than anyone correcting the MCAS test. We did portfolios and presentations and took college courses and wrote and read and laughed and struggled and grew. And then I told them: This MCAS test will ask you to do some reading and writing. All I want you to do is show your thinking – that is what we have been doing every single day. So at University Park Campus School we took the MCAS test and outscored nearly everyone in the state – no test preparation and no focus on five-paragraph essays. Scores count. But not at all costs. The funny thing is the test worked for us because we did not teach to it. On the other hand the test may actually lower expectations if kids are pulled out of actual classes to do mindless test-taking drills.

Hopeful.

Creative writing online

Wondering how creative writing works in the online universe? You can see what one class in Paris, Illinois is doing here.

And while you're at it, check out the progressive view that the principal at that school has on technology use.