A while back I had a student, Davy, reach the final week of his final semester in high school, and he had a 40% in my senior Mythology course while maintaining an attendance rate of 60% (and I think a blood-alcohol level of 2.0 most of the semester). I wouldn’t budge on giving “extra credit” [...]

I came upon another article about class size and student success. According to the article’s author, “Small classes are more engaging places for students because they’re able to have a more personal connection with teachers, simply by virtue of the fact that there are fewer kids in the classroom competing for that teacher’s ...

According to a new study in a Washington Post article: At a time when more authors are writing more books for young people, fewer children are reading for pleasure. A recent study by the National Endowment for the Arts showed that the percentage of 13- to 17-year-olds who read daily for fun dropped from 31 percent [...]

I sometimes feel this way about standardized testing and class sizes in my school.

Today an article explained how the state Supreme Court deemed random drug tests for athletes unconstitutional. One portion of the article reads: “We cannot countenance random searches of public school student athletes,” under the Washington Constitution, Justice Richard Sanders wrote. “We require a warrant except for rare ...

I read an article today about high school seniors who are trying to pass the WASL in order to graduate. While I believe a minimum standard is acceptable for students to reach, I also feel that the credits earned should be the standard. However, that is not really my comment for today. I find it odd [...]

I thought I’d post some updates on the goings on I’ve discussed previously. When my class created bulletin boards about the 1920s for The Great Gatsby, things did not go exactly as planned. Being literal-minded students, almost everyone basically created the exact same research piece–exactly as I had written up the assignment. A ...

Is it possible to create a culture of failure? My school is currently being asked to discover why the Freshman failure rate is so high. 1/3 of the Freshmen failed a class during their first semester in high school, and statistically speaking 30% of Freshmen who fail a course in their first high school year do [...]

Recently, I sat down with one of our counselors and discussed the numerous reasons for so many freshman failures and failures in general. Of course, the normal reasons sprang up: student apathy, teacher ineffectiveness, absences, disconnections from school, and more. The one that bothered me the most, surprising as it may seem, is a failure to ...

Why do so many states create their own state test? I’d love to see every state use the ACT and SAT with every high school student. Maybe each state could divert the funds currently used for their own state tests to pay for all students to take one or both of these national exams. Results could [...]