Eduleadership
Justin Baeder on principal performance & productivity
School districts turn to paid readers for grading student essays
May 29th
According to the Seattle Times, several districts are hiring people to read English papers, greatly increasing the amount of writing on which students can receive feedback. Since the turnaround time for grading 200 or 300 pages of essays is so long, the meaningfulness of feedback students receive is minimal. With an outside reader, papers can be graded in a few days and returned quickly, whereas a full-time teacher might need several weeks to finish the essays.
Schools using outside readers say students are doing more writing and getting better feedback. The downside, though, is that the teacher does not have as much detailed information about individual students’ performance. To compensate for this, some districts require the teacher to personally read one in ten essays handed in, with the outside reader handling the rest.
The Four-Day School Week
May 20th
Some schools are shortening the school week to four days, staying longer Monday through Thursday and keeping schools closed on Fridays:
In parts of the American West such as Salmon [Idaho], sharply higher fuel prices have prompted a growing number of school districts to save money by shortening the school week to four days.School systems in such remote, sparsely populated areas, where school bus routes can stretch across many miles and take hours to complete, say far higher transport and other energy-related expenses are squeezing already shrinking budgets. link
Parents are concerned about the cost of daycare for Fridays, and schools are concerned that longer school days may make it harder to keep students engaged productively. However, many districts have successfully transitioned to the four-day week, saving money and giving teachers three-day weekends.
Starting Confused: How Leaders Start When They Don’t Know Where to Start
May 6th
In this Phi Delta Kappan article, Barry C. Jentz and Jerome T. Murphy of Harvard explain how a new educational leader can “hit the ground learning” rather than “hit the ground running,” in order to become established as a leader and avoid making hasty decisions.
Starting Confused: How Leaders Start When They Don’t Know Where to Start
ASCD on the Tween-Age Years
May 6th
ASCD’s current issue focuses on the tween-age years, with articles on building community among tweens, tween brain research, and firsthand accounts from tweens of what they need in order to learn.
